Valerie June

Her latest album, The Moon and Stars Prescriptions for Dreamers encompasses so much of it's warm and good and music earthy roots, the soulful, passionate, and compassionate. The songs are steeped in her Memphis upbringing, with a voice honed in the church, orchestrations by the great Stacks arranger Leicster Snell, at guest spot from legendary soul Queen Carla Thomas, and

sessions at the world famous SUNS Studios. She's also included nature sounds recorded outside her family home in Tennessee, offering one of several meditative moments of reflection. We're listenings are invited to bring their own thoughts and feelings to the proceedings. It's a touching display of intimacy, emited, formidable displays of talent, and it also serves as a reminder that music is about communication and communication is a two way street. I'm

so happy to welcome Valerie June. Please basket or positivity and enjoy. Oh my goodness, so many things I want to talk to you about. But first off, I want to talk to about your album In the Moon and Stars Prescriptions for Dreamers, which was out in the spring. How did it begin for you? It's such an astonishing record. Was there a song that that sort of manifested itself

first that pointed away to the rest of the record? Um? Yeah, there was Um, And I don't really think about it like that because the record is a collection of songs that have come over the course of about fifteen or so years. But the song that really was the one that was like, oh out, I think I'm ready to make a record was um, call me a Foo. Oh my goodness, all that you said over the course of fifteen years, what is that set? The oldest? Which is

which is the oldest track on there? They're Falling is the oldest? And then colored right after that, Oh wow, I'll call me at four I mean, just it's such an amazing song. I mean, and of course it's got Carla Thomas on. I mean, what was that experience like working with her? Oh? My goodness, it was mind blowing because she is so bright and so delight and um high energy and just so encouraging and positive and everything

that I dreamed. Sometimes when you meet like people who are famous that you really love, it's like you have all of these expectations and they can't possibly live up to it. But Carla lives up to it and then exceeds it. I love hearing you together. I mean, my gosh, I've I've loved her. I think the first song I heard of hers was Tramped with Otis Redding and some do At. I mean, she's just the best. Oh yeah, And I love how on Tramp she uses her speaking

voice as well as her singing voice. And accidentally it happened on this record The Moon and Stars, because I was listening to her talk and tell amazing stories about working with Otis and her father Rufus and all of her sister and everything. And as I was listening to her talk, I was like, you know, she really shouldn't read the African proverb before the song, and so I asked her if she would read it, and she did

and her voice was perfect. She's like the fairy god Mother reading this magical quote over this dreamy, dreamy um interlude of music. It's so so sweet to have her. Oh it's so great, And I wanted to ask you about that proverb, but such a I've been thinking about it and I keep going back and forth. And I

do this with a lot of song lyrics. I kind of look at them from different angles, only a full test the depths of the water with both feet, which makes sense, but there's almost a sense so of you know, you hear the you have the other expression of diving in with both feet, like a look before you leap, almost going on faith, which is sort of the opposite of that too. It's a funny. I feel like that

you could play it both ways. Well, it does work both ways, and mamm I think that what I was trying to do in using it is say that, yeah, you need to just jump in that water. You need to do that in your life. But also when Carla is saying it, she's saying it before the song called me a fool, so she's saying it kind of in a way of are you sure you want to jump

in that water? Only a fool would do it, And the fact that she does join me and singing on the actual song, Once the Dreamer, who I guess I am in this whole narrative, Once the Dreamer begins to dream and does take the leap, and is the fool She joins in at the end, singing that this beautiful high soprano because she's glad that you trusted yourself enough to dare to dream, to take the leap, knowing that

you could fall. I mean, this is the whole album is so beautiful because, as you say, it is directed towards these dreamers out there to give them encouragement and nurture their own creative spirit. As a teenage artist and a dreamer, did you get that kind of support growing up when you were first beginning of your time in music? Hell? No, apparently got that support, Like even when I started and

got a label. You know, it's like, you know, when you are a dreamer, you're constantly like, uh, you're on shaky ground. I'll just put it that way, because the path isn't clear. It's it's like Joseph Campbell's says that you gotta follow your bliss, and if you're on the path this like got a whole lot of clarity to it, then that's probably not your path, you know. I mean, I feel like being a dreamer means to a certain extent,

