JUNO frequently visited the Career Center for advice and gained skills that taught her how to conduct herself in a professional setting.
She’s also learned to navigate the business scene thanks to involving herself as a student at Illinois State. “JUNO is an artist whose story is all about courage, inspiration, fearlessness, and hope,” a review on said. The songs in Help Is Not on the Way revolve around overcoming obstacles and staying true to oneself. “But the one thing I have in common when I play music is that it’s from my heart.” “I started to develop a culture around the way I play,” said JUNO, who performed at the LGBTQA Cultural Dinner at Illinois State last September. Despite a lifestyle that would eventually lead to overseas shows with some of the most recognizable brands in the industry, JUNO has never wavered from her purpose to serve. She began touring with household names, developing a strong reputation as an R&B guitarist. With her infectious energy, enough people in the music industry took notice. JUNO used YouTube to market herself, uploading songs and spreading the links to the right people. She felt this was the clearest path for her to help people. She started bringing her guitar with her to make those lessons more relatable for kids. JUNO was still working throughout Bloomington-Normal teaching bully and sexual assault prevention at local elementary schools. JUNO began writing songs for friends’ birthdays and other occasions, and her creativity eventually ranged into more serious topics. The song, “How Much You Mean to Me,” would hardly be her last. “It had the three chords I knew at the time.
“It was just how I felt about him, and I played it right before surgery,” JUNO said. So, with the bit of knowledge she had gained, she wrote him a song. Less than a year later, JUNO’s grandfather went to the hospital for an operation, and she didn’t know what to say. While she was helping the boy find his footing, he in return showed JUNO how much more she could express herself. But this experience resonated with each chord she learned during their sessions together. “I wondered what would happen if I shared this experience.”Īt age 23, it was the first time in her life JUNO had played guitar. “I watched it transform his experience from growing up trying to survive every day and then feeling passion for the first time,” JUNO said. That way, they could connect and build a relationship. JUNO was determined to reach him, and a guitar seemed to be the only thing lifting his stoic exterior. According to JUNO, he was addicted to heroin at a young age and was subsequently scarred emotionally. This young man, whom she met while working at a drug rehabilitation clinic in Bloomington, kept his thoughts in a bottle. While JUNO brought energy and enthusiasm to every client she met with, it was a 15-year-old boy who forever altered the trajectory of her life and placed her on the path she walks now. She began interning and practicing at schools, as well as the YWCA, throughout Bloomington-Normal. She quickly found herself gravitating to social work, and before long, she was an active student in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. JUNO, a Chicago native now based Nashville, came to Illinois State University from Rock Island High School to pursue a teaching degree. But she didn’t quite know the best path to execute that plan. She always had intentions of paying it forward. Growing up in a single-mother household, JUNO never took for granted the programs and philanthropy that she and her family used for basic needs. “I felt I had a responsibility to give back to that community of underrepresented people,” she said. As a black, LGBTQ woman, JUNO has used her charismatic voice to reach listeners who need an extra push coming out of their own shells. JUNO-who has played guitar for artists such as Bruno Mars, Machine Gun Kelly, Camila Cabello, and Fifth Harmony-recently released her first album, Help is Not on the Way. Thanks to a leap she took a decade ago, she has created a significant platform to express herself in the only way she knows how. At her core, that’s always who she’s been. Better known today in the music industry as JUNO, she is fun and outspoken. Ashlee Juno ’09 has a personality that might be even bigger than the following she’s rapidly accruing.
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