Tag: emily saliers

Basic Folk – Amy Ray

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Amy Ray is best known for being one half of Indigo Girls with Emily Sailers, a band that’s been going strong since the late 80’s. She’s also known for her activism and love for all types of music. On her latest solo album, If It All Goes South, Amy’s bringing us songs of comfort and healing. Recorded live to tape in Nashville, this album features an incredible lineup of guests like Brandi Carlile, I’m With Her, Allison Russell, Phil Cook and Alison Brown. She’s confronting racism, homophobia, religion and mortality in her songs and we go deep into those topics in this episode.

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Aside from exploring gender identity and being comfortable in your own body, I had an agenda in our interview. I’ve talked about this a little on the podcast, but recently our dog Willis suddenly and unexpectedly died. Amy’s new album features the song “Muscadine,” which was written when her oldest dog passed away. The song’s about “learning to love and receive love in the purest way, and to not be picky about life, but to stay the course with curiosity and gratitude.” I was grateful for Amy’s words of wisdom about the loss of a dog and am happy to share them with you. Actually, Amy’s full of wisdom and is always so open to whatever questions come her way. Enjoy this conversation with a very, very good person.

Editor’s Note: Basic Folk is currently running their annual fall fundraiser! Visit basicfolk.com/donate for a message from hosts Cindy Howes and Lizzie No, and to support this listener-funded podcast.

Photo Credit: Sandlin Gaither

Indigo Girls Expand “Country Radio” With Black, Brown and Queer Musicians

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Hollywood, the 2020 Netflix series from director-screenwriter Ryan Murphy, is a resplendent show dripping in Art Deco that does not wholly reimagine Los Angeles’ golden era, but rather subtly inserts a quintessential question: “What if?”

What if Hollywood hadn’t been as… ___-ist? (Sexist, racist, misogynist, ageist, etc.) If one happens to be born into a region, a folkway, a culture, an art form that doesn’t include you, or that doesn’t quite love you back, one often doesn’t realize it until it’s too late. And then what? Do we, the rural, country-loving queers, wait around for our Ryan Murphy to reimagine the world to better include us? Not quite.

For Emily Saliers and Amy Ray of Indigo Girls — and, for that matter, almost each and every queer who has ever loved roots music — that “What if?” question is existential, but it also doesn’t matter. What if country music loved LGBTQ+ folks? The lyrics of “Country Radio,” a track off the duo’s sixteenth studio album, Look Long, tell it plainly: “But as far as these songs will take me/ Is as far as I’ll go/ I’m just a gay kid in a small town/ Who loves country radio.”

While curating the following playlist of their favorites from country music airwaves and songs they wish were included there, Saliers and Ray offer a quite simple solution actionable in each present moment: Be who you are, listen to the music that brings you joy, love who you love — and be anti-racist.

Emily Saliers: [I began with the idea:] What are the songs that I listened to that I latched onto, that sort of gave me a feeling of “I can’t get into this song [because of its heteronormativity], but I love this song so much”? One of the first songs that came to mind is “Mama’s Song” by Carrie Underwood. 

I should preface this by saying, I don’t expect that there can’t be heteronormative country songs, or that queer life has to be explicitly represented in songs, it’s not that. It’s the feeling of the way a song moves me emotionally, but then it stops me a little bit short of being able to fully experience it because of the language or the obvious implications of man and woman.

I love Carrie Underwood’s voice and she’s taken more of a harder, pop direction since “Mama’s Song,” but she sings this so beautifully. She’s talking to her mother, “He is good… he treats me like a real man should,” and yet the beauty of her song [is in] her telling her mom that’s she’s going to be okay. 

Amy Ray: For me it’s a little different because I never had the experience of feeling like I wish I could put myself in a song. I think it’s because, gender-wise, I always just related to the male singers. I kinda have that gender dysphoria, you know? [Chuckles] I have these filters that sort of make it my own — probably out of necessity, from growing up loving the Allman Brothers, Pure Prairie League, and Randy Travis so much. [Sings] “Amie, whatcha gonna do?” Pure Prairie League!

It’s very odd — Emily’s perspective on this is something I can understand, and I agree that it’s this weird disconnect with country music. We have to kind of acclimate it to ourselves, in some way, using some kind of trick in our minds. But I’ve always had that internal translator…

ES: Another example is Brett Young’s “In Case You Didn’t Know.” Now this is a song that you can listen to and fit your own queer life into it — as far as I remember it doesn’t have any gender pronouns. Then I watched the video and of course he’s singing to a woman who comes into the audience and he plays to her, alone. It’s a love song to his girlfriend — or wife or partner or whatever — so I could live in that song and think back to relationships and apply it in my own life, but then I watched the video and that door shut a little bit.

AR: I love Angaleena Presley, the Pistol Annies. Presley is such a great writer. “Better Off Red” is one of my favorite songs that she’s written… Honestly, if I hear songs, if I like it, I just put myself in it. I don’t really think about it or worry about it. It’s a survival mechanism from my youth, not that it’s the right thing to do. It’s built inside me.

…I thought you couldn’t be a country singer if you were gay and left-wing and a complete dyke. That made me feel more alienated than the songs themselves, that idea of its inaccessibility. Or, if you went to a show and you were sitting there in that audience, in the early days before it all kind of busted open, you would feel scared. Or judged. Or uncomfortable.

