Grace Potter Repurposes 16-Year-Old Recordings into New Solo Album ‘Medicine’

In 2009, before Grace Potter became a mother, the roots-rock siren and lead singer of The Nocturnals had her sights set on a solo career. The world had yet to experience her band’s big breakout hit — “Paris Ooh La La” — which would ultimately change the Vermont singer-songwriter’s career trajectory. 

So she tucked herself into a studio with producer T Bone Burnett and a crew of musical geniuses — session players that weren’t in her band — including drummer Jim Keltner, the guitarist Marc Ribot, the bassist Dennis Crouch and the keyboardist Keefus Ciancia.

“It really felt like something exciting on the horizon,” Potter told The New York Times of the time she spent recording the album.

But then, those solo-album plans halted, Potter told the NY Times. Hollywood Records shelved the album, and asked Potter and The Nocturnals to rerecord the songs with the producer Mark Batson, and make them the core of the self-titled Grace Potter and The Nocturnals’ 2010 album.

Ultimately, the move was a smart one, as that album — and the hit “Paris (Ooh La La)” — catapulted Potter and her band to international stardom. But in the years since, the songs she’d originally recorded with session musicians stayed on her mind.

And finally, they’re free from the vault!

Released on May 30, Potter’s album Medicine is sensual, nostalgic, and, at times, surprising, collection of familiar songs that highlight Potter’s powerful vocals. The new versions of the tracks from the Grace Potter & The Nocturnals’ 2010 album — “Oasis,” “Medicine,” and “Paris (Ooh La La),” especially— feel fresh again, infused with horns and dreamy jazz-guitar tones. The stripped-down effects and arpeggiated guitars of “Oasis,” in particular,” gives the fan favorite tune a bit of a velvet lounge vibe. Admittedly, the solo Potter version of “Paris” threw me off initially — the tempo is slower and the lyrics are slightly different — but anyone who hasn’t heard the Nocturnals version would fall in love with it immediately.

The songs I hadn’t heard before, like “The Shore,” are gorgeous, too.

And while the album comes at a different point in Potter’s life — she married producer Eric Valentine in 2017, and became a mom in 2018 — the songs are just as relevant today as they were in the late 2010s, proof that sometimes timing truly is everything.