I’m sticking with the talent show today and featuring a song I’d never heard by a band I didn’t know existed. That probably applies to half the songs I heard in the talent show, but in this case I was moved to seek out the original track.
The singers were definitely the shakiest group of performers. As anybody who’s seen five minutes of American Idol knows, there are far more people who think they can sing than people who actually can. It takes some combination of guts and delusion to walk out on stage and perform a tuneless version of some recent radio hit.
But there were exceptions. The girl who sang today’s SOTD, for example, had a strong, pretty voice that made up for what she lacked in stage presence. She walked out wearing a sneer that suggested she was either pissed off or scared to death and performed the whole song without changing her expression.
When she finished, however, she raised both arms, did a silly little wave and gave a small smile. My wife cleared things up later, explaining that the girl wore a perpetual frown not because she was sad or angry but because “that’s just her face.”
Grace Potter & The Nocturnals are a Vermont-based band that formed in 2004. Potter, the lead singer and principal songwriter, has a nice raspy voice reminiscent of Bonnie Raitt (the comparison is even more obvious on the bluesier fare I sampled off their several albums).
Thank you, girl with the sour face, for the recommendation.
Were fading fast away
I said well what do you expect
You asked me not to stay and if it had all been for the best
I wouldn’t feel this way
And he said
Oh he said it’s crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don’t wanna fight this war
It’s amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies
My love is like a blanket
That gets a little bit too warm sometimes
I wanna wrap somebody in it
Who can hold me in his arms
Cause when it got a little too hot in there
He was always stepping out for air and he froze
Oh he froze
He said it’s crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don’t wanna fight this war
It’s amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies
Yesterday he looked at me
With a tear in his eye and said
I’ll always tell you you’re my friend
I hope i don’t have to lie
Cause it’s clear you love another man
I said you’re damn right
And he said
He said it’s crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don’t wanna fight this war
It’s amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies
He said it’s crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
That i didn’t figure it out before
And now it’s too late for a soliloquy
It’s way too late for dignity
It’s time for apologies
Meet Me In Montauk 
How does “girl with the sour face” discover a band such as this? What radio station is she listening to? Or, more likely, to which artists has she fine-tuned her personal Pandora radio station? So much music kids listen to can be traced to the kid sitting next to them. One listens because they all listen. Maddie has “discovered” several artists through YouTube fan videos made about some of her favorite shows and set to one song or another that she (and Daniel) come to embrace and investigate. Did Grace Potter show up that way? I’m fascinated.
Regardless, I like the song and imagine I would have enjoyed hearing it played on stage by the cool, slightly offbeat kid who had the gall to discover and perform it. Good for her, sour face and all 🙂
Hmmm…. they played at last year’s Langerado festival, where there is one artist I don’t know featured after the next I know less. Perhaps she saw them there? 🙂
http://www.langerado.com/home2.php?bandid=37
I think “Girl With a Sour Face” would be a good name for a band. That’s all I got today.:)
I hear, at alternate moments in the song, Edie Brickell and Kim Carnes in Potter’s voice. Interesting. It’s a nice song and I would wonder how a high school student came across it and then decided to perform it in a school talent show. Do you think it felt like a safer choice because the odds of someone else knowing it very well would be so slim in that environment? Just a thought. Anyway, I like it and I’d definitely look into their other stuff.
With regard to the girl’s look, just to summarize, she wasn’t actually giving you the stink eye, that’s just how she looks… 🙂