A Grammy and Americana Music Honors nominee, June has built her career around radical invitations\u2014challenging listeners to embrace joy as a form of resistance. An author, poet, and certified mindfulness instructor, she has recorded three best-selling solo albums, written for legends like Mavis Staples and the Blind Boys of Alabama, and earned praise from Bob Dylan. Along the way, she\u2019s collaborated with artists as wide ranging as John Prine, Norah Jones, Robert Plant, and Brandi Carlile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This time, she\u2019s joined by producer M. Ward, with contributions from the Blind Boys of Alabama, Norah Jones, and DJ Cavem Moetavation. When not on tour, she divides her time between Tennessee and New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a crisp late winter morning, I caught up with June on a Zoom call. We began with a tarot reflection\u2014pulling the owl card from the Spirit Deck, a symbol of wisdom and deep vision. It felt like the perfect place to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s talk about owl medicine. What does it mean to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a pond behind our house in Tennessee. One morning when I was making tea I saw an owl perched on a post across the water. I get visits from all kinds of animals, but owls are rare so I went to the deck thinking, what does it mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Magic, mystery, and even darkness\u2014the owl feels like the ultimate oracle. I\u2019m basically an ambassador for joy, and people are oftentimes like, \u201cThat\u2019s so fake, you\u2019re bypassing shit.\u201d But that\u2019s not my truth. My truth is understanding the darkness and understanding the night and the hard times and choosing to be in a place of joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The elders of indigenous communities I meet say that they were taught to think of seven generations in their actions\u2014seven generations past and present. I thought, I\u2019m this Black woman from the South. My people were enslaved. I don\u2019t know a lot about them. I have no real culture from my family line that I can pull from, so let me listen to these elders, these plants and animals, this pond and the water and the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I look at this world and say, \u201cWho am I gonna be when I\u2019m gone for those that are to come?\u201d I think all of us today are oracles. We are telling the future in our actions. And the owl is saying, \u201cOkay, I don\u2019t know if y\u2019all know, but y\u2019all in a dark time. You about to have to make some quick, fast changes. What are you gonna choose?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are some of the practices you do to cultivate that joy?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the big practices I do is cry. Sunny War wrote the song \u201cCry Baby\u201d and asked me to sing on it, and it resonates because I feel grief in this world today. When I go to joy, it is absolutely a choice. I lean toward blues and dark stuff. A lot of what I wrote before I started receiving songs of positivity were dark songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do dark songs come differently?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The first time I met PJ Harvey, she asked me how I write songs. I was like, \u201cWell, I hear voices.\u201d She said, \u201cSometimes I hear voices, but I really see films.\u201d I have written one song like that, \u201cShotgun.\u201d I saw a white farmhouse, a door kind of open, fields all around with the grass tall and blowing. Nobody was in the house, but the energy was dark like Robert Johnson\u2019s \u201cIf I Had Possession Over Judgment Day.\u201d He sings, \u201cIf I had possession over judgment day, Lord, the little woman I\u2019m loving wouldn\u2019t have no right to pray.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So many songs from that tradition were murder ballads, abusive toward women, but I think that was coded language for the oppression they were facing. That\u2019s what I did with \u201cShotgun\u201d after so much gun violence, but I don\u2019t want to sing it. It\u2019s dark, even though it was moving toward a healing place. People don\u2019t always dive into a song and ask, \u201cWell, what do you think she was thinking about when she wrote this song?\u201d I\u2019m not saying that people are stupid. I\u2019m just saying we\u2019re busy, and we don\u2019t have the time to go deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s amazing. I\u2019m going to use that. \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re stupid, you\u2019re just busy.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s true! It goes even deeper, but we ain\u2019t got time. Let\u2019s talk about guitars!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tell me about the Martin guitar you play. When did it come into your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, I have two of them now! The last time I spoke to Acoustic Guitar<\/em> [in 2014, for the magazine\u2019s Sessions <\/em>video series<\/a> \u2014ed.<\/em>], I only had that one. I had just made Pushin\u2019 Against a Stone<\/a><\/em> and was flying back to Tennessee from Canada when my guitar was busted up on the flight\u2014totally destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a Gibson, like Robert Johnson played, an L-1. It was tiny, fit perfectly to my little body, and it broke my heart. I named that guitar Clyde after my grandfather because he gave me my first guitar, a little red Mexican guitar with paintings on the front that was in his closet my whole life until I finally begged so long for one my Granny made him give it to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I got to Nashville and told Dan Auerbach [of the Black Keys] my Gibson was busted, he said, \u201cGet a Martin\u2014try something new. Go downtown to Gruhn and play them and see what happens.\u201d The salesman wouldn\u2019t sell me the first guitar I liked. He brought five or six more in that style and said, \u201cYou\u2019re gonna sit here and play each one, and the one that you feel is the one you\u2019re gonna get.\u201d I fell in love with one [a 000-15] and I went to buy it. He said, could you read out the serial number to me? He was filling out this little form and I read the serial number, and the last four digits were my phone number. And I was just like, this is definitely mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You have this really cool open right-hand technique. Is that something you learned or just picked up?