
Andy Hull and Robert McDowell deliver a dual-guitar coup de main on Cope—the Atlanta indie-rockers’ heaviest record to date.
Electric bees swarming in harmony. Tectonic plates slowly grinding over a fault line of pickups. A surging tsunami ridden by Homer’s Sirens as they call Odysseus and his men toward a volatile fate.
Those may seem like abstractions, but the supremely overdriven sound of the new Manchester Orchestra album, Cope—which frontman Andy Hull describes with a single word, “brutal”—puts gravel in their bellies. But what the album truly sounds like is a creative breakthrough for the uncannily hardworking Atlanta quintet that’s propelled by the dual 6-string thrust of Hull and Robert McDowell, childhood friends and kindred spirits who do for post-atomic-age rock guitar what gospel-raised Southern siblings like the Louvin Brothers did for close harmonies.
To listeners casually familiar with the band through breakthrough tunes like 2006’s “Wolves at Night” or 2011’s “Simple Math,” Cope may seem like a radical departure. After all, those hits were fueled by the post-Cobain mantra of alternating loud and soft dynamics in support of melodic pirouettes that soften the edge of Hull’s lyrics.
“A lot of people who've never seen us live think of us as playing pretty music—which we do, and we enjoy,” notes Hull. “But this album is as relentless as our live shows.”
Although Cope does stand up on its hind legs and beat its chest, its noise also comes from mental static. Few songwriters today have Hull’s psychic pipeline into the minds of his characters. His gift for interior perception makes offerings like “The Mansion,” about a lost, hollow-hearted soul, and “The Ocean,” a roiling tribute to futility, seem nakedly genuine and haunted.
Then there’s the gift for hooks, melodies, and harmonies that’s deep in Hull’s and his bandmates’ collective DNA. Manchester Orchestra seems so instinctually adept at upholding those values that they’re able to build a sing-along vibe into the neurosis of “Indentions,” which starts with a church burning and chews on lines like, “It doesn’t matter to me … I tell myself repeatedly/What a nightmare it seemed to honestly think of anything.”
“We’re at a point as a band where the hooks come out naturally in every song,” Hull explains. “We don’t have to think about it. Everybody was on the same page every step of the way in making this album, and as we put together the songs in the studio things just fell into place exactly how they needed to.”
Hull’s voice also lends a buoyance to the band dynamic. He channels his airy tenor into rising and falling melodies—a trick he learned from one of his ’80s and ’90s post-punk heroes, Morrissey, whose hometown of Manchester, England, inspired the group’s name.
Andy Hull's Gear
Guitars
T-style with a Seymour Duncan Little ’59 bridge pickup
Amps
Fender Hot Rod DeVille
Fender 4x10 extension cabinet
Effects
Boss BD-2 Blues Driver
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverbs
Fulltone OCD
Strings and Picks
Ernie Ball 2220 Power Slinky sets (.011–.048)
Jim Dunlop .73 mm and .60 mm Tortex picks
Jesus, Dinosaurs, and Pumpkins
Cope’s evolutionary leap was accomplished in part by looking back to those same decades, too—a time when rock guitar’s territory was wide enough to encompass the subterranean growl of the Jesus and Mary Chain, the 6-string howl of Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis and Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, and the frayed harmonic declamations of Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca. Hull and crew even drafted John Agnello—an expert at wrangling the untamable guitars of some of the aforementioned acts, as well as the Screaming Trees, the Breeders, and Kurt Vile—to mix Cope. “John kept saying, ‘This is so My Bloody Valentine—on steroids,’” Hull says, laughing.
But looking ahead to a blank canvas also lit the fire for Cope. “We had come home after touring behind Simple Math, and found ourselves without a record label, wondering what we were going to do next,” Hull recalls. “We had a band meeting about it, and all five of us said, ‘Let’s make something super heavy, something where the guitars are as powerful as the drums and it never slows down—a no-holds-barred rock record.’
“There are only a few super-heavy rock bands with real songwriting out there these days,” he continues. “We wanted to get away from all the trendy electronica and sampling stuff too many bands are doing, and make a great guitar record that doesn’t sound like anything else—like when Led Zeppelin and Hendrix changed music in the ’60s.”
