Valerie June Quotes

I must stay true to myself and take my own path all the way.

I’ve been busy and need to slow my little tail down and sit and meditate somewhere. I do my walking meditations every day, but just to sit still. Just to be in one place and just to be quiet.

My music confuses people because they think I will sound a certain way because I look a certain way with the dreads.

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.

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 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.

I met PJ Harvey when I was in England, and the first thing I want to do when I meet a songwriter I admire is to ask them how do they receive songs.

As I try to get around with a guitar, a banjo and a suitcase of high heels and dresses, I treasure that little ukulele.

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.

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.

I just love music, and I absorbed what I love.

When I was really little, I loved Whitney Houston. I thought she was the prettiest thing in the world.

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.

It is such a gift to be able to write songs in general, but when you can share it with somebody, it is just such a pleasure. It is such a happy moment when you finish a song, and you are just like, ‘Wow – that was great.’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I like performing live more than anything. I get a little bit afraid in the studio.

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.

Amalgamation is a good word that I like to use – musically and in every way.

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.

When I was writing ‘Shotgun,’ it’s one of the first songs that’s come to me as an image.

When I first moved to New York, I was still returning to Tennessee every few months to perform.