road trip with a rock star

Grace Potter's SXSW Audience Award-winning film gets nationwide release

Grace Potter executive produced a film about finding family through music that's premiering at SXSW in 2024.

Photo courtesy of Grace Potter

At South by Southwest in 2024, the music documentary Resynator won the Audience Award, a contest based on audience votes right after the film is shown.

It was a stamp of approval for the film's merit beyond its star power; some people may have been drawn in knowing it was produced by musician Grace Potter or that it featured lots of her famous peers, but they ended up loving the work as a whole.

The Resynator team has now announced that people all over the country will be able to watch the film, which chronicles an early synthesizer invention and family fallout, starting December 13. Anyone can rent or buy it via AppleTV, Prime Video, Google Play, and Fandango At Home, and select theaters will play a live screening. (Unfortunately, none of them are in Austin.)

To introduce the work to new audiences, below is CultureMap's original coverage from February 9, 2024 — about a month before the film's premiere.

Grace Potter has always wanted to be someone specific and perhaps surprising: "a woman who drove an old truck and had a laundromat in Austin, Texas."

Well, we suppose there's still time for that. Before that dream is realized, she'll be a woman who plays Austin City Limits Live on February 16, then one who has executive produced a documentary premiering at South by Southwest (SXSW) on March 10, 2024. And that's nothing to scoff at.

Since the early aughts, Potter has become known as a real-deal rock musician — one who stands up to the old ideals of classic rock while embracing a more contemporary, versatile aesthetic. She's known for songs like "Paris (Ooh La La)" with her band, the Nocturnals, and "Something That I Want" as a solo project featured on the Tangled soundtrack.

Grace Potter is known for her vintage rock style.Photo courtesy of Adrien Broom

Both of her most popular songs are overtly feminine on opposite sides of the spectrum — from gritty and rebellious to hopeful and bubbly — but neither trips over the benevolently limiting tropes strewn around for women musicians. She doesn't need a schtick; she's gained rock credence from her own artistic vision as well as projects with the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers Band, Willie Nelson, and Neil Young.

"I think that coked-up white dudes from the '70s have been celebrated a lot," says Potter from her tour bus in Macon, Georgia (of course). "And I've been a part of a lot of that celebration... The entire generation of people that made music at that time seem to just touch on a blend of musicality in an era where music from all different corners of the earth started to gel together. I think there's a real ubermusical moment there."

Resynator
Her SXSW project, Resynator, continues following the impactful-men-from-the-'70s thread through another feminine lens.

Director Alison Tavel, Potter's best friend and tour manager at the start of the film, has been collecting information for a decade about her musician father, Don Tavel, who died when she was only 10 weeks old. Don developed a synthesizer called The Resynator, which he himself called "the precursor to MIDI," but this particular synthesizer fell out of use, and it became his daughter's goal to revive it.

Money Mark and Alison TavelStill from Resynator

The film offers a tour through some of the music industry's greatest innovators and entertainers: Peter Gabriel, Fred Armisen, Gotye, Jon Anderson, Mike Gordon, and Potter's husband, producer Eric Valentine, among others. But between the star power and the electronic tinkering are more emotional, personal scenes with family. Alison's mother represents a level of complication in Don's image that was invisible to his daughter; Don's mother represents an origin for this complexity.

Potter, who appears briefly a few times, holds space for pivotal moments: the inception of the idea, the shift from fact-finding to traveling with The Resynator, and eventually, the posthumous resolution between father and daughter. Although she must have been a useful collaborator in parlaying with all these famous musicians, she is also one of the women forming the emotional core of the film.

"There were moments all along the way where [Alison] wanted to quit," says Potter. "Basically my job as EP was to get her in front of as many musicians as possible, [and to] create as many opportunities as possible for her to continue pushing through her vision and of course the occasional mental breakdown."

Family and nostalgia as art engines
A mother herself, Potter doesn't know why exactly she gravitates toward stories about family and images of nostalgia. She seems good at the common creative advice, write what you know.

She remembers as a child trying to dismantle the "female singers" section of her mother's record collection, yet now realizes its existence steered her to a strong appreciation of Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, and Nina Simone. She doesn't seek out family projects, but her latest album, Mother Road, is a direct result of returning to her hometown with her husband and son, grieving a miscarriage, and becoming obsessed with long rental car drives.

"[The nostalgia is] very much always there. It's not something at the forefront of my mind," says Potter. "It's such an amazing thing to wake up ... and to feel like I was born into the wrong time, but I love this. And [we] have the shepherds of our family to bring us to influences and inspiration that allow our creativity to flow."

She continues, referring to the familial questions that drove Resynator, "It really brought in so much gratitude for me that I had the ability to come up in a world where I didn't have to ask those questions. But it also made me [think about] my kid — Sagan, he's 6 now — what kind of table am I setting for him to sit down at?"

Texas and South by Southwest
Whatever tables she sets, the nostalgia clearly inspires some wanderlust in Potter. Although the singer is from Vermont, she grew up spending the winters with her grandparents in Albuquerque. She often uses images of the Southwest, especially in Mother Road, and has plenty of admiration for Texas as part of it.