ES: Think about what a splash that song by Little Big Town, “Girl Crush,” had. Just the implication of a lesbian relationship or feelings! That song was a big hit, but it got people talking. [Probably] the majority of the people in this world lean more heteronormative, so they’re representing themselves in these songs. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

I wouldn’t want to listen to just albums that are for and by queer people, oh my god. No way! But we have to have them as part. I think about what an influence Ferron was, how much Amy and I love Ferron. When her first album came out, it was like, “Oh my gosh this is one of the best songwriters in the country and she’s queer!” I can’t describe how important it was to have an artist like that.

Even Lil Nas X, who had the number one hit forever-ever-ever with Billy Ray Cyrus. It’s awesome to know that he’s queer! And a guy like Young Thug, a rapper out of Atlanta, who’s not gender normative by any stretch, to me. It’s interesting. It’s good to have a mish mosh! It’s not that the majority of songwriters out there can’t be represented in their own songwriting, we just have to have ours, as well.

AR: [We] should add Amythyst Kiah. Amythyst is amazing.

[Racism] is the pivotal struggle of the Americana scene and the roots scene. How do you honor Black and Brown folks who want to be in this scene — and maybe some of them don’t even want to be in this scene because even Americana is rooted in questionable legacy. How much do people of color want to be immersed in that scene when it still feels so racist? Even the best parts of it. It’s a huge question to unwrap and it has to do with such a long history of where country music came from.

We stole the banjo and put it in our hillbilly music in the mountains and called it our own. We forgot all the stuff we learned from “our slaves,” you know? It’s crazy to me, if you think about the racist roots of where a lot of this comes from. Merging this racist legacy with this incredible populist music — music for the people, like Woody Guthrie, like the Carter Family. You get those two things bumping up against each other constantly, how do you entangle that and make this a space where it doesn’t matter what color you are? Where it doesn’t matter what your religious persuasion, or your political party, or your gender, or your sexual preference, or anything.

I think the way we deal with it is by all of us thinking all the time and being mindful of [that racist history]. And including [Black artists] in our playlists and touring with them. Some people are like, “What does it mean if you’re forcing this integration? Is it just going through the motions?” No! No, no, no.

ES: I’ll [echo] the things that Amy said, practically: Tour with Black musicians or Brown musicians or musicians who have not been able to feel that they’re welcome and make everybody welcome. Like Amythyst or Chastity Brown. Those are artists of color who have been discriminated against, who feel other-than in the world of their genres.

I think, first, we all — we white people, we people “of no color,” we “colorless” people — should dig deep, identify our own racism and how far it goes, how much we use it. Break it down, talk about it, identify it in each other. Really start from the core of things and hopefully act outwardly as a result of what we’ve dug through, inwardly. Try to heal and fix, you know? We’ve got to ask artists of color what their experience is like and why it’s like that. I’ve got to assume that there must be some Black artists, who if they hear a song from a white, country, roots singer about the freedom of driving down a dark, country road, they’re not going to feel the same way about the history of Black people down dark country roads. A lot of it is context and, as Amy says, there’s so much to be unraveled. But we are at a tipping point.

AR: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, I feel like there’s a lot of crossover, to me from that and the beginnings of early rock ‘n’ roll. That’s kind of what Elvis Presley was doing and borrowing from. I think about that sometimes, that territory. I like old recordings, like field recordings almost, of all the Alan Lomax type stuff he would collect. Field songs, prison songs. I think a lot of country writers have taken from that stuff, you know? 

I remember an interview with Kathleen Hanna that really resonated with me. She said, when they ask you who your favorite artists are, most of us name all these male artists. That’s who we can think of, because that’s who’s archived the best. Straight men, bands, and writers. If you sit down and really think about who you love and make a list of the women and the queer folks — this is what she was talking about, she wasn’t talking about color at the time or race or the social construct of race — and you take that list to your interviews and rattle off those names, you’ll be more honest, because you’ll be talking about who you really listen to and not just trying to remember [anyone] off the top of your head. 

People are so out of the habit — and so in the habit — of white supremacy that we don’t even know how to do the right things, just in our instincts. We have to learn, write it down, so we remember to do it.

Photo credit: Jeremy Cowart

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

LISTEN: Indigo Girls, “Country Radio”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Indigo Girls
Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia
Song: “Country Radio”
Album: Look Long
Release Date: May 22, 2020
Label: Rounder Records

In Their Words: “I can tell it’s resonating with people. When I get to that line, ‘I’m just a gay kid who loves country radio,’ there’s an audible verbal response from the audience. This song is the way I felt doing those four-hour drives from Nashville to Atlanta, listening to country music radio. I could almost put my own life story in these songs, but I can’t. There are gender divisions and heteronormative realities. There’s a lot of self-homophobia that I’ve had to work on in my own life that plays into this as well.” — Emily Saliers, Indigo Girls

Photo credit: Jeremy Cowart

Kacey Musgraves is Country’s Queer Icon, but These Roots Artists are Actually Queer

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Kacey Musgraves’ dominance during Sunday’s 61st Annual Grammy Awards has certainly solidified her place as country music’s newest queer icon. She offered simply stunning, near-perfect performances during the primetime broadcast and took home four trophies: Best Country Solo Performance, Best Country Song, Best Country Album, and one of the most prestigious awards of the night, Album of the Year. So-called “Gay Twitter” devolved into a tizzy as the show unfolded through the afternoon and evening with Musgraves decidedly at the top.

