I’d say Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen… those are three big influences that spring to mind. Especially Nina Simone! When I really want to FEEL something, I’ll listen to a Nina Simone record.Īnd if those are singers who’ve influenced you, what about songwriters? Oh, lots! Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton, Karen Dalton, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Kitty Wells, Nina Simone. I’m drawn to singers where there’s a rawness, a grittiness… I like the oddities and imperfections in people’s voices. Well, it’s a long way from perfect, but that’s okay because I’ve never been drawn to singers with perfect voices – they sound beautiful, sure, but it very quickly just gets boring. In what way would you say your voice is ‘unusual’? Some people in the band didn’t like it, and so I was trying to change it and then I thought, you know what? Music’s supposed to be fun, and it would be a lot more fun to work with people who DO like my voice! So I went from an environment where people were trying to change me, to one where I could be myself more. To sing soul in the traditional sense you have to sing in a certain way, and that’s just not me… I have quite an unusual voice, and not everyone’s going to like it. And we broke up because it wasn’t really the music I wanted to do… I learned a lot doing it, for sure, but it was a soul band, I was trying to sing soul, and I can’t really do that. We formed in Memphis and we never got much beyond Memphis… we had a pretty good local following that came to all the shows, but not much beyond that, really. I WAS TRYING TO SING SOUL, AND I CAN’T REALLY DO THAT There are no baby pictures of me either, everything went in the fire – we had to live in a motel for two weeks until some church people took us in. Sadly not, because in my teens we had a house fire and lost everything.
#Hue and cry redding how to
Right away I was learning how to play my own songs – I only even attempted playing anyone else’s songs really, really recently.ĭo any of those childhood songs survive? Any plans to record any of them? Yeah it was kinda late I guess, but see I already had a band behind me, and it was only when the band broke up that I thought, ‘Right, I gotta learn how to play’ and started figuring out, y’know, which chords go with my voice and stuff like that.
That seems quite late to start playing, if you’d already been writing songs since you were young? I didn’t really start playing guitar till I was in my early 20s, and then someone gave me a banjo for Christmas, and someone else gave me a ukelele for my birthday so now I play all three. I’m not saying they were great songs or anything! But I’d always be coming up with melodies and lyrics, songs about nature and trees and frogs and rain and stuff like that. I grew up in Tennessee, and I’ve been writing songs since I was a little girl, I guess from when I was about six or something. We say ‘debut’ appearance because we’ve got the feeling it won’t be the last, so allow us to introduce… Valerie June.Īs your name will be new to a lot of Songwriting readers, could you start by telling us a little bit about your background, and how you got into writing songs and making music? A few weeks later – a couple of days before our interview took place – the young singer-songwriter in question also made her debut appearance on Later… with Jools Holland. She’s already signed to Rob Da Bank’s Sunday Best label, and her forthcoming long-player has been co-produced by Dan Auerbach from Black Keys. We were immediately on the phone requesting an interview, and it seems we weren’t the only ones to be impressed. Here, we felt, was a young songwriter with something to say, and with an original way of saying it – the exact opposite of today’s stage school manufactured pop tarts with their lyrics-by-committee, AutoTuned vocals and grating, over-compressed synth riffs. It sounded like a stew of blues, country and bluegrass cooked up by Carole King, served with a dash of soul and accompanied by the kind of honest, heartfelt lyrics you associate with the likes of Janis Joplin or Billie Holliday. T was only a month or so ago that a track landed in Songwriting‘s inbox called Workin’ Woman Blues. Having recently appeared on ‘Later…’, could this self-effacing purveyor of refreshingly raw ‘American roots music’ be America’s next superstar singer-songwriter?
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