Speaker 1: It's a very quiet and slow morning, and I laid
Speaker 1: in the bed just a few seconds longer, just to
Speaker 1: see the day the way I wish for it to be,
Speaker 1: and plant some seats for some sweet things to happen.
Speaker 2: This is finally a show about a Southern Black country
Speaker 2: singer and songwriter hailing from Tennessee. Valerie June's music combines gospel, soul,
Speaker 2: and country and she has one of those voices that
Speaker 2: just stays with you. We met up with her on
Speaker 2: one of her many tour stops.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit like it could be warmer to me. Maybe,
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: I got a good seven.
Speaker 5: I had black tea with cream, and then I will
Speaker 5: jog to the sign to the gym and got a
Speaker 5: day passed and I jogged am all outside.
Speaker 4: And looked at the trees. They were beautiful colors.
Speaker 5: And when I'm doing the physical movement, I'm also doing
Speaker 5: like mantras and meditations and mental alignment. So as I jog,
Speaker 5: I don't just jog. I jog and breathing in, bring
Speaker 5: my awareness to my breath, breathing out, and then start
Speaker 5: to call in like words, breathing in, I am now peaceful,
Speaker 5: breathing out, I am now peaceful and not just calling
Speaker 5: it in and looking at what's around me, but what
Speaker 5: does peace look like? And starting to see each word
Speaker 5: like what that looks like to me that day, because
Speaker 5: it's like tuning myself for the day.
Speaker 4: And then all that's just getting me ready for.
Speaker 5: Being around people and being able to go on stage
Speaker 5: and have enough energy and concentration and focus on light
Speaker 5: in times where we might read what's happening in the
Speaker 5: world and feel like, how am I supposed to get
Speaker 5: up and share some joy or like with somebody today?
Speaker 4: I haven't found it.
Speaker 5: Myself yet, and that's okay, But I do these practices
Speaker 5: so that I could at least come close.
Speaker 6: To finding a little bit of its great.
Speaker 3: Well that was part of me.
Speaker 7: In backstage you're experiencing is one of our members is
Speaker 7: very sick.
Speaker 3: So she she is not at the chef tonight, Okay,
Speaker 3: So I said, you just do think great good.
Speaker 5: I was raised like in the middle of nowhere, in
Speaker 5: the country in Tennessee, and in nature, and I listened
Speaker 5: to trees, and I listened to nature and plants and
Speaker 5: birds and the.
Speaker 4: Pond and the wind. And they give me the practices too.
Speaker 4: They talk to me. You know, on this.
Speaker 5: Tour, I met the oldest tree in Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 5: It's two hundred and forty nine years old. I was
Speaker 5: just walking because it was a beautiful day, and we'd
Speaker 5: just gotten off the road and I was about to
Speaker 5: turn around, but I saw.
Speaker 4: This gorgeous tree.
Speaker 5: It was huge on the sidewalk and it was lifting
Speaker 5: up the sidewalk concrete because it was breaking it up.
Speaker 5: I walked down to the tree and I looked up
Speaker 5: and there was a plaque on the tree that said
Speaker 5: oldest tree in Buffalo. And I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I cannot believe I'm finding this tree today, just in
Speaker 5: the middle of the city. And I held the tree.
Speaker 5: You cannot get your arms all the way around it,
Speaker 5: and I like talked to the tree and it was
Speaker 5: telling me. Earlier that day, in my meditation in the sauna,
Speaker 5: I was invited into this garden. It was called the
Speaker 5: Hidden Garden. And I went in there and I sat
Speaker 5: and I was surrounded by all these plants, and you
Speaker 5: know things in Palestine and Israel, they were just weighing
Speaker 5: on me so heavy, and I just was in tears
Speaker 5: in there, and I was doing my breath work, and
Speaker 5: that's when I was invited by whatever spirit round to
Speaker 5: enter the Hidden Garden, and they said, you can enter
Speaker 5: this garden whenever you want to. You can stay here
Speaker 5: all day if you want to. It just it's this
Speaker 5: world inside of us that we have that is very
Speaker 5: much like where everything comes from. And so I had
Speaker 5: stayed in that garden. As we travel that day, I
Speaker 5: needed to ask the tree, is it okay.
Speaker 4: For me to like stay in the hidden Garden? For real?
Speaker 5: You're older than me, You're like two hundred and forty
Speaker 5: nine years old, you see, so much like, is it
Speaker 5: okay with all this going on in the world for
Speaker 5: me to stay in the Hidden Garden? And the tree said,
Speaker 5: you can stay in both worlds. You don't have to
Speaker 5: choose one or the other. You can stay with us
Speaker 5: as long as you want to. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 5: that you're leaving the reality of what's happening in the world,
Speaker 5: but you do need to have to lean on us.
