Make your own kind of music
Go ahead and tell Grace Potter that she sounds like a young Bonnie Raitt. Or Norah Jones. Or Shelby Lynne. Or even Janis Joplin. She won't flinch because she's used to all this. The one comparison she rarely gets is to Lucinda Williams, and that's what befuddles her.
''I've never had a problem with being compared to Bonnie Raitt because I've never sat down and tried to sound like her," she says from a tour stop in Connecticut. ''It's the same thing with Norah Jones. Plus, I'm inspired by them, so how could I have a problem with being compared to them? If there's anyone I've tried to imitate, it's Lucinda Williams."
But let's be frank: Potter does sound a lot like Raitt, as heard on Raitt's mid-'70s records (read: pre-Don Was) -- gritty, yearning, and just plain hungry. In Potter's case, as most of her fans are surprised to learn, it's a voice that belongs to a 21-year-old Vermont native who fronts an unsigned band.
Even though Potter and her backing band, the Nocturnals, have played in New York, opened for acts such as Mavis
''The cool thing about being unsigned is that we're creating this tiny network of people who know and love our music," says Potter, who also plays Hammond B-3 organ. ''People like to discover something new and on their own, and I think that's how we're building our career. You have to have your timing, and right now we're just taking baby steps."
Potter is quick to emphasize the importance of her upbringing in Waitsfield, a ski-resort town smack in the middle of Vermont, a hamlet she describes as ''where all these '70s bums and liberal hippies went to live." Potter's own background isn't far off. Her father has a sign-making business, while her mother is an artisan famous for her bowls.
''Part of growing up in Waitsfield is that I learned that you do things on your own for as long as you can," she says. ''The truth is, [she and her band] aren't really big enough to need a label yet."
A&R departments at a lot of labels might tend to disagree. Potter says she and her band have already spoken with ''someone from all the major record labels. That's not to say that they've liked what they heard, but someone has at least come to one of our shows."
Like her parents, Potter attended St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, where she met her bandmates. Unlike her parents, Potter didn't finish her degree, in part because she struggled to figure out if she wanted to be an actress, set designer, artist, or musician. Once she decided on music, the band got to work and made its debut last year with ''Original Soul."
Its follow-up effort, ''Nothing But the Water," will likely be the group's breakthrough. Recorded in Haybarn Theatre (essentially a renovated barn) on the campus of Goddard College, also in central Vermont, ''Nothing But the Water" is a weathered mix of bluesy roots rock that nods to Potter's heroes while establishing her own confessional songwriting quirks. ''Give me back my hammer/ Give me back my nail/ Give me back my jeans and my J. J. Cale," she sings on the album's opening track, ''Toothbrush and My Table."
If the album seems a total departure from ''Original Soul," then so be it, Potter says. ''We had all these record-label people come up to us after a show at Joe's Pub [in New York City], and they're like, 'What happened to your sound? We thought we had the next Norah Jones,"' Potter says. ''I just looked at them and said, 'OK, whatever you say, guys.' But believe me, we know what we're doing."
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com. 
