Rocker Grace Potter Rings in the Holiday Season at Sing It to Me Santa Benefit

Content sponsored by AEG Presents Rocky Mountains.

California-based singer-songwriter Grace Potter, who’s carved out a formidable reputation with her driving, drawling, bluesy music on seven acclaimed albums — including this year’s release, Mother Road — is no stranger to Colorado, having performed at both Mission Ballroom and Red Rocks Amphitheatre, as well as gigs in Boulder and Aspen.

And on December 8, she’ll return to the Mission Ballroom for the annual Sing It to Me Santa benefit, to raise funds for Take Note Colorado, a program dedicated to providing instruction and musical instruments for every K-12 student in the state.

Anyone who has seen Potter perform live or followed her recording career over the years — starting with her first group, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, with whom she released four albums between 2005 and 2012, and now with her current band under just her name — is familiar with the gritty, earthy roots-rock energy she packs into her music. She serves up equal parts guitar rock and roll and folksy country music that can be described as classic Americana, with echoes of The Band and the Allman Brothers. Her music makes you want to dance and sing along.

Potter was born in Vermont and raised in an artistic family, learning music early on. She quit college to pursue music professionally, and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals came together in 2002.

Straddling the borders of country and rock music, Potter earned a Grammy nomination in 2011 for Best Country Duo/Group Performance for her collaboration with Kenny Chesney on "You and Tequila." In 2012, she worked with rockers the Flaming Lips on several recordings. In 2015, Potter released the solo album Midnight and toured as the opening act for the Rolling Stones.
Grace Potter and her band will bring her world-class rock to Denver for Sing It to Me Santa, which will also feature the music of opening band Tracksuit Wedding, with Ryan Chrys as rockin’ Santa.

Tracksuit Wedding is the group that started the holiday tradition of Sing It to Me Santa. The band’s founder, Libby Anschutz, launched the benefit; this year’s concert will be the eighth holiday bash.

A stalwart on the Denver music scene, Tracksuit Wedding has also toured across the U.S. and overseas. With vocalist Ali Frankfurt’s raspy vocals that evoke Janis Joplin — or, for Colorado music fans, Candy Givens of the 1970s band Zephyr — the group established a reputation early on for blues rock, but in 2019, Tracksuit Wedding traveled to Uganda and came back with a single, “Coming Home,” that matched guitar riffs with Ugandan rapper Navio’s vocals. And the band’s sound evolution didn’t stop there: It added in some mandolin and fiddle, giving its next album a country-rock flair. Yet good old-fashioned rock and roll remains at the core of Tracksuit. Ryan Chrys, leader of Denver “modern outlaw country” band the Rough Cuts, is sure to bring the spirit of Santa Claus to the evening’s celebration.

The beneficiary of all the fabulous festivities is Take Note Colorado, a nonprofit community initiative founded by former governor (now Senator) John Hickenlooper and Isaac Slade, co-founder and keyboard player of the band The Fray, with the help of Libby Anschutz and the Bohemian Foundation.

The money raised by Sing It to Me Santa will help the organization provide access to music education across Colorado, where many students can’t afford instruction or instruments, or are held back by racial and social inequities. Take Note Colorado was launched in January 2017 with Hickenlooper and Slade as co-chairs; today, Slade is joined by co-chair Wesley Schultz of the Lumineers. An A-list of musicians, philanthropists, music industry leaders, government representatives, community and nonprofit leaders have helped support Take Note Colorado’s mission.

Everyone is sure to leave this year’s Sing It to Me Santa event filled with the holiday spirit, with visions of the musical futures they’ve helped impact!