remaining childlike in a way. I mean, and you know, how do you keep that sense of, you know, the inner child alive, not only in one but especially in the music industry, which you know, as you mentioned, is not exactly famous for, you know, catering to the inner child,

that's true. I think one way that I like to do it is by spending a lot of time in nature and seeing how like the old growth trees are the protectors of the new growth, and how like all of the forest grounds being down there, being at the bottom but also soaring to the top, that there's an equal balance between the two, you know, and all seeing that and staying in that space and working with plants and watching how they grow and how they die and

how they rose, rise and fall. That really helps me to mentally handle what I face as a musician in the modern music world, because nature is not always kind, you know, death exists there diseased exists there, but it does always abide and prevail. It always like makes it through. And when a flower is seen, it's so glorious because you've seen what it took for that to happen. It took a whole lot of work for the rain, the sun, the soil, everything was working for that flower, and then

it doesn't last, you know. And so I think when I look at nature and I realize how small I am in the universe, but large as well, that that perspective helps me, because otherwise it is really tough to be a dreamer. You know. I read I'm not sure if this is true that you had the studio filled

with with fresh flowers when you were working. Is that true? Yeah? Yeah, every time I would go just anywhere to the local grocery store and find flowers in the cities where where in Miami and lay in different places and just bring them because they say that flowers are stars of the earth, and I love that. I love the stars being like something I can never physically touch. I was like, well, I can't such flowers, I can work with them, so

let me go and give them. And they change the energy and the mood of a space for the musicians. Even Oh, I bet now I heard that you recorded some of us at at Sam Phillips's Sons Studios in Memphis. What was that like? I mean being in those hollowed halls. I mean, where did you stand on the X where Elvis saying or well, I loved it. I mean it was I first of all the owner. He was there and he did take me on a tour. And there are parts of Sam Phillips that are so protected that

they don't even let you go to. He will say, no, no, no, we can't let you see that area. But you know they still make music there. Um, some of the sound rooms, but um, it's just got the same vibe as it had during that time period when all the hits were coming out, Like upstairs is preserved way it was when Elvis was there, And UM, it's just so wonderful to be able to say that on every record I've done.

Pretty much, I've worked in Tennessee, in particularly Memphis, because it's one of my birthplaces and I was originally born in Jackson, Tennessee, and how Humboldt, Tennessee is home to my family, and then Memphis is the home of my music. That's where I first got on stage first he has chose first started learning how to play the instruments. That

was in my early twenties. So to be able to always continue to go home and nurture what I have there in being from Memphis, I think that's super super important, especially for um other like young black girls, to see, Hey, you know, we can do anything we want to do. You know what I mean, We can do anything we wanted to do on these Memphis streets. Absolutely, I know you got a little bit of of your your home in there on some of the the starlight ethereal silence.

I think those those birds are from your your family home, right yeah. And Humboldt, Tennessee. And there's a pond behind the house, and we get visits from the great blue harem, from snakes, from Salamander's frogs, and and as you see the day rising, you can hear the birds begin to get louder and louder, and as the day gets hot, they start to quiet down. But as it ends, you

hear the symphony beginning. And it starts always with the birds, and they're back and forth with each other, the different types. But then the cicadas and then the bullfrogs and it goes on all night long. That's a beautiful lullaby. It is every day and it's just so great. And the sun that sets um. You can sit on the back porch and see the sun sitting by over the pond. And I used to sit out there with my dad and it was never the same. I realized that the

sunset is literally never the same. When you are busy in your life and you don't take the time for it, you always think, oh, it's just sunset. But if you really watch it, the color is begin to pop and it goes crazy in different ways, and it's never the same. Oh, it's that's so funny, my my fun I learned everything I know about sunsets. I learned from my father. We grew up on on a little pond with different coves,

and he would always call it chasing the sunset. We get in the boat, watch it from one part of the pond, and when it would dip below the horizon, we'd roll out a little further so we could still kind of see it above the horiz and watch it dip lower, and we keep it going. We'd roll all the way across the pond over forty five minutes an hour, and we we'd see how many sunsets we could catch. And I feel like there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

