Words matter. These are the best Valerie June Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I paid my dues. I have crawled to gigs. I have served people coffee. I worked hard selling all these records out the back of my car. Girl, I’m ready to sell one the real way now.
My signature fragrance would be herbal – basil mixed with rosemary and coriander. Some big stars have got perfume lines that smell really bad. They’ve got it all wrong.
I try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isn’t a song that I need to sing.
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.
When I was writing ‘Shotgun,’ it’s one of the first songs that’s come to me as an image.
I like performing live more than anything. I get a little bit afraid in the studio.
I’m not really into alternative country – I’m into Patsy Cline, who lived down the street from where I lived, and old Dolly Parton records, Kitty Wells and that old stuff. I like country music. I also like Eric Church, who has a great new sound but also holds onto that old sound.
Every writer writes in different ways, and so some write the music first, while others write the lyrics first, and some write while they are doing other things, and it is just nice to see how other writers are writing.
When I first moved to New York, I was still returning to Tennessee every few months to perform.
I just love music, and I absorbed what I love.
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.
I was working like a dog as a housekeeper, barista, nanny, cook, so I could save enough money to really sit with my instruments. Whenever I had 20 minutes, I would practice a new chord or write a new verse.
When I was really little, I loved Whitney Houston. I thought she was the prettiest thing in the world.
I just let the songs tell me what to do – they are my guides, and they are the boss. So I am subservient to the songs, and I let them tell me what to do. I don’t judge them; I just write whatever comes to me.
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.
When you listen to my music, you hear that there are all these voices going on in different parts of the song. That’s because I was always around so many voices in church.
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.
One day, when we were coming back from school, we saw this big cloud of smoke coming up, and all these fire-trucks in the yard. The garage was burning down. I was 14, and we’d lost everything.
I must stay true to myself and take my own path all the way.
When I was teenager, Britney Spears was it – that was the pop world that was happening, and I knew I wasn’t in it.
I’m constantly being inspired by the old days and taking things from the past and allowing them to lift me up where I am now.
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.
Amalgamation is a good word that I like to use – musically and in every way.
I am always excited about playing in front of live audiences because I really enjoy it, for the most part.
When I was 15, I begged my grandfather to give me this guitar he’d always had in the back of his closet. I promised him I’d learn to play it, but I never did. Then my grandfather died, and I felt so guilty. So I started playing.
