“I’ll Fly Away” may be one of the most-sung songs of the 20th century. Written by a gospel composer named Albert Edward Brumley nearly 100 years ago, it’s been performed by congregations of various denominations and recorded by artists working in nearly every genre imaginable. It was originally a hit with gospel groups, including the Selah Jubilee Singers in the 1940s and, much later, the Staple Singers, but it’s been popular with country singers (George Jones, Alan Jackson) and blues artists (Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt), too. It’s been recorded by Johnny Cash, Jars of Clay, and Springsteen, although arguably the most popular version was sung by Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. As of this writing, the web site SecondHandSongs lists more than 400 covers.
For a song about soaring away from your troubles, that history weighs heavily: How do you sing “I’ll Fly Away” without gesturing in some way to its legacy? How do you make the audience hear it with fresh ears? Valerie June doesn’t completely solve that riddle, but the version that kicks off her new covers EP, Brighter Blue, certainly sounds refreshed: fleet in its tone and tempo, yet still burdened with worry. It opens with a strutting rhythm, like a jump blues slowed way down or a second line funeral march sped way up. The music is earthy and grounded, but it’s still funky and nimble, especially on a woozy pedal steel solo from Dan Iead. Valerie June takes nothing for granted in the song, and she hits notes Brumley never considered, her voice like a bird landing on unpopulated branches.
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Crucially, there’s a sense of mischief in her delivery, which means there’s also a sense of self-determination. “I’ll Fly Away,” along with so many other hymns, is essentially about freedom and salvation deferred: This world is cruel, but we suffer through knowing we’ll accept our true reward in heaven. Valerie June sings like she’s devising a plan to get her reward in this life. Her interpretation feels especially timely when a deluge of bad news, pointless indignities, and stupid name changes can feel overwhelming and unstoppable. From her mouth “I’ll Fly Away” is a challenge, a call to arms.
That’s an awful lot for one song to hold, and it’s a lot for a three-song EP to hold. Brighter Blue doesn’t quite have the impact of an album, but it does hit harder than Valerie June’s 2022 EP Under Covers, where she sounded relatively hamstrung by more recent tunes. Brighter Blue is focused, potent, and sharp-edged, attacking complacency and reveling in these old songs’ current potential. “I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long,” she declares on “Trouble in Mind,” another song that’s been well-sung for decades. Her interpretation rollicks and gallops, with Caito Sanchez’s snare rhythm hurtling like a runaway locomotive and Sam Amidon’s fiddle shoveling coal into the furnace. With its shoutout to Jackson, Tenn., (Valerie June’s hometown), her version owes more to Muddy Waters’ take than to Nina Simone’s, and her idea of trouble sounds very similar to John Lewis’s exhortation to “get in good trouble… and redeem the soul of America.”
Brighter Blue ends with “Smokestack,” which collides the acoustic country blues of Lead Belly’s “In the Pines” with the industrialized blues of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning.” Her arrangement emphasizes the train imagery in both songs, the mash-up ingeniously mapping out the Great Migration from rural communities to urban centers. But there’s a visceral kick to the music, which sounds closer to the one-chord drone-dance blues of Mississippi juke joint rockers like Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside. Valerie June obviously knows her history, and while she tinkers with her source material, she sings like she understands that history isn’t over yet. Nothing is quite settled, especially not these songs.