I don't really know what it is, but it's just the perfect perfect way to spend the evening, I think absolutely. I mean, I love how on your wreck could you have these still moments I mean, like stay meditation and starlight ethereal silence like I mentioned earlier, I mean it feels almost like the end of a yoga session or a meditation session with the bell ringing or a singing bowl or something. What let you to incorporate those moments

into your album. Well, the one muld stay Meditation was the very first one, and that was worked together with Um Jack Splash, who's the co producer and he's pretty much the producer of every popping track on the record. And when I was working with Jack, he does these beautiful interludes with the artists that he works with, from Tanking the Bengers to Um to St. Paul and the

Broken Bones. He's done these amazing, sweet little bits, and so I was saying to him, you know, I love how you do that with your work, and I really want to do something like a meditation on this song Stay, and I wanted to sound like, you know, chimes, like you're sitting alone in a park and you're listening to these beautiful child comes in the wind, like the giant ones. And so we were able to incorporate that into the

song Stay. But then as we went on, more and more of them came, like, for example, when I was trapped in the pandemic like all of us quarantining we um we. I started to record that bird song at my family home and I sent it over to him and he was like, I love it, we have to use it. And he sent it and he played piano, but he also sent it to a Native American flute musician who did these beautiful flute pieces over it. And it's just really, how do we incorporate like the natural world,

the ethereal realm, and the physical world in sound. Create that soundscape and that stratospheric sound that we feel every day when we wake up and walk out. You know it's there. Just bring that music to an extraal hand held on a vinyl. How do you do it? So that's what we were trying want to do, bringing in some of the world's music to um to this the you know, orchestrated and arranged tracks. Oh, it's absolutely gorgeous.

I mean I speaking of orchestrating and arranging tracks. You worked with the great Lester Snell, who's worked with folks like Isaac Hays and the Barqueys and the Masqueraders and so many incredible people. The arrangements, I mean, they compliment your voice and the emotions so well. When you're writing, do you hear those production flourishes or is that something that takes place in the studio almost by uh, you know,

trial and error and collaboration. I hear them as voices and so one of the things that really worked working with Jack d it was that I sang him the voices that I heard, and he was able to say, okay, you know what, I know. Just the person who's going to be able to translate that those voices into the string parts, and that was Mr Lester. And he introduced me to Leicester, and believe it or not, after a decade of living in Memphis, Tennessee, he said, do you

know Wester Snail? And I was like, no, who's that? And he was like, you don't know who wester Is and you lived in Memphis And I was like no, and he was like, okay, you know it's music then, and he went like you did down the list, that's a case Um, Margot Price, Um, all of these amazing modern musicians but also old school musicians. And he was like, Wow, you gotta go to Memphis. You gotta work with wester He's gonna be able to achieve this. And he did.

You know. So Jack was really like the one who knew how to take the voices that I hear and to make them into an arrangement of music. You know, who's gonna be the person to play that fleet part on um stay, Who's gonna be the person to bring together these horn voices that I hear? And so he just was able to do it. And the key person I love that he brought was um. This guy a

Cave who played the bass on um started scattering. We were in the studio and I was like bumping around like Bunda, I'm pump pump um pump pump, pum pum pump, I don't know, singing him and humming them this part. And he was just able to go and do it all on the base like just like spaghetti fingers, okay, And I was like, thank you so much. I mean, I had crime moments, I had laugh moments. I was on the floor sun sounds balling because the motion of the work was so rich and heavy in the studio,

you know. So yeah, it was an adventure. Oh my goodness, I beat. I mean when you I'm always so curious to speak too. If you are blessed with the ability to write songs, I'm always curious to ask what compels you to do it? Is it in your case? Is it a case of wanting to communicate with other people, or is it a desire to just sort of get these feelings out of you, almost like an exorcism, or is it a little bit of both. Yeah, it's it's

a little of both. But to me, it's mostly just the voices, like because I hear them and they sound so pretty to me, and I'm just like beaming with these voices that I wanted to like just sing them all and share them all. Like that's the thing that propels me. I think, when I don't hear it, when I don't hear the voices and I don't hear songs, and I don't catch them, and they aren't the thing that come to me when I'm sleeping. For example, bright Stars, it was a dream song. Or when I'm like walking

down the street, I hear them. And because I hear them, that's why I translated, because I know that nobody else is gonna hear it the way I heard it, you know. But I think if I don't hear them anymore, if they stop, then I'll stop. That's that'll be that, you know, It'll just I won't hear any more songs. What do you do when you get stuck to go for a walk or do you just kind of share? Willpower just go through until you finish it? I stop? I can stop.

