GREENSBORO — Indya Bratton could only remember what she thought she did wrong in the audition last year for Grace Potter, the Grammy-nominated rocker looking for a second guitarist for her band.
Nerves got the best of the then 20-year-old Western Guilford High graduate who studies old Prince, Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis footage, as Potter looked on at the Nashville studio.
Scared of heights, Bratton was also flying by herself for the first time and worried about the whole process of getting there.
“So by the time I got to the studio I was completely drawing a blank,” recalled Bratton, who was holding down a job at a Ross department store at the time and had crammed to remember the notes to Potter’s music. “On top of that I was starstruck. Grace Potter is very genuine but she’s one of those stars that when you see her in real life it’s, like, ‘Whoa.’
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“I was thinking, ‘Well, that’s over.”
But it wasn’t.
The guitarist would get a second audience with the rock star, who she’s now with on a cross-country tour.
She’s even had someone ask for her autograph after a show.
“As artists and musicians this is the life we all have read and dreamt about,” said Grammy award-winning producer and Greensboro native Billie Lennox, also known as “Fanatic,” who has followed Bratton’s journey online since coming across videos she posted on Instagram years ago. “It’s like going to ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ high school.”
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At the moment Bratton is home between tour dates, pouring Apple Jacks cereal for Harper, her younger sister.
“When she first learned I was going away she went and told her classmates and teachers,” Bratton said of her sister, who is in grade school. “She thinks I’m famous but I’m not famous. I took her lunch to school one day and she was trying to show me off to all her friends, and I thought that was pretty cute.”
The quiet and curly-haired introvert, who grew up listening to music from the ‘70s and ‘80s with her mother, discovered an old, dusty guitar in a closet at her father’s house during her sophomore year in high school. She poured over YouTube footage that showed the guitar greats in their element, including Hendrix, while essentially teaching herself to play.
“That’s the benefit of growing up in the age of the internet,” said Bratton, 21, with a laugh.
Bratton, who learned to play piano the same way, posted to Instagram covers of classic rock songs and any requests she would get — from Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” and James Brown’s “The Payback” to rapper The Notorious B.I.G’s “Hypnotize” and John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change.”
Bratton’s mom wanted her to attend college after high school, but she had other ideas. If she wasn’t going to college, her mother told her, she would have to get a job. For Bratton, that meant working at Ross while honing her music.
Among her growing followers was Lennox — they shared mutual friends — and he started watching her music videos. He was “blown away” by her choices in multiple genres.
“What I love most about Indya’s journey is that she didn’t cheat the process,” Lennox said. “She studied, put in the 100,000 hours practicing and perfecting her craft and never quit so when her opportunity came she was ready. That’s the blueprint to making your dreams come true.”
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Still, she wasn’t sure what to make of the text on Instagram (Indya_Bratton) from someone in Potter’s camp that spring of 2022. Somehow, some way, someone came across Bratton’s videos.
Recalled Bratton: “She was, like, ‘Hey, Grace Potter wants your contact information’ and if I could I send it over.”
Potter’s 2019 “Daylight” earned Grammy nominations for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Performance.
Like Potter, Bratton’s music fuses elements of soul, blues, country and rock.
After getting the initial Instagram text, Bratton got a call from Potter’s manager saying the singer wanted to fly her to Nashville for an audition.
“I didn’t know what to think because of so much fake stuff on the Internet,” Bratton said. “Next thing I know they set up my flight and I’m on my way.”
Bratton admits that she was probably too focused on how she thought she messed up when she thinks back to the audition. But she also didn’t hear anything — for a year.
Then she got a call from Potter herself.
“She asked me if I’d like to come up to her home in Vermont for another round of auditions,” Bratton said. “I was, like, redemption. Redemption. I’d like to think that maybe she sensed I was really nervous.”
Potter’s team had earlier told Bratton that when she found her page on Instagram that she kept looking at her videos.
“She said that I remind her of herself,” Bratton said of their phone conversation. “That’s crazy that someone of her status would say something like that.”
Bratton did a deeper study of her music.
“She’s performed on big stages,” Bratton said. “Like she’s been up there with The Rolling Stones. She’s opened for some pretty big people and pretty big people have opened for her.”
