Most musicians found their activities curtailed during the pandemic. For the Indigo Girls, the past few years have been a particularly busy season.
The duo of Emily Saliers and Amy Ray released a livestream project, Look Long: Together, that took a year and a half to complete; they’re the subject of a documentary film, It's Only Life After All, appearing at this year's Florida Film Festival; and their music was reinvented for the movie Glitter & Doom. Saliers has been writing music for two stage musicals, and Ray has released a new solo album, If It All Goes South.
That’s quite a busy schedule, even for an act like the Indigo Girls, who have been consistently active since releasing their first album, Strange Fire, in 1987. Most bands that debuted around that time — if they’re still together — now only sporadically make albums (if at all) and are considered heritage acts. That’s not the Indigo Girls.
“We still feel like we are a working band. We tour and we make albums and we work, and that feels good,” Saliers said in a recent phone interview.
This latest spate of activity has come on the heels of the release of the 16th Indigo Girls studio album, Look Long, which arrived in May 2020. A stirring effort, Look Long not only features the highly melodic folk-pop (on songs like “When We Were Writers,” “Look Long” and “Sorrow and Joy”) that has always been an Indigo Girls signature, but rhythmically creative songs that touch on hip-hop (“S**t Kickin’”), Caribbean music (“Howl at the Moon”) and catchy upbeat rockers (“Change My Heart” and “K.C. Girl”).
But by the time Look Long was released, the pandemic had scuttled plans for a full-band tour to support the album. Now Saliers and Ray, after touring last year with long-time violinist Lyris Hung, are making up for that lost full-band tour. Saliers said the show will feature a few songs from the latest album along with a generous selection of back catalog material.
“Some people like the band and some people like us acoustic or just stripped-down,” Saliers said. “We just haven’t had the opportunity to tour with the band because of COVID and we really miss that. So it was good to put out the streaming concert and it will be great to get back with the band.”
That streaming concert, Look Long: Together, debuted in May 2022 on the VEEPS platform and is a unique concert special that features performances of a career-spanning set of songs (some of which feature appearances from guests Becky Warren, Tomi Martin, Trina Meade and Lucy Wainwright Roche) combined with commentary segments about the songs from Saliers and Ray. Because of the pandemic, performances had to be woven together from separate film shoots to create full-band live versions of songs.
The year and a half of work that went into the livestream took up some of the pandemic-forced downtime. Saliers also spent considerable time working on two musicals that she hopes might eventually get to Broadway.
“One of them is tentatively called Country Radio,” Saliers said. “It’s the story of a young queer girl growing up in the South and her journey ... working through her love of the Southland that she knew and grew up with and all of the struggles involved with that.”
One thing Saliers has not done yet is write for another Indigo Girls album. Considering that Look Long was completed before the pandemic, there should be plenty of inspiration for lyrics from Saliers and Ray, both of whom have long been involved in a wide variety of social causes, including LBGTQ issues, Native American rights, immigration reform and climate change. But Saliers said she’ll need time to process the pandemic and other recent events to even know what to say about the experience.
Saliers and Ray might also have to consider how to respond lyrically to what may be a sea change of conservative initiatives, the biggest of which so far is the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion.
Like many pro-choice advocates, Saliers didn’t think Roe v. Wade would be overturned and is appalled at its demise. Legal access to abortion had been established law for decades with multiple subsequent Supreme Court rulings that affirmed the Roe decision. Plus, polls have consistently shown a solid majority of Americans didn’t want Roe overturned.
“But the truth is there has been a concerted effort [to overturn Roe],” Saliers said, noting that conservative politicians and activists and certain parts of the evangelical community are among those who have mounted a strategic plan to gain the power in various levels of government and the courts that was needed to target Roe and other progressive issues.
“It’s been going on a long time. So while the thought before was shocking, it’s easy to understand how we’ve come to this place.”
Both Saliers and Ray are gay, and Saliers fears the conservative movement will widen attempts to repeal rights that the LBGTQ community have gained over the years. She and Ray plan to be active in efforts to restore abortion rights and preserve gay rights and to support politicians who support such causes.
“As a gay person who’s married, I’m like ‘Is this my country?’ And that’s like a big question to ask,” Saliers said. “I understand the complexities of history and how things, the pendulum swings and reactions, I understand that. But when it affects peoples’ lives and there’s this huge disconnect between this small group of zealots making decisions because they’re so removed from the reality of peoples’ lives, it’s a lot to take in and a lot to live with and a lot to manage.”
Indigo Girls will appear for a Q+A discussion with the director of It's Only Life After All noon Sunday, April 16, at Enzian Theater. They also play the Plaza Live Sunday night.