What I do is I get. I get what I get, and that could be a whole song, or it could be a piece of a song, or it could just be like a hume or a melody. I get it. And if I don't hear anymore, then I'll walk away. And yeah, I'm hopeful that I'll get some more. But if I don't, it can take like years, like it could take a decade and I haven't received the second part. Or sometimes I will have that first part and I'll write with another songwriter, and they'll have the other part.

But if I don't get anymore, then I don't get anymore period, and it just doesn't happen. But sometimes what happens is that the voice, the first voice that I hear, I hear that voice, and as I hear that voice, I'll hear another voice and another voice, and another voice and another voice, and they layer and they stack, and to me, they're all voices. Usually they're not usually um, they're not usually instruments. And that's the beauty of what Jack was able to do is say, for that voice,

that voice is strings. When I hum him the voice, he's able to hear it and say, let's let's make that strings, because for me, it's just like and I hear all of them together, you know, it's just like all of them like a chorus, you know. Or acquire dude a cappella album some day or something with you doing all the parts, like that would be so fun. Yeah, yeah, it would be. I read. I'm not sure if this is true that when you first started working with Jack, you sent um your lyrics to him as as poetry

first before playing the songs to him. I wanted to ask if that was true first of all, and also I wouldn't ask why you did that. I thought that was like such a cool approach of putting the emotion first, almost before the melody I did. I don't know if I sent them separate, but I sent it for sure altogether, the lyrics them, the songs, and then words that like

make the song's feeling. For example, I would send words like um, constellations, iridescent, um, radiant, bright, shimmering, glowing, sparkling, stratosphere. I send words that we're putting him in the mind of where I wanted him to go in the space of the song. And then I also sent proverbs and poems and quotes from people other people that that are thematically fitting with what I feel the song is saying to me, so that he would be able to go to that space in his mind too. And he was.

He was able to go. He was pretty much already there. He didn't need me to help film me was already there. Is when you meet someone like Jack. I knew from the moment I met him that he was going to be able to get it, because we had a capecit the man's art sensibility, his fashion sensibility, his music taste, all of that, in being in his studio and sitting and sitting in his environment, all of that was pretty clear to me that he was going to be able to go to the space where I wanted him to

go for this creation. You know, he was already there. It's so funny to me, how I mean hearing you say this to me. So many of the words and phrases are celestial thinking, you know, moon and stars, and it's so funny how those have become so synonymous in culture with dreaming. And I guess maybe because we're thinking back, that was the furthest off point that we could possibly imagine as as human beings, and maybe that was the biggest dream of all to sort of get out there.

But it's interesting to me how dreaming and stars in the moon are are linked in a way. It's true. And the fact that we still having attained all the knowledge of what's happening out there, you know, it feel

like there's so much more to explore. And and so I wanted for people when they listen to it, to be able to go to a magical realm in their mind, because dreaming is not easy, and it is hard, and it is dark sometimes, and when we face so much darkness in the world, it's very difficult for us to open up our imagination as we get older and continue to dream and to continue and continue to hope for

a new and brighter future. And the only way we can do that is if we yeah face what's heavy and dark, but also pushed through that to see back like we did when we were children, the possibilities, the hope that's there, and it was just such a it is just such a um like uh, heaviness to life. When you look at the realities of suffering that we face every day and the world and the way things are shaped, it can be very challenging to wake up

and say, well, how do I find joy today? How do I believe that something I wish for can really happen, and that that thing would be something not just for me, but for all living beings, that it would lift them up, that it wouldn't make them feel joy, that it would make them feel like a beauty to life, you know. Yeah.

