The Indigo Girls Look Long

After more than four decades working together, the Indigo Girls are still evolving. In 2020, the duo released their most recent LP, Look Long — a reflective record with roots in drives to-and-from Nashville from their home turf in Georgia. Look Long continues Amy Ray and Emily Saliers’ career of musical activism. It also has the expansive view of existence that’s become an Indigo Girls trademark, braiding science, religion and politics into a syncretic way of looking at the world.

Before their fall run of shows, the pair announced that Saliers had been diagnosed with two movement disorders that affect her ability to sing. “We’re trying to look at this organically, as a process of our own aging,” she shared. The shows continue, and on Sept. 30, they’ll play the Ryman with support from Linda Perry, who might be best known as frontwoman of 4 Non Blondes but released a new solo LP, Let It Die Here, in May. Ahead of the show, Saliers and Ray caught up with the Scene about reflection and change — and teased new music. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us more about the show.

Emily Saliers: These are our first dates we’re doing with Linda Perry, so we’re super excited about that. Obviously, we have a lot of respect for her and love her work, and we love the Ryman. I mean, the Mother Church! It’s always great to be back there, and we have friends in Nashville. We spend a lot of time in Nashville making music and doing workshops, so it kind of feels like home away from home.

How has your creative process evolved over the years?

Amy Ray: We write separately. We’ve tried to write together, and it just doesn’t work. Back when we were in high school and college, I didn’t know that well how to play. So it used to be Emily teaching me a harmony part, and me having to play chords that adapted to not being as good on the guitar. So our creative process was very hands-on — sort of laborious, but fun.

Over the years, we’ve gotten better at what we do individually. I can write harmonies now. It’s just the way things hopefully run in any relationship, where you improve, and you bring more to the table. We haven’t done a new record in three or four years, so we’ll see. We don’t even know what the next creative process is going to be like.

Look Long is your 15th studio album. Are the two of you looking back at all?

ES: In some ways. For me, the Lilith Fair documentary came out [last year], and I reflected on that time. We’ve done shows with Brandi Carlile and reflected on her trajectory, and when we first connected with her. The Daisy Chain Fields Festival that Olivia Rodrigo put together was unbelievable. I mean, what a triumph. It’s made me reflect on our career in a way that’s relational to the fact that these young artists now are doing these wonderful things, and they’re giving back to society and culture in ways that are really important. Amy and I were always looking for pop stars to get involved in activism along the way, and it was really hard to find people who were willing to do that.

AR: Yeah, we were both in a reflective place when we made that [album]. I watched that Lilith Fair documentary, and I didn’t remember half the things. I actually didn’t realize that we had been on the same stage with Erykah Badu. I was having an out-of-body experience when I was there, or something.

Sometimes I’m reflective, but I really like to move forward. There’s so much great new music. I love making records. I love writing songs, and I love seeing new bands. It’s a really crazy time with so much stuff going on, and it’s good to think back on other times when it felt like things were insurmountable.

It seems like there’s this real nostalgia for the intertwining of music and social movements from the ’90s.

AR: In the ’90s, I mean, there were so many great activist bands then. ... What I think now is so cool is women do have a better place than they had. Even though it feels very “manosphere” right now ... there are so many strong women doing great activism and being heard, and not being buried. Back then, it was hard. Sometimes you just felt like there was a vacuum in the press to get attention for these underground artists that were doing really big things. It feels now like it’s more wide-open.

Look Long also continues this ongoing conversation in your work between science and religion. Can you talk more about that fascination?

ES: My dad was a theologian. We went to church together, but we went to church at Emory University, so it was a little more ecumenical. ... I grew up in a faith that didn’t come down hard or be judgmental. But as time went on, I found myself separating from the dogma of organized religion. 

Sometimes the language holds me back. Like, what is the intelligence of the universe? But for me, I started to see connectivity between this awe-inspiring design of the universe and how it relates to us as animal creatures here on earth. As human beings, we’re endowed with this consciousness that can be both problematic and liberating. 

A song like “Change My Heart” — it’s about Trump and it’s about physics. ... And the same thing with “Look Long,” it’s a song about perspective, and I’m talking about telescopes and microscopes and looking into the stars. When I’m writing these images of science along with what might be considered religious imagery, they just find a comfortable spot with each other.

You both have mentioned the many artists and activists working today. I’m wondering if you could share some of your favorites.

ES: I love MUNA. They’re one of my favorite bands right now. Maddie Zahm — she actually left evangelical Christianity, and now she’s this queer artist who speaks very openly about that.

MUNA — Katie [Gavin] and I have become friends. ... Katie and her community, they’re all activists. I met some of her friends at a show; they were so impressive. They’re these people who just risk everything, and they go to the Middle East to try to get food to Palestinian people. 

We’re both huge Justin Vernon fans, for his ethos of artistry and care for the world. I’m speaking for Amy now, but [we are] big Phoebe Bridgers fans. And as I said, I’m so impressed with Olivia Rodrigo. I don’t know Chappell Roan’s history of activism, but I get the sense that she’s an amazing artist. And of course, boygenius ... all these young [people] — particularly women, not necessarily queer, but at least allied or adjacent.

AR: I like Bad Bunny. There’s such a strident comment with his music, and he’s not afraid to make a statement. I think he’s been very inspiring for a lot of people. Jesse Welles — that kid’s amazing. I was talking to Adam from Guster — who helped start REVERB, that thing that greens tours — and he was talking about Billie Eilish, and all the stuff that Billie tries to accomplish environmentally.

Amythyst Kiah, somebody we both like a lot. Amythyst is just a great young writer, and she says a lot of really important things about what it means to be Black in this culture, especially in the Americana culture. She’s taken the lead from Rhiannon Giddens, who always also led the way on that, and Elizabeth Cotten and all the earlier people.

Anything else that you want to make sure we talk about?

AR: My country band that I’ve had for 15 years now has a live record coming out in the winter. and Emily’s got a musical called Starstruck. When is it going to New York, Emily? 

ES: In the fall of 2027. We just had a run last spring at Bucks County Playhouse, and we’re hoping to be in New York next fall.

And then Amy and I, we have plans — we don’t know when — but to start releasing new music. Rather than focus immediately on an album, we’ll probably start releasing songs. We’re talking about different people who might produce the songs. And to me, that’ll be fun. It’s just kind of taking a different approach.

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