For the next three days she crammed “all this music” in her head.
“It was fun but the most music I had to to learn at once,” Bratton said.
The rest of the band was in Vermont with Potter when Bratton arrived.
And then Bratton got The Offer.
“It was very surreal,” Bratton said. “I don’t think it really clicked that I’m now part of the band. One day I’m at Ross and the next day I’m part of the band.”
Bratton had played at special events and a few clubs around Greensboro, but “I wasn’t having much luck in Greensboro with being in bands I wanted to be in. This was like I struck the jackpot.”
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Having Greensboro’s Piedmont Hall as the first stop on the tour helped ease the transition into the spotlight.
“My first show ever, can you believe it?” Bratton said. “That first show was really, really fun. The songs I had learned were really fresh in my head so I was focused although I caught my cousin’s eye. The crowd really liked what Grace was doing. Her charisma was all over the stage.”
Her mom had come with a group of family and friends who Potter later invited back stage.
“She let my mom know that I would be fine,” said Bratton, who says Potter is like a big sister. A nurturing big sister.
She’s learned a lot by just watching Potter perform.
“She makes you want to do your best,” Bratton said.
Since then, Bratton has crisscrossed the country by bus and plane, seeing the Midwest and West Coast for the first time. Played to audiences large and larger. Even been in a music video.
A “Tour Life” reel on her Instagram page gives followers a look into being on the road, including Potter jamming with her during a solo.
“Some of you’ve been wondering where I’ve been,” Bratton captions it.
And it’s literally what she’s dreamed about.
It was just a year ago that she was on YouTube watching The Main Squeeze, a funk band “that does really good covers of classic songs,” playing at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, which is built into the surrounding rocks and has a breathtaking view.
“I said I really want to play at Red Rocks one day — and literally a year later and I’ve played Red Rocks,” Bratton said.
There was also the three-day stay at one of New York’s fanciest hotels and a performance at Radio City Music Hall, one of the largest and best-known venues in the world.
“I could feel my legs shaking,” Bratton said of the huge stage. “I felt like a school girl during a recital.”
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During a recent photo shoot near some downtown railroad tracks, her guitar slung on her hip, she draws the attention of Anthony Smith, who rents out studio space in a nearby building to artists and had been watching from a loft.
“You’re giving rock star vibes,” Smith said as he introduced himself to Bratton.
Bratton just smiled and extended her hand.
She has drawn a lot of attention. Some people say she looks like popular rapper Ice Spice, who also wore a natural curly red afro.
Along the way she’s been able to pick up invaluable advice for someone starting out professionally.
“Like, if I hit a wrong note in a solo, maybe a chord in a wrong way, to keep doing it,” Bratton said of advice she got from of Devon Gilfillian, a Nashville-based soul singer, who has opened for Potter. “He said to turn it into something funky. He said to have fun on stage. He said to repeat it, that the audience won’t be able to tell you messed up. And honestly, it makes me less worried about messing up.”
Gilfillian also gifted her a hair pick, because they both have afros.
As she was leaving a venue in Savannah, Ga., she experienced another gift: her first fan.
The band packed up and was leaving the show.
“When I turn the corner there’s a bunch of Grace Potter fans at the tour bus,” Bratton recalled. “And this man was asking for my autograph. I was kind of confused at first.”
He had a vinyl copy of Potter’s album.
“I was like, ‘Wow,’ did that just happen?” Bratton said with a laugh. “Nobody’s ever asked me to sign anything.”
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Potter’s tour dates extend into 2024.
Bratton says she’s having fun and hoping for longevity.
“I still have a lot of work to do,” Bratton said of her guitar playing. “Before this tour I’m thinking I’m pretty good. But coming in contact with Grace and all these other musicians who are amazing at what they do, I’m like I’m not as good as I thought I was. They’ve been playing longer but their skills almost make me feel like I need to get better.”
She dreams of making a living off her music and for her that means one day buying her mother a house.
Already, Bratton has splurged on a guitar with a fancy name.
“I would like to move to a big music scene — and I would like to continue touring and getting opportunities like this.”