Valerie June: Celebs Rumors

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music On Tuesday, March 5, Foo Fighters will perform at a private concert in Washington, D.C. hosted by Power to the Patients, a non-profit fighting for a more affordable, accessible, and equitable healthcare system through price transparency. Veteran rappers Fat Joe, who has spearheaded music’s awareness of the organization, and Chuck D will also be in attendance.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The Los Angeles music scene has long had “folk music,” in its many permutations and offshoots, as a key part of the famous sounds the city has been most often associated with. But a festival with that as part of the moniker and definition? Not so often, though some locals with long memories will remember a Troubadours of Folk Festival at UCLA in 1993 that included everyone from Joni Mitchell to the Folksmen.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Amazon has come on board this month’s Stagecoach Festival in California to provide a livestream of the country music gathering. Live action from the April 28-30 festival in Indio will be streamed on both Prime Video and Amazon Music’s Twitch channel. It marks the second year that the festival will be extensively streamed, albeit the first involving Amazon. In 2022, Stagecoach livestreamed most of the main attractions on its own YouTube channel. In some years prior to that, Yahoo had had exclusive rights to stream select artists’ sets. Coverage from the festival will begin at 3 p.m. each of the festival’s three days. Stagecoach and Amazon did not immediately reveal how many or which sets will be streamed from the festival; a press release promised that performances from the Mane Stage will be seen.

The inaugural Hollywood & Mind Summit has listed some of the speakers that will appear at the May 11 event, including Charlamagne Tha God, radio and television personality, media mogul and founder of The Mental Wealth Alliance; Christina Wootton, head of partnerships at Roblox; Vicky Cornell, wife of the late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell and advocate for mental health and addiction recovery; and Percy “Master P” Miller, rapper, music producer and NAMI ambassador.

The National will return to London on Friday (August 26) to headline All Points East 2022 – check out the full stage and performance times below.It will mark the band’s first show in the city since 2019, where they will be joined by a stellar cast of support acts including Mogwai, Fleet Foxes, Lucy Dacus, Kurt Vile and more.Across seven stages, the day also sees performances from Parcels, Tune-Yards, Perfume Genius and Rae Morris.The performance comes just a few days after The National unveiled their new single ‘Weird Goodbyes’, which features Bon Iver.Speaking in a statement about ‘Weird Goodbyes’, The National’s Matt Berninger said: “It’s about letting go of the past and moving on, then later being overwhelmed by second thoughts.”See the full stage times for The National at All Points East below, and buy your tickets here.Fleet Foxes: 8:00pm – 9:15pm Perfume Genius: 6:20pm – 7:00pm Lucy Dacus: 5:10pm – 5:50pm Valerie June: 4:00pm – 4:40pm Cassandra Jenkins: 3:00pm – 3:30pmNathan Fake: 5:45pm – 6:45pm Plaid: 4:30pm – 5:45pm Afrodeutsche: 3:15pm – 4:30pm Tasha: 2:00pm – 3:15pmParcels: 7:55pm – 8:55pm Public Service Broadcasting: 6:25pm – 7:25pm Balthazar: 5:15pm – 5:55pm DEHD: 4:10pm – 4:45pm Bess Atwell: 3:05 – 3:40pmMoa Moa: 8:10pm – 8:40pm Lewis Ofman: 6:30pm – 7:00pm Jana: 5:15pm – 5:45pm Mid Nite Life: 4:05pm – 4:35pmDWEAMS: 7:30pm – 8:00pm Phoebe Hall: 5:55pm – 6:25pm Honey Mooncie: 4:45pm – 5:15pm The Deep Blue: 3:40pm – 4:05pmRaw Silk: 7:00pm – 8:00pm Demae: 5:50pm – 6:20pm Lynda Dawn: 4:40pm – 5:10pm Lavender: 2:30pm – 3:00pm and 3:30pm – 4:00pmAll Points East 2022 began last weekend (August 19) with Gorillaz supported by IDLES, Turnstile, Yves Tumor, Self Esteem, Femi Kuti, Obongjayar, NewDad, Remi

The National returning to London for a huge headline slot at All Points East in August, the band have shared exclusive footage of them performing fan favourite ‘I Should Live In Salt’ from their summer 2022 tour. See it first on NME above.The band will headline the festival in the capital’s Victoria Park once again on August 26.