Speaker 5: The songs come for they come to me while I'm
Speaker 5: doing things. So it's important to me for my work
Speaker 5: to have other things that I'm doing, not to like
Speaker 5: sit down to write a song or a poem. Because
Speaker 5: I need it's many. It's much like the ancestors. Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: they were enslaved and they worked in the fields, and
Speaker 5: while they worked in the fields, they sang, and they
Speaker 5: had these songs that came to them while they were working,
Speaker 5: and they sang work songs. I do better creating when
Speaker 5: I'm watering the plants, when I'm cleaning the toilet, when
Speaker 5: I'm washing dishes, when I'm folding clothes, when I'm sleeping.
Speaker 5: I do better creating when I'm not intending to create.
Speaker 5: If I stop what I'm doing and I sit down
Speaker 5: and I really try to create, then it's not like
Speaker 5: it's very fri frustrating like it needs to be. That
Speaker 5: I'm cooking dinner and I just hear this voice, and
Speaker 5: the voice is singing me a song, and I sing
Speaker 5: you the song the way the song is sung to me.
Speaker 5: So it's like I turn like when you turn on
Speaker 5: a radio and you hear a song, That's how it is.
Speaker 5: When I hear a song, it's just like there it
Speaker 5: is today. And because they come to me, that's why
Speaker 5: I do that.
Speaker 4: But if they stop coming to me, then I won't
Speaker 4: do that anymore.
Speaker 5: And I've talked to other creators, like I've talked to
Speaker 5: filmmakers or other songwriters even, and different people get them,
Speaker 5: get things different ways. Like some filmmakers see the entire
Speaker 5: film and all they have to do, and it's hard.
Speaker 5: It's just write what they see. But it's hard to
Speaker 5: write it because they see it, you know, and it's
Speaker 5: in a different realm, and they have to get the words,
Speaker 5: the actual words that someone else is gonna understand. But
Speaker 5: for me, I hear and I hear the voice. The
Speaker 5: voice sings to me, and I say to you what
Speaker 5: the voice sings to me. Other songwriters hear like instruments,
Speaker 5: and they hear a whole symphony or an orchestra in
Speaker 5: their head and they write it down.
Speaker 4: I don't hear that so much.
Speaker 5: I work in a way where I hear many voices.
Speaker 5: They exist in this.
Speaker 4: World for me because I have to.
Speaker 5: Be doing something like driving or walking to a train
Speaker 5: or something physically in this world for them to come.
Speaker 5: They don't just come. They come while I'm doing other things.
Speaker 5: Like That's why I like to have other things going on,
Speaker 5: even in business that I'm like, you know, I'm doing books,
Speaker 5: but I'm also doing songs and I'm doing poems, and
Speaker 5: you know, I'm just like trying to.
Speaker 4: Leave the space open, the creative space. Just let it come.
Speaker 5: Don't sit down and try to force something.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I know, I'm busy.
Speaker 5: I'm on the I'm on a conference skylland oh I'm
Speaker 5: hearing a voice. Okay. As soon as I get off,
Speaker 5: keep that on refeet on the back of my mind.
Speaker 5: Since I get off that, that's when I'm gonna start
Speaker 5: focusing on it.
Speaker 4: And get it down in my journal or wherever it is.
Speaker 5: They pretty much come like as they want to be,
Speaker 5: and they're very bossy because if I start to try
Speaker 5: to make.
Speaker 4: Them something else, which I try to.
Speaker 5: Do a lot, then they pull back, They pull back
Speaker 5: the other way, back.
Speaker 4: To where what they want it to be.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, okay, okay, I hear you.
Speaker 4: They boss me around. Songs know what they want. They
Speaker 4: are living.
Speaker 5: They have dreams and hopes just like I do or
Speaker 5: anybody else does. They have ways they want to be
Speaker 5: in the world, and so job of songwriters, the job
Speaker 5: is just to get out the way and let the
Speaker 5: song do what it wants to do.
Speaker 4: And that's hard because they're.
Speaker 5: Kind of like babies and you want to just like, oh,
Speaker 5: this is my new song, my new song, and this
Speaker 5: is what I'm gonna do with it. But when you
Speaker 5: put it out into the world and someone covers it,
Speaker 5: then you see just how little control you have over
Speaker 5: what the song's gonna do, because everybody sounds different when
Speaker 5: they cover a song. Then the other person it's the
Speaker 5: same song, but it sounds different. You know, the songs
Speaker 5: they are definitely teachers, and I think they.