While invoking those two names is bound to raise some hackles among some players, the band’s core mission seems to have been accomplished: Cope is replete with 6-strings that rise and ebb but never lose their power as the songs unfurl. The trick was layering as many as 10 guitar tracks on each tune, all slightly varied in tone and execution so that, even when Hull and McDowell played the same chords, their varied picking, amp choices, and instruments created small differences that make the combined tracks pulse like a hive.
Guitarist and singer Andy Hull belting out while playing his trustee T-style axe. Photo by Krista De La Rosa.
Everyone Gets a Vote
The monolithic guitars on Manchester’s latest won’t sound foreign to die-hard fans who’ve heard the band’s sound grow increasingly heavy onstage during the past decade. “Right from the start we needed to rock hard at concerts,” Hull says. “We were opening shows for other bands, and quickly learned that if we weren’t loud and in people’s faces, they’d totally ignore us. Cope is what our music sounds like onstage. The amps are roaring up there, and this is the first time we’ve been able to capture that sound in the studio.”
The group once again recruited friend and collaborator Dan Hannon to co-produce. They also built their own studio in the Atlanta house they once shared. McDowell and drummer Tim Very both have construction experience and oversaw the project, which delayed the album’s start, but saved money on the studio time Cope’s meticulous creation required.
“When we were making the album, we’d have breakfast together every day and then go into the studio to create a song,” Hull recounts. “We’d start by jamming on a riff or another idea, and then when it was starting to take shape I’d go off in a corner and write some lyrics about whatever was on my brain that day, and then we’d come back to finish the form. Then we’d play it three or four times and comp together a version, and I’d stay late putting on the vocals.”
Sonic Stacking
The secret to Cope’s pummeling tour de force o lies in the strategy guitarists Robert McDowell and Andy Hull employed when layering their instruments. “At certain points you want to go down different rabbit holes,” McDowell says. “Our goal has been to make our records sound bigger and bigger than a five-piece band typically does, and this time we really nailed it.”
Only two guitars were deployed in the sessions: McDowell’s Fender 1972 Telecaster Deluxe, which he swaps out with an SG Standard onstage, and the parts-built T-style solidbody that Hull uses for everything.
They fired up a variety of amps, including Hull’s Fender Hot Rod DeVille stage rig and McDowell’s Vox AC30, which was also routed to a Marshall 4x12. “I wanted to be louder onstage, so I started powering the Marshall cab with my Vox to get six speakers moving air,” McDowell explains. “Although I did that just to get more volume, I noticed that the Marshall was also making my sound darker. Now I’m totally smitten with it!
“Since Andy and I have very different tones, that was a starting point for layering,” he continues. “We began recording the guitars for each song with both of us in the same room, playing the same part together at the same time, but with each of us using two different amps. In order for the layering to work, we needed to marry the guitars into one great tone as the foundation.”
Then came a second pass, where they exchanged and mixed amp, head, and cabinet combinations. They brought in a Fender Super-Sonic cab, as well as a Fulltone OCD pedal for the sessions. That gave every song as many as eight foundational guitar tracks to work with at mixing. Next, additional leads and overdriven sounds were added, sometimes going direct, occasionally with Hull’s Boss BD-2 Blues Driver pedal slamming the recording console’s preamps.
Hull explains that duplicating tracks of the same chord progressions by recording separate performances, rather than simply copying them via Pro Tools or using a multitude of isolated amps simultaneously, gave the album a more live and detailed sound. “All the slight differences in the picking, attack, and tone we used every time we played a track really comes through and makes the guitars sound bigger,” he says.
A few carefully curated stompboxes were also used. Two Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb pedals were used at once to get the cathedral-like sounds that ramp up to the crescendo of “The Mansion,” and that song’s secret weapon was a Walrus Audio Janus—a tremolo/fuzz that McDowell describes as “completely blown-out and insane sounding. It entirely changes your tone. There are two joysticks to control the fuzz and tremolo separately, and I was down on the floor playing with those as I recorded.”
That process yielded 28 songs before the band felt they had the anatomy of Cope. “Everybody had to be in agreement that every song was a home run,” says Hull. “Doubles and triples are sometimes really good for an album, but our goal was that if everybody didn’t feel a song was totally awesome, it wasn’t going on the record.”
Hull tried to nix the track “Top Notch,” which pits Very’s offbeat drums against cascading waves of burly guitar and a desperate vocal performance. But McDowell, Very, keyboardist/percussionist Chris Freeman, and new bassist Andy Prince argued for its inclusion. The tune ultimately became the first single, released in January.
