VALERIE JUNE

(1982 - )
MUSIC ::: BLUES ::: FOLK ::: GOSPEL :::

If you took the Appalachian reclamation of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, filtered it through the cosmic poise of Erykah Badu, brushed it with Dolly Parton’s earthbound grace, and let Billie Holiday haunt the edges, you’d arrive somewhere near Valerie June. Born Valerie June Hockett in Jackson, Tennessee—a city steeped in blues history and also home to Big Maybelle—June grew up at the crossroads of gospel, folk, and Southern mysticism. Her signature Medusa dreadlocks may now be associated with Brooklyn’s art-folk orbit, but her music has always carried the humidity, grit, and spiritual stubbornness of West Tennessee, sounding both ancient and slightly unmoored from time.

She released her first recordings young, forming the husband-and-wife duo Bella Sun and issuing a debut at nineteen. The songwriting was tentative, sometimes pedestrian, but the voice was already unmistakable—a warbling, time-slipped twang that hinted at deeper currents. After leaving both the marriage and the band, June busked her way along the West Coast, expanding her skills as a multi-instrumentalist and releasing two self-financed albums, The Way of the Weeping Willow (2006) and Mountain of Rose Quartz (2008). Her return to Tennessee—this time Memphis—proved pivotal: while working as a waitress in 2009, she was spotted by an MTV producer and appeared on $5 Cover, debuting the sly, subversive “No Draws Blues” to a national audience. A collaboration with Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor followed, before her true breakthrough arrived with Pushin’ Against a Stone (2013), produced by Dan Auerbach and partially funded via Kickstarter. Songs like “Workin’ Woman Blues” and “You Can’t Be Told” carried her to international stages alongside Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Sturgill Simpson, and even the Rolling Stones.

By the time the world slowed in 2020, June turned inward. What began as a three-song digital release—Stay / Stay Meditation / You And I, co-produced with Jack Splash—opened into The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers (2021), a record that felt less like an album than a survival manual. Featuring a luminous collaboration with Carla Thomas on “Call Me a Fool,” the project earned widespread acclaim, a Grammy nomination for Best American Roots Song, and top placement on Americana radio charts. Rather than chase momentum, June continued deliberately—honoring John Prine at Austin City Limits, contributing to Little Richard: I Am Everything, celebrating Stax legacy and Mavis Staples with Carla Thomas, and signaling the next chapter with Owls, Omens and Oracles. Valerie June’s work now operates on its own frequency, treating imagination, ancestry, and care not as aesthetics, but as practice.