Go Girls
With Brooke Shelby Biggs
From Girlfriends, March 2000
With the release of Come On Now Social, their sixth studio album, the Indigo Girls are finally getting comfortable with themselves.
The duo has moved away from the unrequited love song in favor of the political polemic and social critique. Remarkably, the almost-sappy melodrama of those early albums has not, as might have been expected, given way to preachiness. Emily Saliers--the one we could count on for the bawl-your-eyes-out ballad--is learning to rock and get funky with her bad self; Amy Ray--always a dependable source for that soul-cleansing, you-dumped-me-bitch angry tune--is unashamedly embracing her punk and country roots. As ever, the two styles and personalities merge and diverge in mysteriously complimentary ways.
The evolution of the Girls doesn't please everyone; early fans have accused them of abandoning their folkie roots. The market doesn't know what to do with them; their last album, the iconoclastically cheerful Shaming of the Sun scored poorly with many diehard fans, but hit the charts at number seven and brought some new blood into the cultish IG fan base [Hey!]. Come On Now Social, arguably the better and more traditionally Indigo-Girlsy new album, debuted at number 34 but then quickly dropped off.
That's okay with Ray and Saliers. They don't aspire to Celine Dion-style fame and fortune; in fact, Ray has said she'd sabotage the duo's success if it ever reached such heights. True, it's hard to imagine her on CBS in Spandex and sequins.
Fortunately, they measure success in far different terms. They consider themselves counterculture troublemakers more than musicians. Earlier this year [their error not mine], their concerts at three South Carolina high schools [again, their error not mine] were canceled when several parents complained that, as lesbians, Ray and Saliers would be a bad influence on the students. Many students protested the cancellations, and some were suspended. The concerts were rescheduled off campus. Saliers and Ray say they were profoundly inspired by the students; their latest single, "Go," was written, in part, as a tribute.
The duo is heading out on an international tour in early 2000, and this summer will see them back on the road with Honor the Earth, the Native American environmental rights campaign they've supported for the past eight years.
In this recent conversation with Brooke Shelby Biggs, the Indigo Girls take on the music industry, the music press, and the gay establishment--no holds barred. They also peer a few years into their futures, professionally and personally.
Going Indie, Gettin' Political
Girlfriends: You signed an eight-album deal with Epic in 1988, and you've got two albums to go. What happens after that?
Amy Ray: We don't know yet. We might decide not to be on a label after that. Me and Emily might just feel like we're ready to scale back a little bit; that it's okay to sell less records and play slightly smaller rooms.
GF: Emily, your songs have more politicals references than they have had in the past. I'm used to hearing politics from Amy, but not from you. Is this how you intend your songs to be interpreted?
Emily Saliers: I think when we started working with indigenous activists like Winona LaDuke and others and the Honor the Earth crowd, it just really changed my life and started infiltrating my songwriting. Very early on I was writing sort of general political songs, like antinuclear songs. And then I got really fascinated by interpersonal relationships and love and my whole coming out process. And still it is probably my favorite subject to think about: how people interact with each other. But once I met some of those mentors, it just became part of my thinking in a way that it hadn't before. I decided it's all right to come out and say something straight about gay people [sic] being oppressed.
Saying the L-word
GF: You weren't always okay with that, though.
ES: Early on, I didn't want to talk about our sexuality in the press. One, I was afraid, and two, I just didn't want us to be pigeon-holed as a lesbian band.
GF: Has that happened to anyone?
ES: Well I'm sure it does. Gay artists are afraid to come out, when they come out it's a big deal. I mean there's us and there's Melissa Etheridge as far as women, you know, and there's not room for the both of us, really.
GF: Do you think Melissa is identified mostly as a lesbian rocker?
ES: Hell yeah. I believe it's people's first thought about her.
GF: But she gets a lot more radio play than you guys do, so does it really hurt her?
AR: It's not a cut-and-dried thing like "Melissa gets played and you guys don't." She's much more commercial than we are, she's also much more willing to do a lot of promotional things that we wouldn't do. She's much more willing to be part of the industry and to present an image that will work.
GF: But isn't it good that she's fully out and saying, "I am a lesbian, I am playing this music that you people like." This is important to the gay community, no?
ES: Yeah, it's great. But it is still a male-dominated industry, and when you play by their rules you have to project the typical gender roles as far as your image. Tough women or women who are unpretentious, who don't project the ideals of beauty and sexuality don't get as much exposure.
GF: But don't tell me that you guys don't project some kind of sexuality.
AR: It depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to a straight man, in general, no. We don't fit into a "male-gaze" demographic, of what the male wants to see. And that's fine. There's always going to be someone who breaks through that. Melissa breaks through it, but there's not room on rock radio for Melissa and us to break through, because the programmers are like, "We're already playing Melissa, we can't play the Indigo Girls, too." And it's not just sexuality, it's also our politics. About 50 percent of what we do is activism, and the other half is music, and that's really not something that radio is interested in.
GF: What about the time that lesbian separatists raised hell when you wouldn't bar men from your concerts?
AR: That was fifteen years ago, and I was very naive. Politically, I thought we should be past that point, and that the real way to achieve equality and recognition was for everybody to be able to deal with each other. I didn't understand the reality of needing a safe space. I didn't understand that when you have a meeting and there's twenty women and one man, the man runs the meeting.
(But) there were moments when the separatists were like, "You're part of our community and you're not supporting us," and it felt very possessive to me. Just because you're gay doesn't mean you agree; it doesn't mean you think the same, it doesn't mean you're a Democrat automatically, although God knows I donn't know how you can be a Republican.
I feel like I made some mistakes out of naiveté early on. I eman, I had a girlfriend my senior year in high school, but I didn't even know what it meant to be gay. I had never heard the word before. It was all, I'm in love with this woman; it all happened naturally, so I never had a political context for it.