Photo by Owen Sweeney—Frank White Photo Agency.
The Best 16 Seconds
Manchester Orchestra’s democratic spirit rests on the axis of Hull and McDowell’s friendship. They met in school, as music-obsessed teenagers. Both were already playing guitar. McDowell was initially inspired by Christian rock and AC/DC, and Hull, several years older, was listening to everything from Morrissey’s the Smiths to roots-rockers Wilco, visceral storytellers Built to Spill, and Delta bluesman Son House. They started recording songs in McDowell’s primitive basement studio, and when Hull decided to start Manchester Orchestra he invited McDowell to join. “I was 14, and my mom said, ‘No,’” McDowell recounts. “Two or three years later, I joined the band and we’ve been doing it since.”
With their music and personal lives intertwined—Hull is also McDowell’s brother-in-law—it’s no surprise that the guitarists play together as if they share lungs. That cohesiveness and their work ethic have driven them to relentlessly tour and record four albums and eight EPs over the last decade—not to mention each band member’s solo projects.
“If Andy or I come up with the coolest part, that’s what gets played. It doesn’t matter whose stamp gets put there,” McDowell relates. “The best thing to do is to always put your pride aside, and to put what’s best for the song and the band first.”
Nonetheless, Hull says his pal McDowell is the most likely to conjure a daring solo off the cuff, like the bright, bristling melody that brings the ominous “See It Again” to its crescendo. “He was playing a scratch track as we were demoing the song and got bored with the part he was playing, so he just ripped out this solo,” Hull remembers. “It was through a cheap transistor amp, but it sounded so great that we kept it.”
Robert McDowell’s Gear
Guitars
Fender ’72 Telecaster Deluxe
Gibson SG Standard with Burstbucker pickups
Amps
Vox AC30 driving a Marshall 4x12 cab
Orange OR50 driving a Marshall 4x12
Effects
Walrus Audio Iron Horse, Jupiter, and Janus
Two Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverbs
Strings and Picks
Ernie Ball 2220 Power Slinky sets (.011–.048)
Jim Dunlop .73 mm and .60 mm Tortex picks
And then there’s the title track, which brings the album to its final reckoning and serves as its emotional mission statement. “The word ‘cope’ means getting by, letting go, being able to find a way to deal with the bad things in life,” Hull states. “We’ve been in this band since we were teenagers, so we’ve grown up playing this music. You can cope in a positive way or a negative way when bad things happen. And that inspired me a lot when I was writing lyrics.” The song is a 10-layer cake of growling guitars that perfectly match the lyrics, bemoaning the sometimes-crushing weight of the human experience. But while cheerful melodies and catchy riffs counterbalance most of Manchester’s pessimistic outings, here we’re left to founder, to listen as the album closes with dying gasps of feedback.
Despite the bleakness of that title track, Hull and McDowell are both elated with the album and are proud to have made what they consider to be Manchester Orchestra’s finest recording. “Every note, every lyric—even the intros … if it’s a 16-second intro, it’s absolutely the best 16-second intro possible,” Hull asserts. “ We kept pushing ourselves in every way to make a great rock record, and this album speaks for itself.”Adding to the company’s line of premium guitar strapsand accessories, Fairfield Guitar Co. has introduced a new deluxe leather strapdesigned in collaboration with Angela Petrilli.
Based in Los Angeles, Petrilli is well-known to guitar enthusiasts around the world for her online videos. She is one of the video hosts at Norman’s Rare Guitars and has her own YouTube lesson series, the Riff Rundown. She also writes, records and performs with her original band, Angela Petrilli & The Players, and has worked with Gibson, Fender, Martin Guitars, Universal Audio, Guitar Center and Fishman Transducers.
Angela Petrilli's eye-grabbing signature strap is fully hand cut, four inches wide and lightly padded, so it evenly distributes the weight of the instrument on the shoulder and offers superb comfort during extended play. The front side features black "cracked" leather with turquoise triple stitching. The "cracked" treatment on the leather highlights the beautiful natural marks and grain pattern – and it only gets better with age and use.The strap’s back side is black suede for adhesion and added comfort, with the Fairfield Guitar Co. logo and Angela's name stamped in silver foil.
