25 Mar NPR: When Valerie June Writes Music, It Begins With A Voice In Her Head
Valerie June started performing in the Memphis club scene when she was still a teenager. She’s a New Yorker now, with a vocal style that takes traditional blues, country and soul and pushes them into another realm.
On her new album, The Order of Time, she takes other voices to that world with her: Her brothers, Jason and Patrick Hockett, provide background vocals, as does her late father, who was a gospel and R&B promoter involved with one of Prince‘s first shows in the 1980s. June says that it’s far from the first time her family’s sung together.
“I come from a singing family and we all sang around the house, and I never thought about it,” she says. “People would ask me, ‘Are you from a musical family?’ I’d be like, no, because we didn’t play instruments. … We just sang everything and we sang all together and all different styles and ways.”
Having grown up in a singing household, June says her songwriting process is centered around the voice.
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