I mean, You've been asked a lot in the past about your your activism and politics over the last few years, and I love the response you usually give about sort of radical optimism, I think is the phrase and resistance through joy, which is I think is something that we all need and we can all learn from. And I want to ask you you more about that, because that that sense of of joy really does come through. I think you lead by example with your music, that sense

of of radical optimism that you touched on them. I'm gonna go thank you. I you know, radical optimism is something that people have said to me about the way that they see me existing in the world. Um, but I never claimed it fully for myself. What I do see, though, is that what what what we focus on in our lives. I see that being the thing that we live and breathe every single day. And if we are focused on

like what isn't happening and what isn't going right? And all the wrongs and all the injustice, then we begin to see that repeated again and again throughout centuries history. I mean, we see it happening again and again. But I just wonder what would happen if there was a period of time when people were able and did focus on their joy. What we did look like with the earth began to shift, what our energy began to shift, with the relationships we have with the rest of the

world being began to shift. I mean, what is truly possible when we focus on positivity? What we don't know, We've never truly explored it. What we have done is explored the possibilities of the darkness or the things that could happen that are the fears. And so I just really feel like, um, yeah, it's true. All of the negativity is there, is real, it's very very present. But we create that. We create the space where we, you know,

can experience something beautiful. We can create that. And so I just I think like if we each shift that energy and began to use that negative energy for something positive, then the world gets a little bit more in balance. You know. That's just what I think. I don't know. I think at least it's worth rn. Yeah, it beats the alternative, certainly. Yes, it's an experiment. It's all an experiment.

There's no absolute there. I have a very dear friend who's actually the person who introduced me to to your music a few years back, and in describing your music to me initially, she said, I'll never forget it. You can listen to her music when you're at your lowest and it's like receiving a nourishing hug. First of all, I want to say that's absolutely right. And second of all, I wanted to ask, what is the best thing you

can hear from someone who listens to your music? Is there a response that someone can say to you and you can think, Okay, that song came from a really tough experience or painful place, but getting that reaction really makes it worth it. What's the best thing you can hear from someone who hears the song of yours? Ah? Oh, listen, you know the best thing I can hear from someone who's heard my music? Oh, that's a hard question. It's very hard. I I mean, just yeah, you know, I

don't think they necessarily have to like it. I don't think they have to tell me that they loved it at all. I don't think they have to say that they liked my voice. But I think they have to tell me that they felt something. I know that the raw emotion that they were able to feel something, Because like when you start feeling and when you start tapping into the real core of yourself, then all things are open.

You know, you're opening your heart. Then it's not a breaking of the hardest and opening, and I want to do that. I want to open people's hearts through song. I want to make them feel like when I hear it a j I'm singing and she like uh growls or she like twists and turns with her voice, I feel something and it's not always pretty, you know. And when Jannis Jacquelin sings, it's not always pretty, but I

feel something, you know. And there are things to hate about, say Nina Simone's voice sometimes, but I feel something and I want to feel that, you know. I want to feel that. I want to feel um what I feel when I listened to Karen Dalton singing and her voice is super odd, but I want to feel that. I want to feel it, you know, And it doesn't have to be like a good feeling. I need to feel what that is, you know. I just don't even have to be able to describe it. I need to just

feel it. And so as people can feel what I'm doing, then that's the best thing for me, because I'm like, yeah, okay, cool, it made you feel something, and maybe it didn't make you feel something positive, maybe it makes you feel something negative, but get that out in song versus another way you could get it out, you know. I think songs are a powerful tool for helping a shift energies, like whenever I feel like super sad or down and I'm just not believing in myself. If I put it on Johnny Taylor,

I believe in you. And I listened to it again and again and again, it begins to be not about him singing to his lover and his lover singing to him. It really begins to be something inside of me telling me that it believes in me that I can make it through this day, you know. And so lyrics to songs begin to be like that for me. And I hope that people with these songs can can have them as a prescription like that, you know, I can. I

can promise you they do. I mean, this is probably an unanswerable question, but what is it about music that makes it such an effective media to transmit emotion? I spent a lot of time wondering that, and I don't have an answer myself, but I think just the ability for sound and not have to be with words or or understood with language, sounds is its own language, and that alone is it to me? It's like it's just things you can say with just an ah or an ooh, or a tone or a timbre of it, and that

you can't say with words. You just can't say it words. Just like if you say the word God, or you say the word god is or a word like that. Yeah, no, that word doesn't do what that what it is, you know, it doesn't even touch what it is. When you walk into a cathedral of beautiful trees and you look up, it's like, yeah, you feel God, but you don't. You can't say that word in capsture to me. You know, it's an experience. Yeah, So music does that. It says

what you can't say. That's a beautiful way to put it, I think. I mean speaking of mediums, I have to I mention I should have said this early. Congratulations on your book, Maps for the Modern World, which came out in April. How is your experience as an author compared to your experience as a musician and a performer. Yeah, I can't believe I put a book in the world. I'm like, yay, I never thought I would write a book,