Features include:
- 100% made in the USA
- Hand cut 4” wide leather strap with light padding -- offering extra comfort for longgigs and rehearsals.
- Black suede back side avoids slipping, maintains guitar’s ideal playing position.
- Length is fully adjustable from 45” - 54” and the strap has two holes on thetailpiece for added versatility.
The Fairfield Guitar Co. Angela Petrilli signature strap is available for $150 online at fairfieldguitarco.com.
This legendary vintage rack unit will inspire you to think about effects with a new perspective.
When guitarists think of effects, we usually jump straight to stompboxes—they’re part of the culture! And besides, footswitches have real benefits when your hands are otherwise occupied. But real-time toggling isn’t always important. In the recording studio, where we’re often crafting sounds for each section of a song individually, there’s little reason to avoid rack gear and its possibilities. Enter the iconic Eventide H3000 (and its massive creative potential).
When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
A live editor and browser for customizing Tone Models and presets.
IK Multimedia is pleased to release the TONEX Editor, a free update for TONEX Pedal and TONEX ONE users, available today through the IK Product Manager. This standalone application organizes the hardware library and enables real-time edits to Tone Models and presets with a connected TONEX pedal.
You can access your complete TONEX library, including Tone Models, presets and ToneNET, quickly load favorites to audition, and save to a designated hardware slot on IK hardware pedals. This easy-to-use application simplifies workflow, providing a streamlined experience for preparing TONEX pedals for the stage.
Fine-tune and organize your pedal presets in real time for playing live. Fully compatible with all your previous TONEX library settings and presets. Complete control over all pedal preset parameters, including Global setups. Access all Tone Models/IRs in the hardware memory, computer library, and ToneNET Export/Import entire libraries at once to back up and prepare for gigs Redesigned GUI with adaptive resize saves time and screen space Instantly audition any computer Tone Model or preset through the pedal.
Studio to Stage
Edit any onboard Tone Model or preset while hearing changes instantly through the pedal. Save new settings directly to the pedal, including global setup and performance modes (TONEX ONE), making it easy to fine-tune and customize your sound. The updated editor features a new floating window design for better screen organization and seamless browsing of Tone Models, amps, cabs, custom IRs and VIR. You can directly access Tone Models and IRs stored in the hardware memory and computer library, streamlining workflow.
A straightforward drop-down menu provides quick access to hardware-stored Tone Models conveniently sorted by type and character. Additionally, the editor offers complete control over all key parameters, including FX, Tone Model Amps, Tone Model Cabs/IR/VIR, and tempo and global setup options, delivering comprehensive, real-time control over all settings.
A Seamless Ecosystem of Tones
TONEX Editor automatically syncs with the entire TONEX user library within the Librarian tab. It provides quick access to all Tone Models, presets and ToneNET, with advanced filtering and folder organization for easy navigation. At the same time, a dedicated auto-load button lets you preview any Tone Model or preset in a designated hardware slot before committing changes.This streamlined workflow ensures quick edits, precise adjustments and the ultimate flexibility in sculpting your tone.
Get Started Today
TONEX Editor is included with TONEX 1.9.0, which was released today. Download or update the TONEX Mac/PC software from the IK Product Manager to install it. Then, launch TONEX Editor from your applications folder or Explorer.
For more information and videos about TONEX Editor, TONEX Pedal, TONEX ONE, and TONEX Cab, visit:
www.ikmultimedia.com/tonexeditor
Valerie June’s songs, thanks to her distinctive vocal timbre and phrasing, and the cosmology of her lyrics, are part of her desire to “co-create a beautiful life” with the world at large.
The world-traveling cosmic roots rocker calls herself a homebody, but her open-hearted singing and songwriting––in rich display on her new album Owls, Omens, and Oracles––welcomes and embraces inspiration from everything … including the muskrat in her yard.
I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun in an interview as I did speaking with roots-rock artist Valerie June about her new release, Owls, Omens, and Oracles. At the end of our conversation, after going over schedule by about 15 minutes, her publicist curbed us with a gentle reminder. In fairness, maybe we did spend a bit too much time talking about non-musical things, such as Seinfeld, spirituality, and the fauna around her home in Humboldt, Tennessee.
