Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo from Atlanta, Georgia, United States, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers.[1] The two met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. They started performing with the name Indigo Girls as students at Emory University, performing weekly at The Dugout, a bar in Emory Village.
They released a full-length record album entitled Strange Fire in 1987, and contracted with a major record company in 1988.[1] After releasing nine albums with major record labels from 1987 through 2007, they formed the IG Recordings company in 2009 and resumed self-producing albums.[2]
Outside of working on Indigo Girls–related projects, Ray has released solo albums and founded a non-profit recording label that promotes independent musicians. Saliers is an entrepreneur in the restaurant industry as well as a professional author; she also collaborates with her father, Don Saliers, in performing for special groups and causes. Saliers and Ray are both lesbians, though not a romantic couple, and are active in political and environmental causes. They are regarded as queer icons.[3]
Recording and touring[edit]
Early years[edit]
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers first met and got to know each other as students at Laurel Ridge Elementary School in DeKalb County, Georgia, just outside Decatur, Georgia,[4] but were not close friends because Saliers was a grade older than Ray. While attending Shamrock High School (now Druid Hills Middle School), they became better acquainted, and started performing together, first as "The B-Band" and then as "Saliers and Ray".[1]
Saliers graduated and began attending Tulane University in Louisiana. A year later, Ray graduated high school and began attending Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Homesick, both returned to Georgia and transferred to Emory University in Atlanta (where Saliers' father was a professor).[5]
Songwriting and influences[edit]
Ray and Saliers do not ordinarily collaborate in writing songs.[13] Saliers described herself as "a lyric person. [...] I’ve always respected Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan". Saliers said: "Amy is much more a combination of music and lyrics. She really likes alternative rock a lot, and she likes the feel of certain kinds music as well as the lyrics. Amy is more stream-of-consciousness. She doesn’t censor herself at all; she just channels it through herself, so in her lyrics, she has tons of different kinds of images, sensual images, things of the earth, that connection to nature. Mine is a much more singer-songwriter intellectual narrative style. I take an idea and try to really pinpoint it, make it as clear as possible".[14]
They write separately and work out the arrangements together.[15] There are a few exceptions, mostly unreleased songs from their early, pre-Epic days: "I Don't Know Your Name" and "If You Live Like That." "Blood Quantum", which appears on Honor: A Benefit for the Honor the Earth Campaign featured Ray's verses and chorus and Saliers's bridge. Finally, "I'll Give You My Skin", which appears both on Tame Yourself (a benefit album for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and on the Indigo Girls release Rarities, is a collaborative work by Ray, Saliers, and Michael Stipe, which is doubly rare because Saliers and Ray usually write their songs without outside collaborators. In September 2020, the Indigo Girls released "Long Ride", the first song Ray and Saliers had written together in 30 years.[16]
The Indigo Girls have toured as a duo and with a band. In 1990, they toured with Atlanta band the Ellen James Society backing them; they have also toured with side players, with one distinct group from 1991 to 1998, a second from 1999 to 2009, members of which appeared on all of the Girls' subsequent albums and which re-formed as a live band in 2023, and a third from 2012 to 2016.
Solo projects[edit]
In 1990, Ray founded Daemon Records, which has signed Magnapop, Ellen James Society, New Mongrels, Kristen Hall, Rose Polenzani, Girlyman, Athens Boys Choir, and James Hall among others.
Ray has put out six solo albums, entitled Stag, Prom, Live from Knoxville, Didn't It Feel Kinder, Amy Ray: Live MVP, Lung of Love, Goodnight Tender and Holler through Daemon. She has toured with both The Butchies and her bands The Volunteers and the Amy Ray Band.
Saliers also released a solo album, Murmuration Nation, in 2017, and was a founding co-owner of Watershed Restaurant[18] in Decatur, Georgia. She sold Watershed in 2018. Saliers was an initial investor in the Flying Biscuit Cafe[19] in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2005, Saliers and her father, Don Saliers, a theology professor at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, released the book A Song to Sing, a Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice. They promoted the release of the book together including several days of speaking and performing together at the Washington National Cathedral College in Washington D.C.
Appearances in other media[edit]
Ray and Saliers appeared in the 1995 film Boys on the Side, playing short excerpts from their songs "Joking" and "Southland in the Springtime", as well as singing "Feliz Cumpleaños" ("Happy Birthday" in Spanish) with the gathered group of friends during the birthday cake scene, and standing on the far side of several shots over the next few scenes. Neither had spoken lines. The duo also appear in the 2006 documentary Wordplay, where they discuss their reaction to appearing in a New York Times crossword puzzle and then begin to solve one together.
They performed onstage in the 1994 revival of Jesus Christ Superstar in Atlanta, titled Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection. Ray starred as Jesus with Saliers as Mary Magdalene.[1] They later reprised their roles in stagings in Austin, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, and in Seattle.
Ray and Saliers made several cameo appearances on the sitcom Ellen; in the episode "Womyn Fest", Ellen and her friends attend a feminist music festival and catch the end of a performance by the Indigo Girls.
The girls are mentioned multiple times in Stephen King's 1995 novel Rose Madder, and Curtis Sittenfeld's 2023 novel Romantic Comedy, as well as being name-dropped in various TV shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Will and Grace, South Park, 30 Rock, The Office, Squidbillies, The Big Bang Theory, Saturday Night Live, Harley Quinn and Nip\Tuck.
Their posters are seen on the British soap Brookside and the 1996 slasher film Scream.
The duo appeared onstage alongside standup comedian Tig Notaro during Notaro's 2018 show "Happy to be Here" at The Heights in Houston, Texas, as a closing bit, performing one song.
In the 2023 film Barbie, Barbie sings along to "Closer to Fine." The song appears three times in the film, as well as in its trailer.[20][21]
A collection of Indigo Girls' songs is used in the jukebox musical movie Glitter and Doom, which has been touring movie festivals across North America. The film has no confirmed release date.[22]
