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Sun 10/20 @ 8:30PM
Tennessee singer/guitarist Valerie June calls her music “Organic Moonshine Roots Music.” It’s an accurate description of her unadorned tracks that put her nasal, plaintive vocals in the foreground.
She moved to Memphis in her late teens, where she honed her playing and performing skills and self-released three albums. Then just a couple of years ago, she happened to meet producer Kevin Augunas and Dan Auerbach of Akron’s Black Keys, who was just finishing putting together his Nashville studio.
They were captivated with her music and worked with her to create her new album, Pushin’ Against a Stone, which was released on Concord Records his summer.
It’s got a homespun backwoods flavor, capturing the front-porch music-making vibe of both rural blues (“You Can’t Be Told”) and Appalachian country folk (“Twined and Twisted”). She’s credited Mississippi John Hurt and the Carter family and “everything with Alan Lomax’s name on it” as primary influences.
She’ll be at the Beachland Tavern. Opening is Burton’s Rebekah Jean, who blends rural roots music with a rock and roll sensibility. Her debut album, Love May Be Real But It Ain’t Enough, was produced by David Mayfield of Kent’s prolifically talented Mayfield family.
Tickets are $12.