YouTube
If you’re familiar with June’s sound, you know how effortlessly she stands out from the singer-songwriter pack. Her equal-parts warm, reedy, softly Macy Gray-tinged singing voice imprints on her as many facets as a radiant-cut emerald—and it possesses the trademark sincerity heard in the most distinctive of singer/songwriters. Her music, overall, brilliantly shines with a spirited, contagiously uplifting glow.
Owls, Omens, and Oracles opens with “Joy, Joy!” with producer M. Ward rocking lead guitar over strings (June plays acoustic on nearly all of the tracks and banjo on one). It then recurringly dips into ’50s doo-wop chord changes, blends chugging, at times funky rock rhythms with saxophones and horns, bursts with New Orleans-style brass on “Changed” (which features gospel legends the Blind Boys of Alabama), and explores a slow soul groove with electronic guest DJ Cavem Moetavation on “Superpower.” Bright Eyes’ multi-instrumentalist Nate Walcott helmed the arrangements with guidance from Ward and June, and frequently appears on piano and Hammond organ, while Norah Jones supports with backing vocals on the folk lullaby “Sweet Things Just for You.” The entire album was recorded live to tape, which was a new experience for June.
June shares her perspective on the album and her work, overall. “It’s not ever complete or finished, your study of art,” she offers. “It’s an adventure, and it keeps getting prettier as you walk through the meadow of creating or learning new things. Every artist that you bring in has a different way of performing with you, or the audience might be really talkative or super quiet. And all of that shapes the art—so it’s ever-expansive. It’s pretty infinite [laughs], where art can take you and where it goes.... I kinda got lost there a little bit,” she muses, laughing.June’s favored acoustic guitar is this Martin 000-15M, with mahogany top, back, and sides.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
June didn’t connect with guitar in the beginning, but discovered her passion for it later, when the instrument became a vehicle for her self-empowerment. She took lessons as a teenager but was a distracted student, preferring to listen to her teacher share the history of blues guitarists like Big Bill Broonzy and Mississippi John Hurt. “I didn’t pick it up again until I was in my early 20s, and my band that I was in with my ex fell apart,” she says. “I still was singing and I still was hearing these beautiful voices sing me these songs, and I didn’t want to never be able to perform them. It was a terrible feeling, to be … musically stranded.
“And I was like, ‘Now, I could go get a new band and get some more accompaniment, but how ’bout I get my tail in there and keep my promise to my granddad who gave me that first guitar and actually learn how to play it, so I’ll never feel like this again.’ The goal was that I would never be musically stranded again.”
She became a solo performer, learning lap steel and banjo along with guitar, and called her style “organic moonshine roots music.” Today, she eschews picks for fingers, even when strumming chords, and is a vital blues-and-folk based stylist when she lays into her playing–especially in a live,solo setting. After two self-released albums, 2006’s The Way of the Weeping Willow and 2008’s Mountain of Rose Quartz, she connected with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who recorded and produced her 2013 album, Pushin’ Against Stone, at Nashville’s Easy Eye Sound, which helped launch her now-flourishing career.
Valerie June’s Gear
Guitars
Amps
- Fender Deluxe Reverb
Effects
- TC Electronic Hall of Fame
- MXR X Third Man Hardware Double Down booster
- J. Rockett Audio Archer boost/overdrive
Strings
- D’Addario XL Nickel Regular Light (.010–.046)
- Martin Marquis Silked Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054
Photo by Travys Owen
As we talk about art being a shared experience, June says she can be a bit of a hermit at times, but “when it’s time to share the art, then there you are. Even if you’re a painter and you just put your painting on a wall and walk away, that’s an interaction that brings you out of your studio or your bedroom to understand this whole act of co-creating—which to me is a spiritual act anyway. That’s why we’re here, to really understand those rules and layers to life. How do we co-create together?
“And I think it’s so fun,” she enthuses. “I enjoy learning, even when it’s hard. I’m like, ‘Okay, this chord is killing me right now, or this phrase.... but I’ma stick with it. And then that likens to something that I might face when I go out into the world. I’m like, ‘All right, I can get through this.’”
I suggest, “When you say ‘co-creating,’ it sounds like you mean something bigger.”
