Valerie June, The Order of Time June's second LP is louder and more confident than her beguiling debut, steeped deep in electric blues and old-time folk, gilded in country twang and gospel yearning, with a hypnotically gnomish voice that suggests a brawnier Joanna Newsom. Near-perfect front...
Valerie June is a striking proposition. Those long dreads are tied up Medusa-style, a humble yet confident persona that builds towards that voice, that unmistakeable voice. Breakthrough album 'Pushin' Against A Stone' was an international success, with Valerie seeming to sit at a junction between bluegrass and...
On one of the most blisteringly cold days in December I sat next to Valerie June in a small coffee shop and listened to her tell me about how music helped her and her family grieve the death of her father. "I feel like his...
Tennessee singer-songwriter Valerie June's second full-length album is steeped in old-time country and blues. On opening track "Long Lonely Road," she sings of being taught of "The one way to save your soul," but the songs on The Order of Time offer many paths to...
Her follow-up to 2013’s sublime Pushin’ Against A Stone finds Valerie June expanding her unique blend of blues, soul and mountain music to create a distinctive hybrid in which past and future coalesce with gentle power. The opening blues spiritual “Long Lonely Road”, for instance,...
Although my dad was one of the friendliest people I’ve ever known, his life seemed to be fully focused on his family and his businesses. My father had two companies: Music Makers Productions, where he promoted the likes of Prince and Bobby Womack, and Hockett...
Valerie June has been making her distinct blend of plaintive folk traditionals, Southern soul, and country blues for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until her 2013 breakthrough Pushin’ Against A Stone that she established herself as one of the most promising roots synthesizers...
"As of this writing, I am sixty-one years old in chronology," the novelist Madeleine L'Engle once mused. "But I am not an isolated, chronological numerical statistic. I am sixty-one, and I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five, and...
"As of this writing, I am sixty-one years old in chronology," the novelist Madeleine L'Engle once mused. "But I am not an isolated, chronological numerical statistic. I am sixty-one, and I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five, and...
In the apartment buildings of New York City, there is no shortage of crazy cat ladies. Valerie June isn’t one of them, but she does have her own obsession. “I am the crazy plant lady,” she says. The Tennessee native’s Brooklyn brownstone is a veritable...