Said Album of the Year, Golden Hour, saw a critical mass of LGBTQ+ fans embracing Musgraves’ music, but her relationship to the broader gay community has been percolating since her debut album, especially given its overt “Follow Your Arrow” message. All combined, her eye for gratuitous-yet-effortless glamour, her acid-steeped, anime-meets-California-meets-trailer park aesthetics, and her singular, pop-influenced countrypolitan sounds are gay country manna from heaven. And it’s not just in the music. This year, she made an appearance as a guest judge on VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars and she routinely advocates for LGBTQ+ fans and their causes on her social media feeds.

To be sure, Musgraves fits the diva-idolized-by-gays criteria impeccably, but there’s a certain passive erasure that can occur when fans consciously or subconsciously become myopic in their praise of and infatuation with straight, cisgendered, female artists. It’s true that Musgraves has played an important role in expanding country music’s borders — musically, socially, and otherwise — but at the same time a burgeoning community of LGBTQ+ writers, artists, musicians, and creators are carving out their own space within country, Americana, folk, and even bluegrass and old-time.

This writer would never go so far as to suggest that one ought not squeal with delight at Musgraves’ fierce-as-fuck costumes, her tear-jerking solo performance of “Rainbow,” or her impossibly long and flowy Cher-callback, bump-it wig. Rather, if you love Kacey Musgraves and Golden Hour — because queer identities can be seen and reflected within her work, because she opens the door to the idea that country isn’t a forbidding place for these identities, and/or because she’s unabashed and unapologetic in her pursuit of these goals — you’re going to love these eleven badass, talented, inspirational, openly queer roots musicians, too.

Time to get stanning:

Brandi Carlile

After last night’s show this name should no longer need mentioning or introduction, as Carlile and her twin collaborators, Tim and Phil Hanseroth, absolutely brought down the Staples Center with one of the most moving performances of the night, the soaring, galvanizing, overtly queer, and now Grammy-winning masterpiece, “The Joke.” Carlile is openly gay, married, a mother of two daughters, and a tireless voice for representation and progress in Americana and its offshoot genres. If “The Joke” resonates with you (i.e. if it makes you sob uncontrollably, as it does this writer), check out “That Wasn’t Me,” “Hurricane,” and, of course, “The Story.”

Mary Gauthier

Gauthier’s latest, Rifles & Rosary Beads, was nominated for Best Folk Album this year and though it didn’t take home the prize, the album has received universal acclaim for its message of hope, empathy, and visibility for members of our armed services and the struggles they face during and after their service. Gauthier collaborated with veterans of the military in writing all of the record’s heart wrenching, honest, raw songs — which might seem counterintuitive given gays’ historically tenuous relationship with the military writ large. But Gauthier’s own life story, and the trials she’s faced, make her the perfect writer to prioritize empathy above all else in these songs.

Don’t sleep on the rest of her discography, though. The simple profundity of her writing is consistently awe-inspiring. Check out “Mercy Now” after you’ve given Rifles & Rosary Beads a listen.

Karen & the Sorrows

Jewish New York City native Karen Pittelman may seem like an unlikely frontwoman of a country band, especially when you factor in her past punk and queercore experiences, but it turns out she grew up bathed in the country compilation albums her father produced and sold for a living. Her voice recalls country mavens of bygone eras — it’s delicate yet powerful, with a pin-up girl quality that’s as subversive as it is natural. Also check out “Take Me for a Ride,” a Pittelman original that plays like a trad-country, queer version of Sam Hunt’s smash hit, “Body Like a Back Road,” but without the cheese.

Little Bandit

All of the hollerin’, barn-burning, hell-raising country soul of your favorite outlaw country rockers, but with lacy gay edges, Little Bandit (AKA Alex Caress, et. al.) is as honky-tonk as it gets. It’s a beautiful balancing act, presenting as an impossibly big-voiced, piano-smashing, charismatic frontman while singing male pronouns without hesitation. He leans into a beautifully paradoxical queerness that equally embraces diamonds, Waffle House allusions, platform shoes, and plain ol drinkin’. If you like it — and you will — check out “Diamonds,” too.

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

Outspoken outlaws in a crop of alt-country artists who align with that eponymous country movement of the 70s, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers are a road-dogging band that would seemingly fit that mold, excepting Shook’s deliberate efforts to challenge the inherent heteronormativity of country music at every turn. For Shook it’s not necessarily about having a political message, as she put it in a 2018 interview with BGS, “I feel like doing what I’m doing — touring relentlessly, putting out records, and being unapologetically myself — is a very powerful and political maneuver as well… I’ve never been concerned about that because I feel it’s important to be honest and forthright as a human being, and as an artist and certainly lyrically as well.”

Indigo Girls

Both Amy Ray and Emily Saliers — the two halves that make up the absolutely iconic Indigo Girls — have released solo albums in the past year, both of which draw heavily on folk, Americana, and country influences. This should be no surprise to even the most casual IG fans. Banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, and so many other hallmarks of roots music have been integral to the Indigo Girls’ sound all along. But the songwriting, devastating and personal and oh so very real, is the real takeaway from both projects.

kd lang

This list might as well not exist if it excluded kd lang. Before her crossover to more mainstream genre designations, kd pretty much originated the role of badass queer making unimpeachably trad country music that refused to shy away from its queer touchpoints. Just take a look at this video! “Honky Tonk Angels,” sung with Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee, Kitty Wells, and finally, kd in all of her butch, gender-bending, binary-eschewing glory — complete with a Minnie Pearl cameo! Country has always been (more than) a little queer, y’all.