The National have announced the full line-up for their All Points East show in London later this summer, with Parcels, Tune-Yards and more joining the bill.The band will headline Victoria Park on August 26, with the likes of Fleet Foxes, Lucy Dacus, Kurt Vile and more already confirmed to support them.Other APE headline sets across two weekends in August will come from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Tame Impala, Kraftwerk, The Chemical Brothers, Disclosure and Gorillaz.The full bill has now been confirmed for The National’s show, with Parcels and Tune-Yards being joined by Villagers, Valerie June, Balthazar and Dehd.Others also on the line-up include Perfume Genius, Low and Rae Morris.See the full line-up below and pick up tickets here.We are so pleased to be headlining such a brilliant lineup for @allpointseastuk at Victoria Park in London this August. Tickets are on sale now at https://t.co/hkOWVSGvIL pic.twitter.com/SQl2oZsj8Q— The National (@TheNational) June 29, 2022The National returned to touring last month, giving live debuts to three new songs at the tour-opening show in Pamplona, Spain on Saturday, May 28.Footage of those songs – ‘Tropic Morning News (Haversham)’, ‘Grease In Your Hair (Birdie)’, and ‘Bathwater (Mount Auburn)’ – then appeared from a later gig in Paris.In a social media post shared last month (May 26), The National said that they have been working on new material.

Jim Sclavunos, the drummer from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, has shared a solo cover of Bob Dylan‘s ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ with The National‘s Scott Devendorf. Check out the charity single below, along with our interview with the musician.The Bad Seeds drummer’s second solo release, following from last year’s ‘Holiday Song’ to benefit the Music Venue Trust, sees Sclavunos team up with Devendorf on bass and Dave Sherman (Valerie June, Nicole Atkins) on piano – with all money raised from the BandCamp sales going to the DEC’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal and Ellis Park Wildlife Sanctuary.

Chris Willman Music WriterNominations have been announced for the Folk Alliance International’s Best of 2021 Awards, with such recent Grammy nominees (and winners) as Allison Russell, Rhiannon Giddens, Arooj Aftab, Valerie June, Kalani Pe’a and Sarah Jarosz among the contenders in the association’s three categories.Also set for non-competitive lifetime honors at the May awards ceremony are accordionist Flaco Jiménez, Jason Mraz, Denver-based folk music center Swallow Hill Music and the late singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith.Awards will be handed out May 18 in Kansas City on the opening night of the annual FAI conference, in a ceremony that will be webcast online.Russell is the only artist with a nomination in two of the three categories, being up for album of the year for her Grammy-nommed “Outside Child” as well as for artist of the year. Nominations are based on domestic and international year-end lists and folk DJ airplay.

Chris Willman Music WriterWhen the Nashville chapter of the Recording Academy held its annual pre-Grammys celebration for Tennessee-based nominees in early March, one of those contenders, Yola, filed a report from the party on Instagram. “The vibes were strong,” she wrote, “and so was the melanin!”Looking at the nominations in the country, folk and American roots categories, it was clear what the people of color in the chapter had to celebrate — and the Black women most of all.

Chris Willman Music WriterFor years, the Stagecoach Festival in Indio has had a side stage, dubbed the Palomino tent, that is a virtual festival-within-a-festival, focusing on alternative country, Americana and heritage country acts, “cred” artists that tend to draw a largely different audience than the larger one that stays at the mainstream main stage all day. This summer, Goldenvoice is branching off that approach into a one-day gathering of its own — the Palomino Festival — set to go down for the first time July 9 in Pasadena.Kacey Musgraves, Willie Nelson & Family and Jason Isbell are newly announced as the headliners for the inaugural event, which will take place at Brookside at the Rose Bowl, a park adjacent to the storied stadium that Goldenvoice has used for a number of other genre-specific festivals in the last decade.

Chris Willman Music WriterThe state of the art for emerging Black performers in country music will be the subject of a feature-length documentary that has been produced by Amazon Music, titled “For Love & Country,” which was announced Tuesday morning as having a premiere date set for the music streaming service and Prime Video on April 7.The arrival of the film will be preceded by Amazon Original recordings by some of the documentary’s featured artists, starting with a new acoustic rendering by Amythyst Kiah of her signature song, “Black Myself,” that’s out today.Although the announcement of the doc does not include “Americana,” the lineup of artists featured in interviews and performances in the film includes about equal measures of singer-songwriters who are up-and-coming in mainstream country and those are are generally considered part of the alternative-roots or Americana realm. Mickey Guyton, who recently performed the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, is featured, as is Jimmie Allen, who has become one of the leading men of country with three of his singles becoming No.

