Mother Road is the best blues rock record I've heard in a good long while, it's clear why Grace Potter has a couple of Grammy nominations in her belt, this album was recorded at RCA Studio A in Nashville and Topangadise in Topanga with Eric Valentine producing the Band of top-quality session players including Benmont Tench, Dan Kalisher, Tim Deaux, Matt Musty and Nick Bockrath this was written and recorded over a two year period and mainly written while driving across America during the pandemic lockdowns.
The album opens with the title track and single Mother Road, epic blues rock tale of rum goings on, down Mother Road that is a reference to Highway 66, but is as much for the wide open road, this comes with a very cool video, as Grace's, Sass Jordan meets Allanah Myles with a dash of Janis Joplin vocals start to tell tales that will make you need a stiff drink, if your not listening to this album while driving down that lonesome highway once more, driven along by that steady pounding organ.
Truck Stop Angels is a sweet soda shop pop interlude as you get Ready Set Go to hit that road, to do all the things you need to do to survive life on that wide open road, the guitars rev-up as the stories unfold on multiple levels, you know this is the road to ruin, redemption and salvation, dependent on if you turn left, right or go straight ahead, before any more ghosts make you stop by the side of that road, the ghosts driving her on.
Good Time is down dirty low-down blues for that road to Montreal, that owes as much to Bonnie Raitt as it does Alanis Morrisette, as the gospel singers tell you that "You Can't Keep A Good Time Down". As she needs more fun and games, better watch out, she's on her way, no matter the country may be locked down, she wants to be out on the road finding love once more.
Little Hitchiker is loosely based on Grace's own experience of running away from home aged 9, how it started her journey down those endless highways of life, knowing that you could spend a lifetime looking for that perfect destination, as the relationship between the child and the person who stops to give her that first ride along the way. The lonesome blues desolation backs the search for the end of that road, will she be forever on that road or settle down.
Lady Vagabond is the title sequence to a western epic that this song sets out the whole story of, a gal leaving in just a bathing suit to escape whatever just happened, she hits the trail, leaving devastation everywhere she goes. Cross her at your peril, tangle with her if she wants, she gets to hustle shake shimmy her way across those endless wilderness roads. Is she coming home, does home exist for Lady Vagabond now in Technicolor Cinemascope.
Rose-Colored Rearview opens with a come-on, an invitation to party, where you'll have no regrets afterwards as you drive away again, as the slow-motion funky stew powers you on, as you order your drinks once more.
All My Ghosts is a slow blues evocation of all the Ghosts Grace carries round with her, for everything she's been through, but the ghosts don't scare her as much as she scares herself, but she does need them to keep her company, as the kettle drums boom against the pained guitar, taking her confession before Betty Ford's apparition scares the hell out of everyone.
Futureland is a mighty long way to roll on down too, driving piano gallops along, as she wants her reality to change into a different future, to the one she's currently living through. A time that's as ballsy as she can make it.
The album closes with Masterpiece one last sassy as they come tale, for all the assholes her generation produced, this chugs along blowsy streetwise, road weary, sleazy headed for the pole once more, helping her to have all the hard luck stories, to make fabulously real blues like this, she has created her own Masterpiece album. I have managed to hear this album more times than anything else in my review pile in the last 6 weeks as this really does need to be heard over and over.
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