Lavender Country

A man well, well ahead of his time, Patrick Haggerty (AKA Lavender Country), released his debut, self-titled album in 1973. It was a groundbreaking work, but the world, let alone the country music community and its commercial machine, were not ready for it. A Seattle DJ was fired for playing “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears” on the airwaves, only one thousand copies of the album were printed, and the band was relegated to performing exclusively at LGBTQ+ events and programs. But, despite being largely shut out of the industry, Haggerty and Lavender Country never ceased. In 2018, at the age of 74, Haggerty took part in AmericanaFest’s very first queer-focused showcase.

Amythyst Kiah

Amythyst Kiah’s booming, captivating voice, and her haunting, Southern gothic approach to Americana, bluegrass, and old-time set her apart from almost anyone else on the scene at this moment. Her reimagination of Dolly Parton’s magnum opus, “Jolene,” is a perfect example of how she carefully turns tradition on its ear. Based in East Tennessee herself, she draws on the rich musical heritage of the region, adding her own spin, creating space to allow herself to soar. And there’s plenty more soaring in her future, as she has opened shows for artists such as Rhiannon Giddens and Indigo Girls across the country and in Europe, and her collaboration album with Giddens, Allison Russell (Birds of Chicago), and Leyla McCalla, Songs of Our Native Daughters, is set to drop February 22.

Alynda Segarra

Singer/songwriter, activist, and Hurray for the Riff Raff frontwoman Alynda Segarra entrances with The Navigator, a concept project that focuses on the life and times of a fictitious Puerto Rican youth living in New York City. Themes of immigration, identity politics, displacement, disenfranchisement, and capitalistic overreach are threaded throughout the album, which offers its songs as tableaus of this girl’s — Navita’s — reality. It’s a stunning reminder that the intricacies and nuances that define us, and by doing so, separate us, are not so difficult for us to overcome with empathy and understanding. “Pa’lante!” (which translates to “forward!”) is the album’s battle cry, a song that turns utter despondency, grief, and a sore lack of humanity into a glimmer of hope.

Trixie Mattel

While almost all other drag queens who delve into the music scene release dance tracks, rap albums, or similar club-ready jams, Trixie Mattel (AKA Brian Firkus) draws upon her rural Wisconsin roots on two folk-adjacent, country-ish albums, Two Birds and One Stone. (Get it?) This isn’t just an opportunist attempt to punch up Trixie’s Dolly Parton-esque, country barbie aesthetic, she’s really got the chops. Not only is she a talented humorous-while-poignant songwriter, her technical skills on guitar and autoharp (yes, autoharp) are precisely honed to showcase her original music. This is no gimmick — though the Doves in Flight Gibson guitar and the custom, pink d’Aigle autoharp are jaw-droppingly perfect additions to Trixie’s lookbook.

 

Curiosity and Persistence: Amy Ray Gets Down to Her Roots on ‘Holler’

Posted on by Editor

Amy Ray’s new project, Holler, is the closest thing she’s made to a classic country album in a career that stretches across nearly 30 years. As one-half of the Indigo Girls, she’s won a folk Grammy and toured the world, sharing her musical path with Emily Saliers. But on Holler, Ray retreated to Asheville, North Carolina, with a hand-picked band of musicians who knew how to play country music – and she was eager to record the new music to tape using the studio’s vintage machines.

“For this band in particular, there is a real kind of magic quality to knowing that you can’t go back and change a lot of things,” she says. “So it keeps you on your toes the whole time. You have to be well-rehearsed. And at the same time, you just want to go for it.”

Taking a break from signing vinyl copies of Holler a few days before its release, Ray chatted with the Bluegrass Situation about finding happiness on a clawhammer banjo, discovering a commonality with Connie Britton’s character, Rayna Jaymes on ABC/CMT’s Nashville, and staying curious about the world.

How much did you rehearse this new material before going into the studio?

This unit has been playing together for about almost five years, so that’s like been our rehearsal — just touring. For these songs in particular, we did have some rehearsals, but most of the stuff we had rehearsed or worked on arrangements at my house. Or we would have a gig, like we opened for Tedeschi Trucks here and there, and I would use that as an opportunity to practice the day before. We would get together at the hotel and go to the conference room and work on songs – like at the Microtel or whatever – and do arrangements. It bought us a lot of time.

So the band knew the songs well in advance.

Yep, except for “Dadgum Down,” which was a wildcard, which no one knew. We didn’t even know if we were going to do it. I kept saying, “I have this song I wrote on banjo, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,” like a broken record over and over and over again. Jeff Fielder, the guitar player, and Alison Brown, who guested on banjo on the track – those two really came up with what became the arrangement for the song. It turned out to be a really fun experience because I put my banjo down and said, “I’m just going to sing.” But everything else, we had really worked on it and spent a lot of time fine-tuning the arrangements.

So the reference in that song about the sting of the bee — is that a reference to drugs?

It’s everything. The stinging [lyric] was another song I was working on, and I was like, “Oh, these are actually about the same thing.” Which is addiction, and relationships. So it’s like, it’s in the nature of the bee to sting. And it’s in the nature of love, and it’s in the nature of drugs. You can’t get mad at that item, because that’s part of their nature, and it’s also what you’re hungry for.

So it’s meant to be more than one dimension because the song is about wrestling with addiction — addiction to a person, and addiction to drugs, and addiction to anything. I’m always fascinated by that because I have an addictive personality, but also I have a lot of friends in recovery. And I don’t drink anymore, so I know how it is to try and beat that.

I want to ask about your musicianship. How did you get interested in the guitar?

