With the release of their 10th studio album, the Indigo Girls prove that they are social activist leaders as well as musical legends. Amy Ray spoke to OUTinPerth about her 20 year career as one half of the dynamic singing, song writing duo.
OiP: The Indigo Girls have become legends of not just music, but social activism. How do the two intersect for you?
Amy: They intersect sometimes in the song writing, and [activism] definitely leaks into our language because it is the lens we see things through. We have always been activists from the time we were young. We just started using our music and the ability to gather people in one place and amplify people’s voices.
OiP: How do you decide a cause is something you want to give your voice to?
Amy: We’re grabbed by the issues because the issues are important, but we are grabbed by certain groups because the work they do is grassroots and community based. We tend away from bigger, more corporate groups who are doing good work, but not on a grassroots level… If you are working on gay issues, for instance, and there is a huge national lobby group, they might be doing some effective work around marriage, but the people in a certain community might have a lot of gay kids and their youth suicide rate is really high. In that community, they care about whether their kids survive or not. So, even though we think gay marriage is important, we would choose to work on something that is very immediately saving lives in a community. We might want to work on issues of class or transgender issues as opposed to a very mainstream issue.ÂÂ
OiP: Your career has spanned quite a few administrations and political climates in America. Do you find that as the political climate changes, it affects your song writing?
Amy: Subject matter changes, but there are a lot of problems that are really long term and even in our lifetime or our children’s lifetime they are not going to be solved. So, a lot of our songs can be heard over a long period of time and still make sense.
OiP: When you sit down to start writing for an album, what is your approach to creating a song?
Amy: Our process is very different. I keep a journal of songs. I write things down everyday that I’m thinking about, song ideas or lyrics, things that come to me, stories that people tell me, or weird things my friends say. Then, I sit down to play guitar and I just go through my lyric book and see what strikes me. I tape everything as I’m doing it and slowly come up with songs over time. For Emily [Salier], songs just must be brewing inside her because she just sits down and starts working on something and it just comes out.
OiP: So, how do you take songs that you’ve written separately and harmonise with the other person?
Amy: When we got ready to make the last record, we made demos for the producer Mitchell Froom of some of the harmony arrangements we had. Then he had ideas too, so we would try different harmonies and just experiment. It gets kind of technical and picky, but in the end, we just did what sounded the most organic.
OiP: It’s funny that you had to work to get the organic and natural sound that you are known for.
Amy: It’s funny that way. It’s really about what is the heart of the song and what sounds the most organic, but something might be blocking that. Sometimes it is the first thing you think of, but you don’t settle on it until you have tried every other angle.
OiP: How did you come to be on the track Dear Mr. President off Pink’s last album and what was it like to work with Pink?
Amy: Her management got in touch with us because Pink was a fan of our music, which we were totally surprised by. We wrote back and said, ‘Yeah, totally, let’s hear the song.’ And we heard it and were like ‘Oh, that’s why she wants us because it is right down our alley. We obviously feel that way about the President.’ She came to Atlanta, and we hung together and had a really good time. She is a force of nature definitely…
OiP: Pink has said Dear Mr. President is one of the most important songs she has ever written. Are any of your songs that stand out as tracks you are proud of?
Amy: I’m proud of a lot of songs. I don’t know if they are important, but I’m proud of them. On the most recent record – I can’t speak for Emily – for me, the songs I’m most proud of are the ones that are obscure and weird. There was a song on this new album that Pink sang on called Rock & Roll Heaven’s Gate. It’s more of a punky anthem. I wrote it for some friends of mine who were in different bands that broke up over a short period of time. It was a keep on keeping on song.
However, I don’t think me or Emily ever think in terms of what is important historically because for us we are always thinking about the next thing and what we are doing today. We understand the importance of the live music experience, of people coming to a show from a lot of different backgrounds and mingling and singing together and breaking down barriers. That’s what we think is important and that can happen with any song. Sometimes it’s not even important what the song says it’s just the fact that people are standing together listening to it.
OiP: Anything thing you’d like to say in closing?
Amy: We just love music. We love the evolution of what we learn and who we collaborate with. Collaborating with Pink and then Brandi Carlisle, in the old day R.E.M., that’s something I would never trade out. If you can’t have that, you might as well stop. I see people doing the same old, same old and just going through the motions and I think the only reason they are doing that is because it is how they make a living and it isn’t about their heart anymore. I don’t ever want to be that.
The Indigo Girls come to the Fremantle Arts Centre on Friday November 2. Tickets are available on www.heatseeker.com.au.