So that's a huge thing. And the illustrations to have it finally done something with my passion and love for art that was really fine. I mean having the living room floor covered with like crayons and color pencils and all textures of paper. It was an amazing time creating it. Um. But with the whole book, compared to music as a path, it's like I've started over a year at the beginning,

so it's the baby. It's still so small. And with music, I remember when that dream was still so small, and now it's kind of like in the middle, So it's still it has a long way to go. But you know, I did hold my very first record about I guess maybe fifteen or so years ago, maybe twenty years ago. Yeah, i was holding a record in my hand, and I'm just now holding my first book. So i look at it and I'm like, well, what am I gonna do

When I'm sixty, Maybe I'll be working on books. Was there a moment for you, like a clear crystal moment, when you felt, Okay, you know what music is going to be what I devote my life too. Or was it was it something that was always there or a gradual realization. Yeah. Always, they're just like what I do. And I still feel like that that if I'm not on the world stage no matter what, I'm gonna be doing music. That's just what I do. That's what I was born doing. And I always have song songs to

myself and wrote songs for myself. And there's songs that I have, tons of them that the world will never hear. They're just songs I sang to myself, Like I have a song about eating, I have a song about cleaning, a song about sleeping, And these are songs that I sing to myself. And and so I I think that I was even scared to share the book and to put the book out because they were things I did for myself. Like I didn't have those things to share with the world. It was like something that I have

for myself or um. And so like that fear that happens when you're a dreamer and you've shared something and maybe the world doesn't like it. Um that that was something I didn't have to deal with with my drawings and with my poetry because I just did it for me and so I didn't have to be afraid of

sharing it. But eventually I get over that fear and I just say, Okay, everything has to line up for that though, like for example, meeting Amanda Lucidan and you know Adam, her husband, I mean Allen and them like saying, hey, why don't you share your work with this literary agent, and then the literary agents sending it to like a hundred different publishers and getting all these rejections, and then finally two of them wanted it, and then finally finding

the one. All of that stuff had to line up for me to share the work. You know, if none of that stuff happened, then I wouldn't do that. I would just still do it for me. So that's how that siddy things works. Is it? If the doors are open being I do shared. If they don't open, I keep it from me. I feel like it's so easy for for people who have creativity, but that's not there. You know, that's not the way they pay rent to

talk themselves out of doing things. And you're kind of alluded that a smaller way with with the book, you know, I you know, I all, I'll play around on the guitar on the weekends or something, or you know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make money off of doing this, so I'm just gonna, you know, put it aside. And I think that takes out a lot of dreamers in a lot of ways. How do you push through that?

How do you say, you know what, this is mine and I I'm gonna pursue this for me and not for any kind of external validation or reward, Like, how do you how do you mean you mentioned earlier about being a little nervous about putting your book out there? How do you push beyond that and say, you know what, I'm going to do it anyway. Well, what happens eventually if you are doing that work anyway is that the

work pushes you through it. The work is like when you're sitting there and you've got like a huge stack of poems or songs, the work begins to say, okay, now what are you gonna do with me? And it begins to put you in situations like you might be at a party, Well what have you been up to? I've just been writing writing? What writing poems? Like? How many do you have? Four hundred? What you got four?