It was just a vehicle to sing with probably. I mean, that’s probably why I’m not a better guitar player, too, because I looked at it as, “I want to write songs, and I want to sing, so I gotta learn how to play something.” I was playing piano, but not very successfully. I was in fifth grade and I got a guitar and took lessons at the Y. I learned like five chords and I could play all the Neil Young songs. So I was like, “This is perfect.”

What was the path to learning the other stringed instruments?

Well, mandolin, I just learned. It was like a natural thing for me, I guess. I was interested. I think I learned it because…. I’m trying to remember why I picked up a mandolin. I think I borrowed somebody’s flatiron mandolin and I liked it a lot. I thought this was cool, these chords. And I never really learned how to play properly, which I really want to do one day. But I was learning more from mountain music, like field recording kind of stuff. So I didn’t really learn the bluegrass style, or any of that. And then banjo is just something to knock around on, I don’t really know how to play.

Yeah, but it makes you happy right?

It makes me happy! It doesn’t matter. I try to play clawhammer and it makes me happy. [Laughs]

I’ve followed your career since that first Indigo Girls record, and you always seem to be doing something new and having something coming up. Where did that work ethic from?

Probably my parents, my family, just the way I was raised — workaholic.

Yeah, but you’ve never really rested on your laurels or waited around for it.

I get bored with laurels, and there’s not enough of them to rest on, either. I like the process as much as the prize. I mean, seriously. So for me it’s like I get bored and I really do want to become better at what I do. I think the only way to do that is to keep doing it. And for Emily and I, persistence was our friend forever. I mean, if we hadn’t worked hard and been persistent, and then had a lot of luck, we wouldn’t have made it.

That reminds me of “Tonight I’m Paying the Rent,” which is about putting in the time. Some gigs are not necessarily feeding your spirituality, but you’re still working, doing what you love. What’s the reward for what you’re telling me about – where you’re working, and traveling, and staying busy?

I don’t know, I’m just proud of it. Because when I do a solo tour and get to the end of it, and been able to play all the gigs, and drive all the miles and everything, I feel proud of it. I don’t know why. The process is fun, and I like the people I’m with. I’m just compelled. I think we are compelled by something, and it probably is fear of mortality and all of those deep things too. But it’s also like, well, it beats us sitting around. And it’s fun to try to do something that’s hard to do, and then be able to do it. It feels good.

Is it a calling for you, do you think, to be up there singing?

Who knows? I mean, I have no idea. It’s all I know, though. It’s all I know how to do. So I don’t know if it’s a calling or like a compulsion. I mean, “Tonight I’m Paying the Rent” really also grew out of needing an attitude check. Emily and I were playing a few of these private party kind of things, and I had such a negative attitude about it because they’re soul-sucking. And you’re just doing it for the money, and we stopped doing them because of that.

But then at the same time, I was watching an episode of Nashville where Rayna has to play a private party for a venture capitalist in California. And of course, the guy that hired her is a big fan, but no one else likes her, or likes country. And she’s out there, and she’s smiling, and no one’s listening. And I was like, I’ve totally been there a million times. Then her attitude about it after the show was like, “We all have bills to pay,” or whatever she says.

And that’s the attitude I have. Like, “Tonight I’m paying the rent.” That’s what that song grew out of. It’s like, “Why be so negative about this thing?” Yeah, maybe it’s not fun, but it beats digging a ditch. And look – you’re actually paying bills. That’s hard to do.

To me, “Didn’t Know a Damn Thing” is about history that you haven’t been taught, that you discover it on your own by seeking it out. Where does your own sense of curiosity come from?

I think that’s probably from my family and growing up with role models that were curious. Even my dad, who was super conservative, was also curious about everything. Even though we disagreed about a lot of things, one thing I know about him is that he was curious, and he would always listen to the other side. All the best teachers I ever had in high school and my favorite youth minister at church were curious and they didn’t mind it when I questioned things either.

And I don’t know why I always felt like I needed to question things. … I think part of that was paranoia. It was like the flip side of curiosity, which is paranoia. And I was like, this can’t be all there is, there’s got to be something else going on. It doesn’t feel right. And when you start feeling those feelings, you know you’ve got to look into it.

Photo credit (color): Carrie Schrader
Photo credit (black-and-white): Ian Fisher

Ghost, God, and Girls: Angaleena Presley Thanks the Indigo Girls for 30 Years

Posted on by Editor

In lieu of having a full blown panic attack, I’m just going to tell the truth. So goes the story of my life. It’s Thursday, and I’m on my period. I’m sitting in the corner of my kitchen where I created a writing/reading nook. I’ve never read a book here, nor have I ever written anything here. I’m pretty sure I looked at pictures of reading nooks online all day and decided that I couldn’t be taken seriously as a writer if I didn’t have one. After five years, I’m taking her on her maiden voyage. My legs are propped up on a thrift store coffee table and my stomach is cramping like the dickens. For months, I’ve been toiling over a promise I made to Kelly McCartney and the reckoning is upon me. We were standing backstage at an Amy Ray show when she mentioned she was organizing an Indigo Girls tribute. Before the words spilled fully out of her mouth, I screamed with the glee of a school girl, “I want to do ‘Ghost’!!!” 

Damn Emily Sailers and her Asus7 Bm C# diminished minor chord finger-picking wizardry. Damn her haunting yet calming melodies that melt like butter on the ear. Damn Amy Ray’s gravely, heart-stopping tone and her unmatched, unhinged low harmonies. Damn them both for writing and recording complex, profound songs that are hellishly hard to cover. Jesus Christ, what have I gotten myself into? 