Speaker 4: I think they might.
Speaker 5: You know, sometimes I ask myself, like did they ever live?
Speaker 5: And maybe they did, I don't know, like or maybe
Speaker 5: they've never been on a body, and they live through
Speaker 5: people who come and have voices to sing their song
Speaker 5: for them.
Speaker 4: They say, everybody has a good story in them.
Speaker 5: And it seems like when a show or a play
Speaker 5: or a song captures a person's story, then you're like, yeah.
Speaker 4: That's my sound, even though you don't write it. What
Speaker 4: makes it yours is because that story.
Speaker 5: Is something that's yours too, you can I find yourself
Speaker 5: in it and identify yourself in it. So I wonder
Speaker 5: where that commonality really comes from. Does it come from
Speaker 5: beyond just us? Does it come from beyond even the ancestors?
Speaker 5: Is there like something beyond that where all of the
Speaker 5: sounds and visions and beautiful things are just swirling waiting.
Speaker 4: To come into this existence. I'm dark. I just need
Speaker 4: to be dark.
Speaker 5: I need to bawl my ass off and enter the
Speaker 5: Eden garden and staying there crying, you know, all day long,
Speaker 5: just like I don't understand why what helped miss.
Speaker 4: Somebody come home?
Speaker 5: And then you know, work with that energy because always
Speaker 5: knowing See, I used to go dark and I would
Speaker 5: not come out, But now I know that you can't
Speaker 5: have one without the other in this realm. And so
Speaker 5: because of that, like any time I go dark now,
Speaker 5: I can stay dark for a week, a year, or
Speaker 5: however long because I've grieved hard for so.
Speaker 4: Long, so many things, and.
Speaker 5: You know, whenever that happens now, because I understand darkness,
Speaker 5: I'm okay because I know that I can't have that
Speaker 5: without some light in there. Because like as I go
Speaker 5: through a day, I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm happy, I'm sad.
Speaker 4: You know this affects me. That affects me. Oh da
Speaker 4: da da, and everyone.
Speaker 5: Everyone's like that, and that's why the day is a
Speaker 5: practice for me.
Speaker 4: My parents would like for things they wanted.
Speaker 5: They would give visions, but it wasn't as whimsical as
Speaker 5: the language I use for it. It was more concrete
Speaker 5: and it was more like, you know, I'm doing what
Speaker 5: I gotta do to make what I need to make happen,
Speaker 5: and this is the way to make it happen in
Speaker 5: the physical world. These are the laws and the rules,
Speaker 5: and this is how I have to like maneuver.
Speaker 4: And they would go and like say.
Speaker 5: For example, if my dad needed a new dump truck
Speaker 5: for his construction company, he.
Speaker 4: Would go through the ads and he.
Speaker 5: Would just start clipping out pictures of dump trucks that
Speaker 5: he liked, and he would put together like just a
Speaker 5: little kind of I would call it like a visionary board.
Speaker 5: He didn't have any New Age hippies telling him what
Speaker 5: to do on that.
Speaker 4: Nor would he ever follow anything like that.
Speaker 5: He would probably say that magic and all of that
Speaker 5: is focus and like against God, and that I'm going
Speaker 5: to hell for believing in it.
Speaker 4: But they worked it. They did.
Speaker 5: They wanted a house, they had a vision of a
Speaker 5: house they wanted. They would drive around and look at
Speaker 5: different houses and they would pull like I want this window,
Speaker 5: I want that doorway, I want that driveway, and they
Speaker 5: would go to an architect and get the plans made
Speaker 5: for it, and they would call to them the things
Speaker 5: that they wanted, you know. And I saw them work
Speaker 5: in magic like that in the sense that the world
Speaker 5: would say, through redlining and a lot of limitations upon
Speaker 5: southern Black families that they can ain't have, that the
Speaker 5: world will tell them who they were. But they always
Speaker 5: worked magic, and they decided who they wanted to be
Speaker 5: and they made that shit happen. So to me, that's
Speaker 5: like the greatest magic. Magic is real. It's hard. Dreams
Speaker 5: are hard because you fail, you know, you fail. I
Speaker 5: fail every fucking day.
Speaker 4: I fail.
Speaker 5: But you got to learn how to fail and be
Speaker 5: okay with that, you know, like it's a part of
Speaker 5: the process. So becoming a successful failure is kind of
Speaker 5: part of the nature of dreaming. In some ways, people
Speaker 5: could say that doctor King failed because in his time
Speaker 5: he you know, even to today, we still are pushing
Speaker 5: to see his dream come true across the whole continent
Speaker 5: for all people, no matter what you believe to you know,
Speaker 5: be judged by the content of your character and not by.
