Spotlight On: VALERIE JUNE

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ABOUT THIS WEEK’S SHERO IN THE SPOTLIGHT:

This week we bring you a special edition of SHEROES, featuring a conversation with Valerie June recorded live at On Air Fest on Saturday February 25th, an annual podcast festival which took place at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn. 

Valerie June is a true multi-hyphenate. A singer, songwriter, multi instrumentalist, and recording artist, performer, poet, author, and - I would add to that list, a spiritual warrior, and yes - a SHERO. Born in 1982 in Jackson, Tennessee and raised in nearby Humboldt, Valerie June grew up steeped in gospel music and singing in the church, got her first guitar at 15, and made her way to Memphis just a couple years later. Her first band was a duo, Bella Sun, and they put out an album in 2001, and after they broke up, Valerie went solo, putting out a series of self released albums. The first in 2006, The Way of the Weeping Willow, followed by Mountain of Rose Quartz in 2008, and an EP as Valerie June and the Tennessee Express in 2010. But it was following a move to Brooklyn that things began to take off for Valerie. She met and then went on to work with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys on songs that would become her breakthrough, critically acclaimed fourth album, Pushin’ Against A Stone, which would go on to land on Rolling Stone’s Top 50 Albums of the Year list, and won a Blues Music Award. Her hailed 2017 follow up The Order of Time also landed on nearly every year-end best of list, and her latest high water mark - 2021’s The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers garnered Valerie her first Grammy nomination, and two Americana Music Award nominations for Album of the Year and Song of the Year. And - in 2021 she put out her first book called Maps for the Modern World, and last May, her first illustrated children’s book, Somebody To Love: The Story of Valerie June's Sweet Little Baby Banjolele. All to say that two decades into her already illustrious career, Valerie June continues to forge an incredibly inspiring, not to mention prolific, path, and as we are about to hear, she carries a message of joyful resistance, courageous dreaming, and compassionate love.