Indigo Girls Bring Margo Price, More Guests to the Ryman

A politically engaged evening with a variety-show feel wound its way through the duo’s four-decade catalog

Phone-captured color photo taken at the Ryman during Indigo Girls’ performance on Sept. 30, 2026, including special guest Margo Price. — Margo Price with Indigo Girls at the Ryman, 9/30/2026
Photo: Annie Parnell

Indigo Girls brought a roster of special guests onstage for their Wednesday show at the Ryman, a politically engaged evening with a variety-show feel.

After Linda Perry opened with an intimate, living-room style set featuring selections from both her storied songwriting career and May solo record Let It Die Here, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers took to the stage against a projected backdrop that depicted a customs office. They kicked off, fittingly, with “Shit Kickin’,” an ode from Ray to the complexities of Southernness that opens up the duo’s 2020 release Look Long. Soon came “It’s Alright,” Saliers’ devil-may-care anti-homophobia anthem from 1997’s Shaming of the Sun, as well as that album’s opener, the immigration rights protest song “Shame on You.”

Color studio photo of Indigo Girls' Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, dressed in folk-rock stage wear of leather jackets and denim overshirts.

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Saliers, who in April shared that she’s suffering from two incurable movement disorders that affect her ability to sing, announced that the pair would be performing “Power of Two” impromptu after an audience member told her it was his song with his late wife. Throughout the show, the crowd supported her by singing along. The Girls’ lyrics inspire fans to memorize them, and it seemed that many in the audience knew every word of their catalog.

That discography is rallyingly political, and now more timely than ever. Before a performance of “Faye Tucker,” a song about capital punishment that closes 1999’s Come on Now Social, Ray dedicated the ballad to public defenders. She also praised the last-minute stay that was at the time still in effect for Christa Pike, whose execution by the state was set to take place that day. The song selection became even more resonant as the evening went on: Pike’s execution proceeded and later was botched, devolving into bone-chilling chaos late Wednesday night.

Later, Margo Price joined the pair to perform “Deportee,” a Woody Guthrie composition she covered for her 2026 release Days of Unrest, which has increasingly become a signature for Price. She was one of several special guests on Wednesday. Banjo virtuosa Alison Brown and singer-songwriter Becky Warren performed onstage with the band, and Lucy Wainwright Roche, who sang backup throughout the show, played a solo rendition of her own composition “Heroin.” Later, Price and Perry rejoined the stage for the encore, which paid homage to Perry’s indelible 4 Non Blondes hit “What’s Up” before the grand finale: a rousing family rendition of “Closer to Fine.”