Speaker 4: Your race or your beliefs.
Speaker 5: Well, it's been a long time since Doctor King was
Speaker 5: assassinated in Memphis, and we're still having a hard time
Speaker 5: with that one. So dreams take time, and you could
Speaker 5: say the man failed, but.
Speaker 4: I don't believe that. So it's okay for me to
Speaker 4: fail because I know.
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna fail. I know I'm not and I
Speaker 5: know Doctor King's not. I believe in the dream, you know.
Speaker 5: I believe in all goodness.
Speaker 4: I believe in dreams. I believe in magic, and I believe.
Speaker 5: It's hard though, you know, there's just so many things
Speaker 5: to distract from our power and joy, positivity.
Speaker 4: Beauty is never taken. We give it, but because we
Speaker 4: let it. You know.
Speaker 5: I always wonder what could be possible if we didn't,
Speaker 5: and what does it look like if we don't. These
Speaker 5: are always just questions I have. I have no answers.
Speaker 5: I just like guess questions.
Speaker 4: I think the biggest thing for me.
Speaker 5: Is really connecting with other beings who understand community and
Speaker 5: collective dreaming and collective consciousness and the power of imagination,
Speaker 5: wonder and.
Speaker 4: The currency of it.
Speaker 5: Everything is currency, and everything's for sale right now, everything
Speaker 5: being a woman, being black, whatever it is, you know,
Speaker 5: and if it is for sale, then are we consciously
Speaker 5: using it to grow and to heal, or are we
Speaker 5: using it to line our own pockets?
Speaker 4: You know, what does it look like.
Speaker 5: To work with the community of people who are really
Speaker 5: interested in true healing?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: I want to meet my tribe like that.
Speaker 4: That's what I want to do.
Speaker 5: And I don't even have to know them, but I
Speaker 5: want to know that they're working in this world in
Speaker 5: the same way in their small sphere. We ain't got
Speaker 5: to catch up be running buddies, but I need to
Speaker 5: know that there are other people out there that.
Speaker 1: Are working that type of what we would use the
Speaker 1: word magic.
Speaker 4: You know, I need to know it.
Speaker 5: I know that there's a lot of people out there
Speaker 5: causing all kinds of crazy things to happen and stirring
Speaker 5: up a lot of things that will create discomfort. I
Speaker 5: know that, but I need the reflection of those who are.
Speaker 4: Trying to align with a shine.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: JT just texted me the only fifty percent of the
Speaker 3: tickets have been scanned so far, and he wants to
Speaker 3: push till eight tests.
Speaker 4: I got twenty minutes to get myself together. Valerie, how
Speaker 4: do you decide what you're gonna wear.
Speaker 3: The room?
Speaker 4: I go in there, and I'm like, what does this
Speaker 4: room want me to wear?
Speaker 7: Sometimes I'll want online and see what the room was like,
Speaker 7: and then I'll be like, here's a couple of possibilities
Speaker 7: for this particular room.
Speaker 4: But you know, and then whatever, you know, we are
Speaker 4: wearing kind of fits, you know, temperatures.
Speaker 5: Last night she was wearing striped sorrow or stripe.
Speaker 7: And there's a lot of fabrics tool and lots of neon.
Speaker 3: Throw up. That's kind of the thing.
Speaker 5: This is a I got this in the kittie department
Speaker 5: of Target, and it's extra large and it fit me
Speaker 5: and I really like it.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna walk out and play a song. Let's go,
Speaker 3: We're going. We're walking, okay.
Speaker 5: Because of that way that people before ancestors have paid,
Speaker 5: now we have like more freedoms in a sense, in
Speaker 5: certain parts of the world than we've ever had. So
Speaker 5: we have a window of opportunity to make some deep
Speaker 5: choices of change.
Speaker 4: We actually have a chance. I believe in humanity and
Speaker 4: I believe in us.
Speaker 1: It's a very quiet night. I took a bath, I
Speaker 1: covered myself in lavender roll from head to toe, and
Speaker 1: then scrubs with the brush and put a ton of
Speaker 1: ebs and salt in the water as tight as I
Speaker 1: could stand and got in there relaxed, and then I
Speaker 1: got out and made myself some camerameal tea and I
Speaker 1: Shregonda and now I'm laying in the bed and I'm
Speaker 1: just taking it easy and I'm about to go to sleep.
Speaker 1: It's been a beautiful day.