Valerie June. Sarah knew her music, I did not; so, when she came out on stage, the contradictions were fresh to my ears and eyes. Physically, she's thin as a rail, but her body is topped with weaving dreads that appear to weigh more than her slim neck could support. Like snakes on Medusa or knotty roots of an upturned tree, they flowed up and around to the right of her head, rigid but alive. She wore a white, lace dress with long strands stretching from her hip to the floor, like a lampshade. These she played with occasionally, letting them run out of her hands like streams of water. Sarah said the dress made her look like an angel, and I agreed.
The contradiction continued when she sang. A thin, yet tall woman, I expected her voice to be mid-range, maybe reminiscent of Lauryn Hill or Alicia Keys. Instead, a small squeak of a voice came out when she talked, telling stories of her singer father, of working seven jobs to support her career, and of the woes of traveling as a musician. She called her instruments by name -- The Mother, a full-size traditional banjo; The Baby, a pint-sized banjolin (imagine a banjo the size of a ukelele); The Stranger, her Martin acoustic; and Big Red, a lipstick-red, semi-hollow body electric guitar that she personified as the trouble-maker of the group. And when she sang, her voice came through similarly, yet amplified.
However, something else happened when she sang: she had power. Yet another contradiction: her voice came through strong, yet at times vulnerable; clear, yet occasionally with an intentional, story-telling rasp. She could hum and grunt like an old man with a broken guitar and broken fingers, and she could belt high notes -- loud, clear, and long -- like starlets of the '60's and '70s. So many strange figures took root in that voice, so many stories that seemed beyond the thin figure on center stage. And when she played one of her family of instruments (which was for every song), she played them all with the individual attention and focus they demanded. They talked through her this way, being held and used exactly as they wished. Her banjo twanged, her guitar wept, her banjolin sang softly about its unsure stature, and Big Red woke us up with distortion and power. And with each different instrument, Valerie's persona changed. The acoustics brought out an innocence, while the electric made her seem raw, empowered, and angry, not at anything or anyone, but just by virtue of a thing in struggle.
All of these things came from her in the span of an hour. When she was done, before the encore, she picked up The Baby, strummed softly, and began a hymnal. As she backed up -- still playing, still singing, softly now away from the mic -- she began to walk off, carrying the tune with her as she went. And as the flashing white of her dress and the hypnotic yelp of her voice faded away, we began to wonder just what kind of other-worldly creature had been before us.
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