I was introduced to these two bitches in the back seat of a 1992 Mustang LX. A few friends and I had scraped up enough money for a road trip, and we were heading to New Orleans where the legal drinking age was still 18. Jackie was the girl that every girl needed on such an adventure. She was a no nonsense, straight-talking teenager who could read a map, keep up with a purse, and pass for a 20-something. Her taste in music was indelible. Without knowing that it would change the course of my life, she popped in [Indigo Girls’] Rites of Passage and began to sing along. By the end of the journey, I not only knew every word on this album, but I had come to really, finally know God. 

I always believed in God. When I was a kid, God was a robed man with a beard and a bow staff. I said my prayers every night — not to feel closer to him, but rather, to feel less afraid. He was a man who, on more than one occasion, wrecked his own masterful creation with flood and famine. He was a man who turned a woman into a pillar of salt for merely looking in the direction of sin. I remember one particular Sunday school lesson that was based on the Prophesies of Nostrodamus. I was only 8. Upon dismissal, my teacher said, “See y’all next Sunday … maybe.” He was convinced that the world was going to end, and I left that day believing the same. I slept at the foot of my mom and dad’s bed all week and waited for this all powerful, cantankerous, controlling man to rain down fire and vanquish the earth. I wondered if I had accidentally taken the mark of the beast. I had a real thing for Cracker Jack tattoos and thought maybe I had licked and rubbed one too many times. My sister and brother were babies, and I looked around my house and yard for places to hide them. I didn’t want them to burn. 

The Bible Belt put many a whelp on my little mountain soul, but that day, in that car, on that Southern stretch of highway, that sound penetrated my indoctrinated notions and those wounds began to heal. Mortality, brutality, unrequited love, forbidden love, reincarnation, gravity, chicken men, ego, the dream-sucking underbelly of commercial Nashville, paper tigers, truth, justice, Jonas and Ezekial … the weight of it burst into my heart like a live wire on a downed power line, electrocuting my sheltered ideals, shocking me harder than any Nazarene horror story ever had. My murderous image of the man upstairs died in that car in the blinding light of this record and, boy, was I glad. That dude was scary. 

In the years to come, I would listen to and study every nuance of Rites of Passage, as though I had stumbled upon some heavenly relic. I bought the official tablature book from my college record store. I used it to try and learn to play “Ghost” and, in the process, accidentally taught myself to finger-pick. I hung a giant poster of Emily and Amy above my bed in my dorm room. I waxed poetic about ideas they introduced me to and I sang a novice version of “Closer to Fine” around bonfires. I saved up and bought tickets to see them play at the EKU Alumni Coliseum. My boyfriend at the time was a student/artist liaison. Right before the show started, he came to my seat desperately searching for a safety pin because one of the girls was having a wardrobe malfunction. I happened to have one on the overalls I was wearing. They were so worn out that one of the buttons had fallen off the bib. A safety pin was literally holding one side of them onto my body. Without a second thought, I gave him the pin and watched the show half-naked so that an Indigo Girl didn’t have to be. My boyfriend got them to sign my tab book and I nearly died. Twenty years later, I would find myself writing a song with Emily, secretly starstruck and in awe of how she effortlessly played those damned major seventh and diminished minor chords that my collegiate fingers could not master. 

And that brings me full circle. When I squealed, “I want to do ‘Ghost’!!!” what I meant was, “Hey, I learned to play the intro and first two verses of ‘Ghost’ in college and, although there’s no way I could possibly learn the whole thing and actually pull it off on some stage, the sheer excitement of being a part of an Indigo Girls tribute has seemingly hijacked my common sense. Moreover, the adrenaline that I feel pulsating through my veins is tricking me into believing that I surely could learn that song and perform it in front of an audience.” Well Kelly, I am, in fact, a charlatan. I am an Indigo Girls super-fan who follows in their footsteps yet dares not to try and fill their shoes. They mean the world to me because they helped me define my place in it. 

I know lots of Indigo Girls records by heart but Rites of Passage literally introduced me to my spirit. I honestly didn’t know I had one. The God I know now is a tender, forgiving, infinite source of light and energy that is available to every living, breathing thing. Not something to fear, but something to lean into and trust. My friend Jackie has since passed away, and I can’t help but think about her being on the other side, having all the answers, having exposed me to the very thing that challenged me to ask the hard questions about religion, love, life, and past lives. I’m grateful for having known Jackie. I’m grateful for road trips and Southern women who sing about whatever the hell they want. I’m grateful to God for blessing this earth with music and I’m grateful that Kelly McCartney has the patience of Job. In honor of full transparency, I’ve wiggled out of about six deadlines and changed my mind 100 times about what I was going do to pay homage to two people for which my gratitude is beyond measure. It’s definitely beyond some butchered rendition of a song as beautiful and articulate as “Ghost.” So, this is my offering … a psychotic fan rant brought to you from the confines of a professional songwriter’s virgin reading nook.

Amy and Emily, thank you so very much for opening doors, for raging against the machine, for vamping harmonies that give goosebumps, for being brave beyond words, and for spouting philosophy with twang enough for a little girl in Kentucky to understand that she doesn’t have to be afraid anymore. I love you both. Now, I have to go change my tampon and down a bunch of ibuprofen before I decide to delete all of this and try to sculpt some shit or something. 

Peace,

Angaleena Presley

Becky Warren Thanks the Indigo Girls for 30 Years #IG30

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Continuing our month-long tribute in celebration of the Indigo Girls’ 30th anniversary, we asked singer/songwriter Becky Warren how she’d like to thank Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. 