"I just remember it being so foreign at first, the terrain and the way that the hills roll, especially as you get through New Mexico and and start entering into Texas," she says. "There's that big-sky, wide-open-range, horizon-for-days experience. I was so cosseted in Vermont. I mean, every mountain around me felt like a hug. And as I grew up, I think that curiosity and that sort of headlong-into-the-howling-wind feeling ... was urgent, like on a cellular level. And it is the epitome, I think, [of] Texas."

Grace Potter desert landscape The artsy thrifted aesthetic works for Potter wherever she goes.Photo courtesy of Grace Potter

In a much more urban sense, South by Southwest represents a similar unknown in its potential for making creative encounters. (If you see her this year, ask her about Dr. Dog, Jack Antonoff, Phoenix, Robert Plant, and her hotel room party.) She's been going in various capacities since 2005, and always leaves room in her schedule for impromptu collaborations.

"There's so many things about the film industry and the music industry that I've always enjoyed, that cross over," Potter says. "And South by Southwest is one of the rare places where you can really actively see it happening. You can see and meet filmmakers who are inherently inspired by [music] — sometimes even their whole story starts with a song."

"It's been many years of me wanting to find my footing in both the film and music worlds ... and make some kind of a Trojan horse out of the whole thing," she concludes. "And it's finally starting to come together. It only took me 20 years."

music film movies sxsw texas live music

Belles of the Ballroom

9 Austin bar and venue experts take over popular Old Austin space near UT

29th Street Ballroom/Facebook

Changes are coming at the 29th Street Ballroom, but the goal is to preserve what already makes it special.

The evolution continues at the 29th Street Ballroom, the music venue formerly attached to Spider House Café. It's no secret, Resound Presents CEO and co-founder Graham Williams says, that he and a large team of other industry pros are taking over the space; but now they're ready to talk about what comes next for the venue and adjoining bar.

Although Spider House Café closed in 2020, the Ballroom stayed open, and has continued serving University of Texas students and anyone else who wants to see a show outside of the ordinary: punk shows, burlesque revues, fundraisers, and more. It'll stay open through most of the renovations, scheduled through January of 2025, and is expected to hold a grand opening in March.

Now Resound — one of Austin's top live music organizers, which was itself born from the ashes of another Austin institution — is lending two of its co-founders to managing the space going forward: Williams and Ian Orth. They're joining seven other team members from venues around town, many of them overlapping: Amy Mullins, Brian Tweedy, Jason McNeely, John Yaklin, and Shannon LeBoeuf of Hotel Vegas, Chess Club, Kinda Tropical, Tweedy’s, and Yellow Jacket Social Club, in varying capacities; and Brian Buscemi and Mike Sanchez of the Little Darlin’.

Williams emphasizes that although things will be changing at the Ballroom, the goal isn't to change anything people already love.

"Over the next few months as we kind of ease into the spring, we're using this downtime to revitalize things, decorate, revamp some of the stuff in the venue and the bar, and just kind of get things moving in the right direction," Williams says, "taking what's already popular about the venue and just adding to it, really."

Bar updates
The biggest shift will be turning the bar from an accessory to live shows into its own entity that's open even when there's nothing else going on. Amy Mullins, best known as a co-owner of Yellow Jacket Social Club, is overseeing that transition. She's never operated a venue that is primarily focused on music, and has been enjoying learning more about how to do it; she even worked the door recently when a staff member called out sick.

Mullins echoes Williams in assuring that the change is more about logistics than tone. It'll still feel like Old Austin, but she does express a hope to run more than the "typical venue bar," handing out simple drinks as quickly as possible. She's working on a new menu that includes wine, beer, craft cocktails, and non-alcoholic options like tea, kombucha, or mocktails. Regardless of what's on the schedule on any given night, Mullins says the menu will stay the same.

"There's no drink too complicated for us to make, however busy we are," she says.

Food options
Another goal for the team will be making sure the space works when there's not someone onstage to crowd around. They'll expand the front and side patios and create a food truck food court that features the same trucks that are there now, plus one newcomer. All in all, that includes Yalla Burger & Wings, Gyro Center, Li’l Nonna’s Vegan Pizzeria, Guppy’s Indian Fried Chicken, Waylon J’s BBQ, and Ay Chihuahua Tacos.

The expanded patio will connect to Tweedy's Bar next door, which also has its own food trucks. The idea is to create a space to hang out after shows that feels fit for the purpose. It's possible to stick around after events now, but the layout does create a vague feeling of loitering.

Artist and fan-friendly tweaks
On the entertainment side, Williams says some of the renovations include putting in a new sound system, redoing the green room, updating the facade, and repainting signs. Since the winter is a slower time for live music, they'll be taking advantage of the extra time to work on things before packing the calendar with more events than before. Resound will handle most of the bookings in live music, comedy, and DJ sets, welcoming both national and local talent.

Whatever the details end up being, this team has proved to Austinites that they know how to run venues worth visiting. And since they're all friends and business partners on multiple levels, it sounds like having this many cooks in the kitchen just isn't an issue.

"Some of us have been roommates and known each other since we were young," says Williams. "It's a good mix of people who are all very like minded, so a lot is being brought to the table per decision. So yeah, it's it's really exciting. Sometimes that's not the case. .... But with this project, it's a lot of really great, creative people that are good at what they do [and] they trust each other."

bars live music concerts comedy