Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow

LEVITT AMP BRINGS VALERIE JUNE TO TOWN

- STAFF REPORT

Blending folk, soul, blues and traditiona­l Appalachia­n elements, Valerie June crafts a refreshing sound that can’t be boxed into any particular musical era.

June will headline the free Levitt Amp concert at Bessie Smith Cultural Center, 200 E. M.L. King Blvd., at 7 p.m. tonight, Aug. 29.

The daughter of a brick cleaner from West Tennessee’s flatlands, June took quickly to that area’s array of local roots music styles. She taught herself guitar and developed her own stylistic mix, breathing new life into traditiona­l material and writing original pieces influenced by socially-minded songwriter­s like Bob Marley.

Ask her where it came from, and she’ll tell you church.

“Everybody sings in my church, there’s never a choir,” she explains in her bio on Facebook. “There was every kind of voice you can think of, so I was always trying to sit beside somebody who had a cool voice and listen to them and see what I liked about it. I had 500 teachers three days a week for 18 years.”

Her grandfathe­r gave her a guitar when she was 15. She decided to learn to play believing she’d never get gigs if she couldn’t accompany myself. She not only taught herself guitar, but also banjo and ukulele.

“I really fell in love with 1920s and ’30s music when I moved to Memphis,” says June. “Mississipp­i John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten, The Carter Family. I have almost everything with Alan Lomax’s name on it. Once I discovered country blues and straight-up old-time country, I never left it.”

The nurturing musical community in Memphis embraced June’s music, and she went from coffeehous­e gigs to touring across the South. She cut a homemade record in a friend’s 1800s farmhouse to sell at shows, and followed that up with a disc she knocked out in eight hours at the famed Ardent Studios, where she earned a free day of recording as payment for a gig.

She opened for Old Crow Medicine Show at Rhodes College, and the band’s members were so impressed that they invited her back to Nashville to record an EP, “Valerie June and the Tennessee Express.”

Hailed by the New York Times as one of America’s “most intriguing, fully formed new talents,” she has performed on “The Tonight Show,” “The Late Show,” “Austin City Limits” and for Michelle Obama at the White House.

 ?? LEVITT AMP CONTRIBUTE­D PHOTO ?? Valerie June
LEVITT AMP CONTRIBUTE­D PHOTO Valerie June

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