Valerie June Quotes

#1. 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.

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#3. My challenges have not been around music. My hardest thing in music was just sitting down and teaching myself how to play and believing in myself.

Valerie June

#4. I think it's funny how people get confused when they think about church music, because a lot of times there is a soloist who stands out, but my church wasn't like that at all.

Valerie June

#5. 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.

Valerie June

#6. I'm grateful that music has been a place where I've found freedom.

Valerie June

#7. I've always kind of been in the middle of every room, trying to get people together, no matter what color they were.

Valerie June

#8. 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.

Valerie June

#9. If you're going to be stuck somewhere forever, you might as well be around good people!

Valerie June

#10. Whatever people are doing, they're probably going to be doing it five years from now. You have your banker, your general store runner, the principal of the school, and things of that sort. It's nice to see that, and to get old with other people.

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#12. 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.

Valerie June

#13. I am a boring loner. I enjoy Friday nights at home in my rocking chair with no arms, rocking and relaxing. It's not uncommon for Netflix to be involved. Records are a possibility, but most of it is spent in silence.

Valerie June

#14. 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.

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#16. I just have to do prayers and meditation and affirmations to myself as I go throughout the day, and that's the only way I'm able to make it through some days.

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#18. 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.

Valerie June

#19. When I was teenager, Britney Spears was it - that was the pop world that was happening, and I knew I wasn't in it.

Valerie June

#20. 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.

Valerie June

#21. They're all personal and self-created challenges that I think I've overcome within myself. Being confident enough to get on stage and play, things like that.

Valerie June

#22. I can't believe the ignorance there, so I don't allow it to affect my life, I don't allow it to come into my zone, and it's not in my world, really.

Valerie June

#23. Even the sad roots songs have a lot of good stories to them, and the murder ballads are good too. I mean, who doesn't like to watch a nice gory murder film on TV?

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#25. I create my own reality. And I'm not the only one. My reality is becoming more prominent.

Valerie June

#26. 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.

Valerie June

#27. I'm not religious, but I am spiritual and I am creating my own practice.

Valerie June

#28. Sometimes when you're in a more fast-paced place, with more to see and do, you miss out on things like nature and beautiful, God-made things. They call it "God's country"!

Valerie June

#29. When I think about singing, and music, I think about how the people who live on the East Tennessee side have more of a curve or yodel to their voices, and then you think about the curve of mountains.

Valerie June

#30. 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.

Valerie June

#31. 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.

Valerie June

#32. I have a lot of different collections of cards at home. It's hard to say my favorite deck, but there is a deck called the medicine cards, and it's Native American animal cards.

Valerie June

#33. 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.

Valerie June

#34. I don't even want to call it God. I just want to call it connecting with something that's greater than I am. So that's the biggest thing from Tennessee - the spirit.

Valerie June

#35. My number one style requirement is to have fun getting dressed. Nothing is too old, expensive, cheap, cute or ugly for me.

Valerie June

#36. I know a lot of people that don't pray or anything, and that's fine - but I need to. I don't even want to call it prayer, I just want to call it talking to something bigger than me.

Valerie June

#37. If my parents hadn't been made to do that from living in the Bible Belt, maybe it wouldn't be something that matters to me - maybe I wouldn't even know how to talk to God.

Valerie June

#38. The point is to raise your voice and be heard to God. You really are just celebrating being in the presence of other people that believe the same things you believe.

Valerie June

#39. 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.

Valerie June

#40. There are a lot of murder ballads out there, but most of them are about killing the woman. I was like, "We've gotta turn this around!"

Valerie June

#41. I love to read things that have moral messages, and I love to hear stories where it's not just a hook, you have to follow the story, you have to listen to the message of the song, and get it and use it in your everyday life.

Valerie June

#42. Even though I like looking good - don't get me wrong - but if I don't want to, I don't have to.

Valerie June

#43. 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.'

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#45. 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.

Valerie June

#46. There are so many different versions of "Tennessee Waltz" and they're all so good.

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#48. 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.

Valerie June

#49. I am always excited about playing in front of live audiences because I really enjoy it, for the most part.

Valerie June

#50. 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.

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#52. 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.

Valerie June

#53. When I was a kid, I always wanted to go to Europe, to go to Africa, to go traveling.

Valerie June

#54. Memphis held onto me until I was far enough along in my art and then it let me go.

Valerie June

#55. My voice is who I am, who I was when I was 3, and who I am going to be when I am 90 years old. When I hit the stage and people do not know who I am, they automatically assume, before I open my mouth, I am going to sing a Bob Marley song!

Valerie June

#56. 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.

Valerie June

#57. If you want to get broken in good, put four girls on the road together in a van and tour up and down the country.

Valerie June

#58. I don't marry bandmates just to go marrying bandmates.

Valerie June

#59. Even from when I was in grade school or church or wherever, I was always like: we're one, and we should respect each other and grow as one. And respect each other's diversity, of course.

Valerie June

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

Valerie June

#61. I mean, roots musicians - we can get old, you know? We can get up there and wear overalls and deliver the songs, we don't have to look any certain way.

Valerie June

#62. 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.

Valerie June

#63. 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.

Valerie June

#64. As a woman especially I've found a lot of freedom in music.

Valerie June

#65. When I talk about music in Memphis, it's a place you can go if you are a beginning artist or anywhere in your career, and you can incubate.

Valerie June