It’s pretty much impossible to overstate the importance of the Indigo Girls in my life. I grew up in Atlanta, so when I first heard them in 1990 or so, they became instant heroes — women who wrote amazing songs, played and sang them on great records, and even lived where I lived. I got a guitar in 1991, and theirs were, of course, the first songs I taught myself to play. I spent a lot of time in school feeling awkward and lonely and weird — the kid who was absolutely obsessed with music that most of the other kids weren’t listening to. The Indigo Girls showed me that there was a place in the future where a music nerd girl from Atlanta could fit in great. And they taught me a hell of a lot about songwriting.

More than a decade later, my band (the Great Unknowns) had just finished recording our first album in a basement in Boston when Amy Ray called our guitar player to say she loved the record and wanted to put it out on her Daemon Records label. We immediately agreed and, in 2005, newly married to a guy who had just deployed to Iraq, I went on my first run of shows opening for the Indigo Girls. Amy and Emily were legends for me, and I was amazed to find they were also incredibly kind, down to earth, and full of passion for playing and listening to music. My then-husband’s return from Iraq with PTSD kept me out of the music world for almost seven years — an eternity in the music business. But when I got back to it, Amy was willing to listen to my songs again, and she gave me feedback that bolstered my confidence in a way I badly needed after so much time.

Late last year, I released my first solo album, War Surplus, which explores the impact of PTSD on veterans and their families. I sent Amy an early copy, and she told me she really thought people should hear it. And so it happened that, almost 12 years after my musical journey was interrupted by the Iraq War and its aftermath, I got to go back on tour opening for the Indigo Girls.

My dear friend Mary Bragg (who sings with me here and is a phenomenal Americana artist in her own right) came along on the tour to lend her vocal talents. To build my music career back up to that point, after such a long break, meant the world to me; but the fact that Amy and Emily still believed in me and my songs meant even more. I’m so proud to be an Indigo Girls superfan, so honored to call them friends, and so grateful for everything they’ve done for me. 

Photo credit: David Nardiello

The Power of Two: 30 Years of Indigo Girls

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Although the earliest traces of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers joining musical forces date back to 1981 — and their original meeting back to 1974 — the Indigo Girls’ debut album, Strange Fire, was released in 1987. To mark the much-beloved duo’s 30th anniversary, we wanted to say “thank you” to Amy and Emily for everything they have given us over the years … the art and the activism, the influences and the inspirations. To do so, we reached out to artists who have walked the trail they blazed, starting with singer/songwriter Mary Gauthier, who penned this wonderful recollection that speaks for so many. (Keep an eye out all month for more artists paying tribute through stories and songs.)  

Lesbian icons. When I was a kid, the mere thought of such a thing was laughable. I was growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the 1970s. There were no iconic gay women. Hell, there were no gay women, period. When I began to wonder if I was gay, I went to the library looking for lesbian authors. My research brought me to one book: Radclyffe Hall’s sad book, The Well of Loneliness. I read it, then landed on its predecessor, the bi-monthly mailed-in-a plain-brown-paper-wrapper-lesbian-newsletter, LC (Lesbian Connection). A nod to Hall’s 1928 book, the polite LC personals were called “The Wishing Well.”

LC introduced me to “womyns” music. I loved the great Canadian folk singer Ferron, but as an angst-filled, queer, ’70s teenager from the Deep South, I did not relate to much of the womyns music scene. I didn’t fit in there, either. I found myself listening more to Southern folk singers like John Prine, and other male songwriters whose words I felt close to.

Imagine my surprise when I moved to Boston in my early 20s and heard the Indigo Girls for the first time on WUMB college radio. There was SOMETHING THERE for me, personally — a brand new, yet deeply familiar sound. It resonated. I FELT it. Though I did not know it consciously, a part of me understood: Those voices were gay women from the South, like me. I parked my black Toyota restaurant truck in the driveway, turned the radio up loud, sat there stunned, and listened as the song played out. The sound infiltrated my soul. What was this, some kind of cosmic lesbian musical sorcery? Who were these people? They fucking rocked. The harmonies peeled back layers of scar tissue at my center, exposing a longing in me that I could not name. The song coming out of the radio was called “Strange Fire.” Hearing it for the first time in my truck that evening literally hurt.

I come to you with strange fire
I make an offering of love

The incense of my soil is burned
By the fire in my blood

Those harmonies landed like a déjà vu — utterly familiar, but not at all known. The sound was pointing me to something vital about myself, but I did not know what it was. The alchemy evoked a buried self I had not yet met, the future songwriter in me, entombed in a personal Pompeii, frozen under layers of active addiction. When the song ended, I turned off the radio, clenched the steering wheel, laid my head down, closed my eyes, and cried. I banged both hands on the wheel … harder, then harder still.

I was drunk, stoned, and tired of feeling alone. I had a hole in me that the call to songwriting had once upon a time tried to answer. But the call wasn’t even a memory anymore. I had put my guitar and musical longing aside, buried them both in a past I did not contemplate, and forgot about them. Women who did not (or could not) abide the compulsory rules of gender — the sexualized female appearance tailored to the male gaze — didn’t stand a chance in the real music business, right? I’d grown up, turned away from music. Made peace with 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”

I was a restaurateur now, a businesswoman, and a CEO. A chef. I established and ran several restaurants. I had what thought I wanted. I was young and successful. But I felt empty. There was money, but it didn’t matter. I’d spent the last decade subconsciously flirting with death. I lived with a gaping hole in the center of my being that I poured booze and dope and romance and success and any other thing I could jam in there to deaden the pain, the sadness of an unlived life. I was lost, careening the wrong way down a one-way street. I did not know how to turn around.

