“Working with a genius, you just soak everything up,” says Americana singer/songwriter Valerie June of her upcoming studio album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles, which drops this Friday, April 11th. “Like the first record, there’s blazing electric guitar. We’re kind of returning to it, not that I don’t have blazing electric guitar on every record, but when you’re working with M. Ward, he’s a guitar genius,” June says of the album’s producer during a recent phone chat. The two originally met when Ward invited June to contribute a song (“High Note”) to Mavis Staples’ 2016 album, Livin’ on a High Note, which he was producing.
As a massive fan of both The Staple Singers and M. Ward’s She & Him, June jumped at the opportunity, and in 2023 she played with Ward as a guest at his appearances at Newport Folk Festival and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, cementing their friendship and the notion that they should do a full-length collaboration. However, June admits that she was a bit surprised when she first got into the studio with Ward: “The way he records, with everything all in one room, was different for me… He’s like, ‘We’re gonna record everything all in one room,’ and I’m like, ‘What if I mess up?’ and he’s like, ‘If you mess up, we’ll record it all over again,’ [laughs].”
The album – whose first three singles (“Joy, Joy!,” “Sweet Things Just for You,” and “Endless Tree”) ask listeners to consider how we, as a people, can produce and live in an harmonious and collectively healthy manner, despite the profundity of obstacles created by modern society – is Valerie June’s third for Concord Records, home of phriends of PHILTHY like Allison Russell, Daffo, Lindsey Stirling, Lucius, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and The Revivalists. “I’ve been with them for 10 years, so it is a family,” June says of the label, which recently merged with Fantasy Records, who released her previous full-length, 2021’s The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers. She also tells me that she’s a big fan of the roster, having had Allison Russell’s Birds of Chicago open for her many years ago, playing Farm Aid and Newport Folk Festival alongside Nathaniel Rateliff, and touring France with Lucius.
This coming Tuesday, April 15th, Valerie June kicks off the Owls, Omens, and Oracles Tour at the Music Hall at World Cafe Live, which is apparently almost sold-out. The tour takes June through the end of June (the month…) and the artist, who used to split her time between Tennessee and New York, tells me she’s just thrilled to be out there for so long: “I live on the road, Izzy, for real. I used to know where I was from, now I kinda know where I was from… I love to travel, and I got sick for so many years and I couldn’t travel.”
While June admits to liking the opportunity to play a pretty huge range of settings (“I honestly like experiencing the variety… I have the most amazing agent. He could book me at a nightclub, a park, or a cathedral and I know it will be absolutely amazing.”), she does tell me she’s a big fan of opening night’s venue and, “all of the different ways World Cafe Live shares art with the world.” When I ask what can be expected of the live show, June says it will be unlike anything her fans have witnessed before: “Ya’ll have not seen me yet! I’ve been learning, studying, and absorbing, and I’m ready. Are you ready? You ain’t ready, Izzy!”
*Get your tickets here.
