<a href="http://blogs.burlingtonfreepress.com/brent/2011/10/09/grace-potter-comes-home-bids-irene-goodnight/">Brett Hallenbeck show review:</a>

a mid-set high point when Potter and the band tried out a song she wrote for the occasion titled “The Mad Mad River,” about the body of water that runs through and occasionally tears through her hometown.

“The watermark is mighty high,” she sang in the opening line. “It rained so hard even my tears couldn’t dry.” The slow tempo and the mournful slide guitar of Scott Tournet turn “The Mad Mad River” into the closest thing the Nocturnals have to a sad country song (must be all that time Grace is spending hanging out with Kenny Chesney), but also gives hope with a chorus that sings of the Mad River flowing in our blood. ”The Mad Mad River” isn’t just about one place, Potter said from the stage, “it’s about what makes Vermont so great.” The crowd rewarded her with a sustained standing ovation at the end of the song. Potter, whose normally ebullient personality isn’t prone to sentimentality, appeared considerably choked up as the crowd continued to cheer.

Some fans who remember a casually dressed Potter singing subdued songs in her early days on the Vermont music scene grumble at her big glitzy Waterfront Park shows or in comments online that she’s gone Hollywood, leaving her Vermont roots behind for her L.A. label (Hollywood Records), L.A. recording studios, L.A. TV sessions with Jay Leno and increasingly glamorized looks such as the short, fringed white dress she wore Sunday night. But all the show seemed to prove is that in Potter’s eyes, Hollywood will never replace Waitsfield and the mad, Mad River that runs through it.