Valerie June Quotes
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Saturdays are set for antique shops. Williamsburg in Brooklyn has some good ones. I get in there and start meddling around with dusty boxes and rickety, worn-in stuff. I like it when I find something with someone else's name on it.
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I am always excited about playing in front of live audiences because I really enjoy it, for the most part.
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If I have something inside me that I want to get out, I'll just beat it out on the banjo right then and there.
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Amalgamation is a good word that I like to use - musically and in every way.
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I just love music, and I absorbed what I love.
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I don't care if you're Muslim or Christian or Buddhist or whatever your religion is, when you listen to a spiritual song and you really open your heart, you can feel it. You can feel the message of it. Just a simple story.
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As soon as I could talk, I was bellowing at the top of my lungs. My parents couldn't get over how weird I sounded – like an old man when I was just a toddler! But no one was gonna shut me up.
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When I think about singing, and music, I think about how the people who live on the East Tennessee side have more of a curve or yodel to their voices, and then you think about the curve of mountains.
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The challenge is how strange and different my voice sounds, so I have tried to sound like other people and tried to be something I wasn't. I have tried to be a soul singer because someone else thought that a good idea. Not because I did.
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My voice is who I am, who I was when I was 3, and who I am going to be when I am 90 years old. When I hit the stage and people do not know who I am, they automatically assume, before I open my mouth, I am going to sing a Bob Marley song!
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I grew my dreadlocks 12 years ago because they give me the freedom to roll out of bed and not spend hours on my woolly, thick hair. I get tons of dropped jaws and compliments, so I reckon folks like them all right.
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Even from when I was in grade school or church or wherever, I was always like: we're one, and we should respect each other and grow as one. And respect each other's diversity, of course.
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Sometimes when you're in a more fast-paced place, with more to see and do, you miss out on things like nature and beautiful, God-made things. They call it "God's country"!
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I must stay true to myself and take my own path all the way.
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I don't even want to call it God. I just want to call it connecting with something that's greater than I am. So that's the biggest thing from Tennessee - the spirit.
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I love to read things that have moral messages, and I love to hear stories where it's not just a hook, you have to follow the story, you have to listen to the message of the song, and get it and use it in your everyday life.
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When I talk about music in Memphis, it's a place you can go if you are a beginning artist or anywhere in your career, and you can incubate.
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They're all personal and self-created challenges that I think I've overcome within myself. Being confident enough to get on stage and play, things like that.
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I know a lot of people that don't pray or anything, and that's fine - but I need to. I don't even want to call it prayer, I just want to call it talking to something bigger than me.
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I have a lot of different collections of cards at home. It's hard to say my favorite deck, but there is a deck called the medicine cards, and it's Native American animal cards.
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If you want to get broken in good, put four girls on the road together in a van and tour up and down the country.
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I've always kind of been in the middle of every room, trying to get people together, no matter what color they were.
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There are a lot of murder ballads out there, but most of them are about killing the woman. I was like, "We've gotta turn this around!"
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I mean, roots musicians - we can get old, you know? We can get up there and wear overalls and deliver the songs, we don't have to look any certain way.