Green Man Festival has announced over 70 new acts for their 2022 festival, with Kraftwerk, Beach House and Metronomy set to headline.The festival in Brecon Beacons, Wales had already confirmed that Michael Kiwanuka will co-headline their 2022 event. This year’s festival will take place from August 18-21, and will serve as the 20th anniversary of Green Man Festival.Kraftwerk’s headline set at Green Man will mark their first-ever appearance at the festival.Bicep have also been added to the line-up today (February 10), which now includes the likes of Parquet Courts, Kae Tempest, Cate Le Bon, Black Country, New Road, Low and many more.Ty Segall & Freedom Band, Yves Tumor, Dry Cleaning, Ezra Furman, Jenny Hval, Alex G, Valerie June, Mdou Moctar, Arab Strap, Orchestra Baobab, Viagra Boys and The Murder Capital are also on the Green Man bill – you can check out their 2022 line-up poster above.Further additions to the Green Man Festival bill will be announced in the coming months.Tickets for the event have already sold out, but you can find out more information about this year’s festival here.“We’re so excited about Green Man’s 20th birthday, and we’re planning to celebrate his big anniversary with lots of wonderful surprises and the best party ever!” Green Man boss Fiona Stewart previously said in a statement about this year’s festival.

Chris Willman Music WriterJason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, Valerie June, Allison Russell and Amythyst Kiah are among the multiple nominees for the 2021 Americana Honors & Awards. The slate of nominations was announced during a ceremony held Wednesday afternoon at Nashville’s new National Museum of African American Music.Longtime Americana Awards honoree Isbell earned three nods, for artist of the year, album of the year, for “Reunions,” and song of the year, for that album’s “Dreamsicle.”Besides Isbell, Valerie June is the only other artist to receive multiple nominations as a solo artist, for album of the year (“The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers”) and song of the year (“Call Me A Fool,” featuring Carla Thomas).

Chris Willman Music Writer‘Twas the night before Earth Day, and all through houses tuned in to National Geographic’s website or YouTube channel will be the sounds of artists including Willie Nelson, Valerie June, Ziggy Marley and My Morning Jacket, all performing for “Earth Day Eve 2021: A Virtual Celebration.”Others joining in in song for the 90-minute webcast include Maggie Rogers, Yo-Yo Ma, Angélique Kidjo, Aurora, José González and Rostam. While others recorded original performances for the special, My Morning Jacket is offering a world premiere of a new music video.The special will be seen April 21 at 8:30 p.m.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAnnie Lennox, Cage the Elephant and Black Pumas will join the line-up for the 34th Annual Tibet House US Virtual Benefit Concert on Wednesday night (February 17).

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorEddie Vedder, Phoebe Bridgers, Brittany Howard, Laurie Anderson and more will perform at the 34th Annual Tibet House US Benefit Concert, which returns this year for a special virtual edition, combining live and pre-recorded segments streaming via the livestream platform Mandolin.Also joining composer and artistic director Philip Glass at the event, which is ordinarily held at New York’s Carnegie Hall, are Valerie June, Angélique Kidjo, Tenzin Choegyal, Rubin Kodheli and more to be announced.The concert will begin with a personal video message from the 14th Dalai Lama.Tickets for this year’s special virtual concert are on sale now ($25-$250).

Eddie Vedder, Phoebe Bridgers and more artists will perform on the upcoming Tibet House benefit livestream.The event, which will replace the organisation’s typical annual benefit concert this year, will mark the 34th anniversary of the non-profit.The livestream will be broadcast on February 17 and will be comprised of both live and pre-recorded segments.

R&B, and her signature exploration of upbeat African rhythms that soothes the ears. A three-part immersion into life lessons we all need to be reminded of, June questions if beauty can be found in the impermanence of each moment.“With our numbered days here, ‘Stay’ is a song that encourages us to live fully without regrets,” the Brooklyn-based artist explains in a statement.

Featuring cover performances from friends, fans, collaborators and more