In an era in which English public schoolboys dress up in tweed and pretend to be Irish peasants, artists such as Valerie June represent a welcome dose of authenticity.
The Tennessee native ticks all the blues singer boxes: a poor upbringing, a broken heart, an indeterminate age, years spent in menial jobs and, finally, a breakthrough.
That came in the shape of Pushin’ Against a Stone, her first debut proper (her previous releases having been sold chiefly from the back of her car).
She’ll support the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park in July but last night she came to Dingwalls as part of her whistle-stop European tour.
Hair a mass of Medusa coils, June began the way she’s spent most of her career: alone with a guitar.
Drifter showcased her spit’n’sawdust vocals, while Shotgun was less of a song and more a hotchpotch of sexual danger, slide guitar and lyrics about shooting a former lover. Dinner party music this ain’t.
Still, the evening didn’t really begin until the arrival of a four-piece backing band. On Hard Workin’ Woman, June’s downtrodden lyrics were leavened by a groovy bassline and funk horns, prompting whoops of approval from the crowd.
Elsewhere, Tennessee Time was a gorgeous, glacial ballad while You Can’t Be Told nodded to the back-to-basics blues-rock of The Black Keys — unsurprisingly, perhaps, given that The Black Keys’ guitarist Dan Auerbach produced her album.
Before Shakedown, a frenetic rockabilly number, June said: “I used to have to do this; I used to have to shakedown promoters at the end of every show to get paid.”
On last night’s reckoning, she won’t have to do that again any time soon: June is the real deal, in every sense.