You're a poet? No? You know, like whatever it is that you're doing, Yes, you're working your day jobs and you're doing the things you got to do for money, but you're doing something that nourishes your spirit and your soul and your heart, and it keeps your childlikeness about you and whatever that is. As long as you do it, you can do it for five or two minutes a day, or five or ten minutes a month times twenty years. As long as you do it, then it's going to

find the place it needs to be. Like maybe it might find your granky as they might open up a chance and there will be all these cool things that you drew or did, But you have to do that. And I think it's when we stopped doing that, that's when the world starts to get very very gray and dark. And I think more people if we celebrate it that

side of ourselves longer. And we allowed people to and it wasn't just all like you must study this, you must work hard at that, you must get money, money, money, If it wasn't all that, and we did have time to nurture that side of ourselves, which I think a lot of people did have during the pandemic, and they're like, I want to keep that, you know, why can't I

keep that? It's just as important as the working, you know, um, Like we have to have that and and it inspires dreams and it inspires kindness for ourselves and then we see that reflected out in the world, you know, when we're living that way. Who how's the pandemic? Uh changed your relationship to music? Wow? It really changed a lot of things. It really did. It. Like one of the things that did was it made it where I sit down and I tried to practice music versus just playing

and playing what comes. So that's been a really good thing for me to have, like an actual practice where it's like, Okay, I'm gonna sit here and I want to play these scales on the guitar for a few hours. I didn't do that. I've never done that in twenty years. I've never really done that. What I've done is like

learned courts and then put them to my voice. But now it's like I'm actually trying to learn how to play the inst your rents, And that's pretty important for me, I think for the future is to know more about the instruments and have a better relationship with them. Have you started sitting down and um almost like letting your hands do the work and kind of finding chords and uh and constructing songs that way as opposed to hearing the melody in your head and singing it. I think

that's coming. I really do, because when I stay with another songwriter, all songwriters write differently. And most of the people that I've written with are more skilled musicians than me, and so they do right that way. And so because I love the way I right and I'm always I feel like I'll have that as long as I have it.

Maybe it will stop coming that way, but I would like to learn how to do other ways of writing, and so I think this is going to open that whole meadow up to me where it's like, WHOA, Okay now that I feel good about where I am with that part of learning music. And have you even learned to read music and write music as far as the notations? I don't. I don't know how to do that. So I have so much more to learn, and I feel like the pandemic helps me to decide that these are

going to be the hours that I do this. You know that I dedicate to this. Has it changed you in other ways as it taught you anything about about yourself just as a as a as a person, Yeah, I mean it brought a lot to like, Like, for example, I love to be alone. And I love to be at home. And you know, even if I'm out in the world and traveling into it, I like that will alone time. And I think I questioned before the pandemic. I was like, now I need to be more social

and stuff. But now I know that that's something that I really need. I need that I need to be alone. I need to like be in the world, but alone. Like today, I went, I walked around the city and deed things, but you know, and I observed the world, but I was alone, and that was needed. You know. I need to listen to the sounds of the city, the honking horns or you know, go and see it and listen to the what's happening near the pond or whatever, and and be in the world. But I need to

be alone. And I know that now. Before I'd be like, no, I should probably go and get out and do stuff or invite someone to walk with me, or no. Every once in a while, Yeah, I need that, But I also need probably eighty percent of the time, I need to self quarantine. You need that for yourself and to allow the time for the voices too. Yeah, I do

something happens. I don't know how to describe it, but something does happened when I go there and sitting observed the world in a lonely kind of space, it's like whoa, Okay, new perspectives or read different people's ideas or thoughts on things, and that changes it too. So yeah, listen to all of these and by the time, I mean, it's gonna take a while to get through everything here, so having that a long time it is kind of important for

that too, That is for listeners. There was the most amazing record shelf that I see behind Valerie right now is absolutely packed with what all I mean, good lord, what's on deck next? Well, I mean next to listen to. When I was in Jackson, which is my home when I'm not here in Brooklyn, stopped by this antique shop and they had a load of records, and so I bought so much mysterious stuff and some of it, you know,

is good, and some of it isn't. So I feel like I have scored like and I it's like, well, that record cover really looks great, but the actual music is question noble. But this morning was Freddy King was named to Freddy King play the guitar and some amazing music. On on his records, and there have been some heavy Mavis moments and some heavy Robert White moments, and you know, of course Carla moments, and there's a lot of moments

steel to be hey, So we'll see where I go next. Huh. Well, Valuejun thank you for your incredible music moments, and thank you for your time today. It's been such an honor and a pleasure speaking you. Thank you, Thank you, Jordan. I appreciate it. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows, check out the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast orever you listen to your favorite I Guess