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I picked it up. I tried some teachers but I\u2019m not a good student. I don\u2019t have natural rhythm so the way they would teach, I just couldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What do you mean you don\u2019t have natural rhythm?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Shoot. I just don\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How would you pick up that Senegalese highlife rhythm that you do so naturally if you didn\u2019t have rhythm? You were a polyrhythm master from the get-go! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, OK. Thank you. You just kind of changed my life right there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How would you describe what you do with your right hand?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I just like to play that way. I have very long fingers, and I don\u2019t want to have pain in my hand, so I shifted the way I was playing and I got to where I was very comfortable. It\u2019s about following what feels good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On \u201cSweet Things Just for You,\u201d is that you playing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No. That\u2019s M. Ward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wondered because there\u2019s this alternate-thumb thing I hadn\u2019t seen you do.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s similar to my song \u201cRain Dance\u201d that I do alternate thumb on. I wrote it in the spirit of Mississippi John Hurt, but I don\u2019t do the noodles. I played my version of it for M. and I was like, \u201cOK. So, this song goes like this, but with the Mississippi John Hurt noodles.\u201d He got the noodles in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you ever use fingerpicks?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No, I like to feel the strings on my skin, the vibration of the instrument against my body, the smell of the wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, when you\u2019re switching between banjo, uke, and guitar, do you have to physically recalibrate?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s part of my nature now. I play them all very similarly. You know how people have different styles\u2014they clawhammer or fingerstyle or whatever with banjo. I play the banjo the same as I play the guitar. My friends who went to art school, their professors told them to learn the rules so they can break them. That\u2019s cool, but I ain\u2019t got time for that. I gotta sit down here and play it like I can play it. I was already 25, 26, when I picked it up. I had to get goin\u2019!<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re following what feels good.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I first started with the instrument, trying so hard to get a rhythm would create a pain in my shoulder and I was like, \u201cNow, how am I going to make it to 80 doing this?\u201d I rethought that situation, and I was like, \u201cThis feels good, let\u2019s do this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s your sound setup onstage? Do you play through an amp or just straight through the system?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Usually just through the system, through the L.R. Baggs preamp, but I love artists who put their acoustic guitar through amps. I saw Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins do that and I love that sound. Sometimes I do that, but not onstage because I haven\u2019t learned how to master feedback with acoustic instruments and vocals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I like a dirty blues, filthy, grungy acoustic guitar sound. I also like clean stuff, but I love when it\u2019s just a dark rock \u2019n\u2019 roll acoustic sound, you know? And that\u2019s hard to do live. In my own space, when I\u2019m working on the songs, I will plug in my little Pignose amp and crank that junk up and play with some pedals and go crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you take both Martins out with you on tour?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I usually just take one, and I take two electric guitars because I use different tunings. And my banjo and ukulele travel together as the baby and the mama in the same case\u2014so cute and cuddly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You keep the acoustic in standard and use the electrics for alternate tunings?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If I don\u2019t have another guitar then I sometimes tune the acoustic but otherwise I\u2019ll keep the electrics tuned to DADGAD or C G C G A E.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And you don\u2019t play electric with a pick, either?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That could be fun to try, and I like the sound sometimes. My fingers have little knots on them, and I don\u2019t really have nails. I\u2019m jealous of Dolly [Parton]\u2014her nails, her playing, all of it. My friend Yasmin [Williams] has beautiful nails too and she plays gorgeous acoustic guitar. She\u2019s so cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love the question you ask in your song \u201cSuperpower\u201d: \u201cHow will I face this day?\u201d So, how are you facing this day that we have today?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, I started slowly just kind of lying there for a little bit. And I remembered this teacher I had years ago in yoga, and she said at the end of the class in savasana, \u201cBegin to wiggle your fingers and your toes,\u201d and so I started with just hearing her voice say that as I woke up. I wiggled my fingers and my toes and then took a few breaths then I was like, \u201cOkay, I can open my eyes to this day.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n What She Plays<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Valerie June\u2019s main acoustic guitar is a Martin 000-15, set up with Martin extra-light strings. For amplification, she uses L.R. Baggs pickups and preamps for her guitars as well as banjo and ukulele. \u2014NZ<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Owls-Omens-and-Oracles-Concord.jpg?resize=1024%2C1024&ssl=1\")
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