Valerie June: Memphis’ Messenger of Love-Born Blues
Her Sound: On the back of her rustic acoustic guitar playing and her immediately recognizable, sometimes-childlike-sometimes–antiquated vocals, Valerie June mixes rural blues, Southern soul, back porch country, old-time gospel and Appalachian folk into a sonic stew she cheekily calls “organic moonshine roots music.” “Being from Memphis, I truly love all of the different genres of music that were born and married there,” she tells Rolling Stone. “Blues, gospel, rockabilly, country, I love all of it.”
But when June first started dishing out her bluesy concoction, audiences didn’t know what to do with the finished product, much less how to label it. “At first, they didn’t know what to call my music. So I knew I had to help people out,” she relates. “I wanted to call it something magical, and at the core of blues, gospel, folk, and rock & roll is roots music – so that’s what I ended up calling it.”
Big Break: In 2009, June appeared in the MTV series $5 Cover, an episodic show chronicling the modern Memphis music scene from the mind of director Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow, Black Snake Moan). June came by the gig pretty easily — “I used to serve Craig coffee every morning,” she reveals — and it certainly paid off for the struggling artist. “I acted on the show and I got to perform ‘No Draws Blues,’ my only blues song at the time, for a huge audience. It was the first national attention that I received.”
It was both her appearance on $5 Cover and the following year’s release of her collaborative EP with Old Crow Medicine Show, titled Valerie June and the Tennessee Express, that lead to June gaining quite a fan base in Nashville. “Those things opened the door for me to work with Dan [Auerbach, of the Black Keys] and the guys at Easy Eye Studio in Nashville. Having their stamp of approval on the music that I was making really helped to crack open some doors for me to kick the rest of the way in.”
The Auerbach-produced Pushin’ Against a Stone was released in 2013 and featured Memphis legend Booker T. Jones on “Somebody to Love” and “On My Way.” Prior to the album’s release, June also made a name for herself in the U.K. after performing stunning versions of “Workin’ Woman’s Blues” and “Twined and Twisted” on the show Later… With Jools Holland and by supporting Jake Bugg on his European tour.
Why We’re Listening: June’s homespun brand of blues is rich with emotion and a well-earned authenticity that she has come by honestly and naturally. “Memphis is not a machine, and it’s not going to make you a star,” she asserts. “What it’s going to give you is a soul and a heart that you can take anywhere in the world and people are going to get it.”
June’s approach to the blues is also something that is more a product of her internal character than her external circumstances. “I’m really picky about my blues. When I was playing Memphis, I only had like one blues song in my set. It was kind of an accident that I started playing blues music because I never really planned it. My songs just end up coming out bluesy and folksy.”
Listen closely to the moan ‘n wail wallop of songs like “You Can’t Be Told” and “Workin’ Woman’s Blues” from Pushin’ Against a Stone and you won’t just feel the primal stomp-and-sway of June’s songs, you’ll believe every word she’s singing. June believes that this is because love is at the heart of all of her songs. “Sid Selvidge did an incredible version of the song ‘How I Got to Memphis’ that talks about people finding themselves in Memphis because of love,” she says. “It’s funny because when I heard that song, I was like, ‘Yep, that’s how I got to Memphis too!'”
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