Valerie June

Composer of heartbreak ballads, folk songs, spirituals, soul-stirring blues and what she calls "organic moonshine roots music," Valerie June is a self-taught, Memphis-based guitar player and troubadour. June left her native Humboldt, Tennessee, for the West Coast, which she says she traversed "as a sort of gypsy nightingale," busking on the streets and in bus and subway stations. Since returning to Tennessee, June has become a mainstay at major music events as she. She's intent on mastering the banjo and the lap steel guitar, and the new sounds she is creating vibrate with the tension that occurs when mountain-spring freshness meets river-town grit.