16 | Rolling Stone | RollingStone.com July, 2017R&R
E
ven in trendy williams-
burg, Brooklyn, Valerie June
stands out: star-studded sun-
glasses, a sparkly silver blouse
and a plume of thick dreadlocks
that sprout in all directions. At her favou-
rite neighbourhood bistro, she attracts
the attention of a bald customer who ap-
proaches her table to hand her his business
card. “Love your hair,” he says flirtatiously.
“Maybe you could give me some.” “I might!”
June replies with a laugh.
June, 35, smiles again when asked about
another compliment she received recently.
In an interview posted on his website, Bob
Dylan said he’d been listening to June,
whose latest album, The Order of Time, is
a blend of spacey hippie soul, blues and folk
with June’s pinched, modern-Appalachian
voice at the centre. “I lost it,” June says of
the Dylan shout-out. “My biggest gift, I
feel, is songwriting. So to have the god of
songwriting mention he was listening to
my music is huge. I never went to college,
so I felt like when he mentioned my name,
I got my degree that day.”
The nod of approval is the latest surprise
in June’s long-delayed rise. As one of five
kids growing up near Jackson, Tennessee,
she received her first taste of show busi-
ness early on; her father was a part-time
concert promoter and enlisted his daughter
to help prep the backstage rooms for acts
like Bobby Womack. But getting towels for
headliners only taught her that she wanted
to be onstage instead. She grew up singing
in a church so pure it didn’t allow instru-
ments, but at home she listened to what her
mum referred to as “drug music”. “I loved
Smashing Pumpkins,” June says. “I don’t
know how cool it is to say that now.” Nirva-
na’s version of Lead Belly’s “Where Did You
Sleep Last Night” opened her ears to blues.
“The white boy led me to the black man,”
she says. “It was me looking for the root.”
After high school, June relocated to
Memphis to live with her boyfriend, singer-
guitarist Michael Joyner. They married in
2001, when she was 19. June insisted they
form a band, the soul-geared Bella Sun.AgainstaStone. “He’s a master of sound,”
she says. “I never really knew how a person
gotanampto sound like that.”
June saves her biggest praise for her hero
Oprah Winfrey. “A big guide,” she says un-
abashedly. Sometimes June can sound like
Winfrey, like when she’s describing how
past relationships influenced her song “The
Front Door”. “It can feel un-
kind when a spirit leaves,” she
says. “But they leave for their
own reasons. I was like, ‘Is
this a love song? Is this a spirit
song? What kind of song is
this?’ ” She can play up her ec-
centric side onstage; at one re-
cent show, she addressed her
guitar in her heavy Tennessee
drawl as if it were a person.
Six years ago, June moved
to New York to be closer to
a then-boyfriend, who, like
most of her exes, worked in
the music business. “They
ruin my life, honestly,” she
says of musicians. “I said to
myself I was never going to
do it again. I have these great
rules I’m able to follow, but
with that one I just get beat
up.” At a festival in Belgium,
June couldn’t resist sending
Robert Plant a flirty note. “It
said, ‘I’m the one with the big
dreads and the pink shirt in
the corner of the room’,” she
says. “We connected eye to
eye and started talking. When I’m able to
be that close to people, I’m pretty charis-
matic. I can make my way. Lemme at ’em!”
June hits the road this month for a U.S.
tour that will take her to several big the-
atres. “It’s not exactly the most marketable
thing, what I’m doing,” she says. “I was
thinking about mainstream pop and how
we’re the ones who decide what that is.
Can’t it be something else? I think about
Louis Armstrong. We wouldn’t consider
Louis Armstrong to be pop. But was it pop
then?Itcould have been.”After years of struggle, the Tennessee singer made a modern-
day soul classic and became Bob Dylan’s favourite new artistBY DAVID BROWNEWhy Valerie June
Sings the Blues
Quick Hits
Fast facts on June,
from dread secrets
to why the Stones
let her downSchool Days
June says she was
“the worst” cheer-
leader in high school:
“They couldn’t believe
a black girl didn’t
have rhythm.”Opening Act
She warmed up for
the Stones at Hyde
Park, but didn’t meet
them: “Not a ciga-
rette shared. Sucks.”Hair Care
She only has to wash
her dreads once
a week: “I used to
spend an hour every
day on my hair. I got
my life back.”June hand-delivered their music to area
radio stations and newspapers. Eager to
jump-start her career, she also auditioned
for America’s Next Top Model. “She was
restless and unhappy,” says Joyner. “I said, ‘I
love you, but you got to pick a direction and
go.’ That’s when we started having prob-
lems.” The marriage (and band) ended in- June describes a root-
less period living “like a hip-
pie” on the West Coast, crash-
ing with friends. She returned
to Memphis for years of strug-
gle: cleaning houses during
the day, playing coffeehouses
at night. (Long before Dylan’s
compliment, June toiled at a
Memphis herbal store called
Maggie’s Pharm.) By then, she
was immersed in roots icons
like Mississippi John Hurt,
Memphis Minnie and June
Carter Cash. “Broke-down,
bluesy stuff,” says Joyner.
“That’s where her heart was.”
June cut two albums at Mem-
phis’ famed Ardent Studios,
but found no local labels to
distribute them. “I could be
really low and like, ‘What am
I doing this for?’ ” she says.
A small breakthrough
came in 2009, when a local
director cast her in the MTV
online-only series $5 Cover, in
which she played a struggling
Memphis musician. Around
that time, June was diagnosed with diabe-
tes, and medical bills depleted her bank ac-
count. She lucked out when Old Crow Med-
icine Show’s Ketch Secor happened to catch
her set at Memphis’ Rhodes College. He
co-produced her 2010 country-bluegrass
EP, Valerie June and the Tennessee Express.
“I was totally captivated by this black girl
playing folk music,” recalls Secor. “She had
a real old-time voice. It’s got a drawl and a
whine. It sounds like the drone strings on
a fiddle.” Another early fan was Dan Auer-
bach, who helped her record 2013’s Pushin’