So I worked harder, tried to make more money, and became grandiose. Angry. I demanded that those around me work harder, too. We had to push the limits of what was possible. I was hoping to succeed my way out of the feeling of being lost. Somehow, the sound of that song on the radio saw me and called to me, but I couldn’t understand what it was telling me about myself. I could not make sense of the visceral response it released in my gut, even as the waves of emotion doubled me over.

A few months later, I was arrested for drunk driving. The court sentenced me to mandatory rehab. I got sober. Soon after, I decided to find the source of those magical voices I’d heard on the radio. I called the station, described the song, and the DJ said they called themselves the Indigo Girls. I went to Tower Records and bought the record, Strange Fire.

Amy Ray, Michael Stipe, Natalie Merchant, Woody Harrelson, and Emily Saliers perform for Earth Day in Washington, DC in 1990.

Soon after, I went to see them perform at the Paradise, a Boston rock club. It was 1990. I was a few months clean and sober, and what I saw that night made me dizzy, weak, and queasy. The mostly female audience was screaming the singers’ names, while crying and shouting the words to the songs, as the two women on stage sang smiling, delighting in the raucous, carnival-like excitement. In short, the fans were out of their fucking minds. The scene that night was like the black and white footage of girls screaming for the Beatles in 1964. For the first time ever, I saw women jumping up and down and screaming at the top of their voices for women. It was pandemonium. No Well of Loneliness here, this was a grand public display of woman-loving-woman energy, a giant wave of out-ness that rode the waves of the music being played on stage, blasting through the house speakers. It blew my mind.

I’d been out for years, so it wasn’t the queerness that freaked me out; it was something else. I could not name what was happening inside me, but I left early, after going into the bathroom, afraid I would literally be sick. My knees could barely hold me up. I was only a few months sober. I wasn’t even sure I saw what I had just witnessed. I was utterly confused. I loved the music, the passion, and the songs. What the hell was making me so queasy? I had no idea then that the pain of an unlived life was dropping me to my knees in the not-so-clean stall in the women’s room in the Paradise Rock Club.

I went and saw them play again at the 1991 Newport Folk Festival. I’d listened to the Strange Fire record hundreds of times, and had just bought their self-named second record, Indigo Girls. The record had thrown off a smash radio hit, “Closer to Fine.” The Indigo Girls became Newport headliners the summer I celebrated my first year of sobriety. As a gift to myself, I bought a ticket to the festival.

The skies over Newport, Rhode Island, burst open with rain before the Indigo Girls took the stage, but I didn’t care. I found something to hold over my head. Maybe a stranger loaned me an umbrella? I don’t remember. What I do remember was the absolute joy I felt watching them with a full band, brilliantly and confidently take over the entire universe, as the rain came crashing down and rivers of water raced down the hill, magically splitting along both sides of my little island of safety. I had not felt joy like that since … maybe … ever.

Gone was the upset in my gut, the confusing angst, even though the heightened emotions in the women in the audience at Fort Adams State Park was like the Paradise Rock Club times 10,000. I was becoming one of the singing-along-out-loud fans. There were screaming, crying, lyric-shouting women as far as the eye could see and, this time, it made me smile. Song after song, women running up to the stage in tears reaching for them, while security had to push back the surge, while beautiful young girls threw themselves and their passionate, hysterical love at the women on stage. It was amazing. I was witnessing a seismic shift in American culture, and in myself.

The Indigo Girls went on to rule the Newport Folk Festival in the 1990s, appearing as headliners nine times in 10 years. They were stars and bona fide lesbian icons. I had no way of knowing that, a decade later, I’d be standing up on that very same stage myself. I was just beginning to feel the pull to my own music, to the old guitar that had sat in my closet for so long.

What I did know was that a door had opened. Things were different now, and weren’t going to go back to how it was before. The Indigo Girls had shattered the glass ceiling in music, the ceiling that no “lesbian-looking lesbians” had been able to smash through before them. Soon, lesbian artist after lesbian artist made their way through the opening the Indigos created. I become one of them.

I doubt I would have had the audacity to become a songwriter and take the stage without Amy and Emily laying the groundwork for up-and-coming artists. I owe them a huge debt and a heartfelt thank you. The spirit that flows through their music, and through all good music, contains much-needed truths that can help bring lost souls back home.

In their highest form, songs are vibrations from a higher world, which humans have been given the power to channel. Songs are a gift, an offering, and an open exchange between singer and audience. Songs are emotional electricity and know no sexual preference, gender, race, nationality, or age. Some are more than just sweet melodies or sellable entertainment products. The most meaningful ones are powerful medicines that can connect us to ourselves, each other, and to the divine. They carry emotional truths that burn through time and space, touching something eternal.

The songs of the Indigo Girls pointed me home to me, when I needed it most — a date with destiny, a divine decree. By being authentic, Amy and Emily have pointed millions of other people home, as well. Damn near everyone I know (straight and gay) has an Indigo Girls positive impact story. The world is a better, more inclusive place because of their music. So, I say with great joy, happy 30th anniversary to the Indigo Girls and to Strange Fire. You have done much for many, and we are better because of you and your music.

— Mary Gauthier

Photos courtesy of Indigo Girls