“Both in the creation of our art, but also in the creation of a life,” June replies. “’Cause how can a life be something this artistic? You get to the end of it and you’re like, ‘Wow, look at what I co-created! With all these other people, with animals, with nature, with sound that’s all around....‘ All of my life has been a piece of art or a collective creation. I imagine them like books: different lives on a shelf. And you go pick one—‘Whoa! I created a pretty fun one there!’ or, ‘Oh, man, I had no hand in that....’ Close the book, next one!” she concludes, laughing as she illustrates the metaphor with her hands.
“So does that make all of your inspirations your co-creators?” I ask.
Valerie June at one of her several Newport Folk Festival appearances, with her trusty Gold Tone banjo
Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
“Yeah! Even if they’ve gone before,” says June. “I was listening to some beautiful classical music the other day, and I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know who any of these artists are; they’re all dead and gone, but I’m just enjoying it and it’s putting me in a zone that I need to be in right now.‘ So, we’re always leaving these little seeds for even those who are coming after us to be inspired by.”
Some of her current non-musical co-creators are poets and authors, such as the poet Hafez, the philosopher Audre Lorde, poet Mary Oliver, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist whose works include Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.
“It’s not ever complete or finished, your study of art. It’s an adventure, and it keeps getting prettier as you walk through the meadow of creating or learning new things.”
“These books are so beautiful and show the relationship of humanity with nature and the way trees speak with each other; the way moss communicates to itself,” June explains. “Those ways of being can help humans, who always think we know so much, to learn how to work together better.”
As she’s sharing, I see her glance out her window. “Right now, I just saw a muskrat go across the pond,” she continues. “It’s about this big [holds hands about three feet apart] and it digs holes in the yard. It’s having such a great time and I’m just like, ‘Okay, you are huge, and I’m walking through the yard and falling in holes because of you [laughs]. I’m just watching you live your best life!’ And then there was a blue heron that came yesterday, and I watched it eat fish.... They’re my friends!” she exclaims, with more laughter.
Valerie June believes in the power of flowers–and all living thing–as her creative collaborators.
It might seem like we’re getting a bit off subject, but it’s residents of nature like these who are important in her creative process.
I share how, in my own approach to art, I feel as though we can always access creativity and our ideals, as long as we stay receptive to experiencing and sharing in them. June agrees, but comments that sometimes her best self only wants to sit and focus: “No more information; no more downloads, please.”
An encounter with Memphis-based blues guitarist Robert Belfour, who June frequently saw perform, expanded that perspective for her. She shares about a time she went up to him after a show: “I was like, ‘Hey, I would love to work with you on some music and maybe we could co-write a song or something.’ He was like, ‘Nope! I don’t wanna do it.’ And I said, ‘Whaaat?’ And he’s like, ‘No. I do what I do, and I do not do what anybody else does; I just do what I do.’”
Sometimes, she says, “I think that’s just as much of an outlook to have with creating as anything. It’s like, ‘Okay, I’m there, I’m where I wanna be. I don’t want to be anywhere else.’”
“That’s why we’re here, to really understand those rules and layers to life. How do we co-create together?”
Part of what’s so enjoyable about speaking with June is realizing that she truly exists on her own plane. She has no pretense, and in that, doesn’t hide some of the fears that weigh on her mind at times. But she doesn’t let those define her. It’s her easy, exuberant optimism that sparks a feeling of friendship between us, without having known each other before that afternoon. What are some of her guiding principles as an artist, I wonder?
“I sit with the idea of, ‘Who am I creating this for?’” she says, “and returning to the fact that I’m doing this for me, and, as Gillian Welch said, ‘I’m gonna do it anyway even if it doesn’t pay.’ This is what I wanna do. And reflecting on that and letting that kind of be my guiding force. It’s just something that I enjoy, that I really wanna do.”
YouTube It
From there, the conversation meanders in other directions, and June even generously asks me a few questions about my own artistic beliefs. We share about trusting your gut instinct, and walking away from situations and people who don’t serve us. This reminds her of a bigger feeling.
“With everything that these times hold for us as humans,” she shares, “from the inequality that we face to the environmental change, the political climate, and all the things that could lead us to fear or negativity.... I started to think about it, and I’m like, ‘Okay, well, maybe we are fucked! Maybe the planet is going to eject us and all of the other things are gonna come true! Well, if that’s what’s gonna happen, who do I wanna be?’
“I want to go out in a way that’s sweet or kind to other people, enjoying this experience, these last moments, and building togetherness through music. I want to co-create a beautiful life even in the face of all of that. That’s what I want to do.”