As Bette Midler so eloquently sang back in the early ‘70s, you gotta have friends, and Valerie June certainly has plenty of the true blue variety. But the Brooklyn-based Soul/Roots/Blues/Folk singer/songwriter is also a prime example of the importance of hard work and perseverance in pursuit of a career in music.
As a teenager in Jackson, Tennessee, June helped her father — a construction company owner who also worked as a part-time Gospel/Soul/R&B promoter — by hanging posters for his events. At 18, June moved to Memphis and joined the city’s thriving music scene with Bella Sun, her duo with then-husband Michael Joyner; they recorded a single album, 2004’s No Crystal Stair, before breaking up professionally and personally.
After Bella Sun’s dissolution, June shifted into her new role as a solo artist, learning a variety of instruments, recording two self-released albums and living the hardscrabble life of an independent musician. She caught a break in 2009 when MTV featured her in their online series $5 Cover, depicting the career struggles of Memphis artists, and that exposure led to the recording of her EP, Valerie June and the Tennessee Express, created in association with Old Crow Medicine Show. After June moved Brooklyn, New York, she was introduced to Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach by producer Kevin Augunas and the pair co-produced June’s major label breakthrough, 2013’s Pushin’ Against a Stone. The almost universal acclaim that greeted the album helped secure her Best New Artist Debut nomination at the Blues Music Awards in 2014, and her 2012 appearance on Later…with Jools Holland helped push her singles “Workin’ Woman Blues” and “You Can’t Be Told” up the UK and European charts.
In 2016, June began recording The Order of Time, for which she had written close to 100 songs before whittling them down to the dozen that she took into the studio with producer Matt Marinelli. The album’s first two singles, “Shakedown” and “Astral Plane,” featured vocals provided by June’s father, Emerson Hockett, who sadly passed away before the album’s release. June performed a triumphant set at SXSW a week after the 2017 release of The Order of Time, which garnered even greater accolades than its predecessor.
June recently released a spectral and shiver-inducing cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” on her website, hopefully the harbinger of more new music on the horizon of an artist that has not only proven her greatness but may well have just begun to explore its possibilities.
Valerie June plays Newport, Kentucky’s Southgate House Revival on Wednesday (May 1) with special guest Parker Gispert. Tickets/more show info: southgatehouse.com.
This article appears in Apr 24 – May 1, 2019.