GF: But didn't you sense that you needed to hide it?
AR: Kind of, but I wouldn't have realized that if (my girlfriend) hadn't freaked out so much. My mother came to me and said, "People are saying this," and I was like, "Well, I am in love with Kelly, but I don't know what being gay is because we haven't slept together or anything." After there was a context for it, I did struggle with it, but that was a very brief time. And then it was just the residual self-esteem issues over time that we all struggle with. Every now and then we go, "Is something wrong with me? Was my father weird?" You know, those things we always ask ourselves and I think we always will.
GF: How much of being supportive of the community is just being out and open about it? Would you say it's a responsibility?
ES: I think it's a large part of it, but it's a personal journey. I don't believe in outing people. I can only base it on my own experience, but you shouldn't be made to come out untile you're ready. You would wish for courage for the people who are on the fence to make the decision to come out rather than to stay in the closet.
Amy to Go Solo
GF: Amy, you've made noises about doing some solo work, an album of punk and solo country songs.
AR: But they're supported by Emily, I have to make it clear. People always think if you say solo project, you're breaking up your band. I'm going to make a solo record this year. I've been wanting to for a long time and if I don't stop talking about it and just do it it's never going to happen. I'm 35 years old, I gotta get the damn thing outta my system.
The Trouble With Rock Media
GF: You've both complained about the fact the mainstream rock press ignores you. But Rolling Stone loves your new album; they wrote positively about it.
ES: They should write an article about us.
GF: But they're coming around, aren't they? They put political rockers Rage Against the Machine on the cover.
AR: They're a rock'n'roll boy band. The reason Rage is covered is not because of their politics. Rolling Stone has just never ever, ever given us the support that they've given other bands, and we've had a career that's spanned a long time, we've had a lot of success, and they just haven't paid any attention to it.
GF: What if you got on the cover?
AR: I don't know if I would do it. They're sexist and homophobic.
ES: We rub them the wrong way. It's a male-dominated business across the board.
The Gay Establishment: Thanks but No Thanks
GF: Both of you have been quoted in the past saying you have problems with the gay movement, that it's too insular.
ES: I think Amy and I really identify with the whole grassroots part of the gay movement, like the NGLTF or Youth Pride or PFLAG rather than certain groups that have very high overhead and black-tie affairs. Like the Human Rights Campaign does great work, but there's a lot of stuff I can't relate to with them just on a social level.
AR: We don't do that shit.
GF: But if you don't have a black tie in Washington, D.C., you don't have power. Don't you think the HRC has a lot more political leverage than the NGLTF?
AR: What does it matter if they have leverage if they're supporting candidates that are antichoice and antiwomen? (The HRC endorsed conservative Alfonse D'Amato in the 1998 NY Senate race.) I just don't agree with them. I think they really screwed up.
GF: So is the ideal of a gay movement with common goals a myth?
AR: I think having gay people be accepted should be the common goal of the movement.
ES: It should just be to pass legislation that protects gay people, allows them to marry, to share all the rights under the law that other citizens who aren't gay have, and then to promote equality. Ultimately it's about equality and the way that we all view and love and respect and accept each other. Those are the goals. I like other groups that have raised money for AIDS. The wealthy contingent of gay males supported things like Project Open Hand when they had people who were getting sick. Now a lot of those groups have lost a lot of their funding because the demographic has shifted to more Latino and African-American, and they're losing the support they had when the wealthier white, gay male community supported them.
GF: We've also got medications like protease inhibitors that make these guys feel like they're not sick anymore.
AR: Those are the ones who have the money to buy them.
ES: But, where does your love come from? Where does your money come from? What's your motivation? And Amy and I, we're just grassroots activists, and those are the people we feel the kinship with.
AR: It's the grassroots stuff that touches the rural areas, the areas that don't have as much exposure, or as much money. It's a class issue, to me. It's a race issue. It's a sexism issue. And sexism is a part of homophobia. And classism and racism should not exist within the ranks of gay rights groups. Given the choice, we would align ourselves with someone who's a little more radical. I mean, we don't like those black tie affairs and those money-raising things in D.C. where it's high dollars. We're not glamorous lesbians. Our visibility has been low at times because of that.
ES: But clearly, the HRC does important work. I want to be clear about that.
GF: Don't worry, I'm not going to slam HRC in your name.
AR: You can slam them in my name, I don't care. I'm so mad at them about that candidate issue in NY.
ES: Well don't slam them in my name. The gay community gets so feisty about that. "You said this about us." It's just bullshit.
AR: But you have to criticize groups you think don't live up to the goals of the community. It only helps the HRC when you say "you can't be supporting candidates that are antiwoman." And if you want to do it, I'm not going to support you. That's it. It's nothing personal. It's not a gossipy gay issue.
Midlife Crisis
GF: Emily, didn't you have your midlife crisis at 30?
AR: That was a Saturn return.
ES: What is a Saturn return?
AR: I don't know. That's what everybody calls that thing that happens.
ES: I went through a huge change around 29 or 30. Now I can't even remember what kind of change it was because I feel I've changed more over the past year or so. I can feel myself grow and there are parts that are in conflict with each other parts. I'm an activist, but I'm also a hedonist. I want to be productive, but I really at times like to do nothing at all. I can tell I have a lot more growing to do. But I feel in a very good place in my life right now. Because I'm learning and I'm just beginning to see the way things work together and the outline of the picture of where I need to go. Hopefully I'll get there. There's no one else to hold me back except myself.
GF: So what happens when you feel like you've figured it out?
ES: That'll never happen!
GF: You're in your forties and the Indigo Girls are on the lite rock station.
ES: My songs are already on the lite rock stations. Poor Amy has had to suffer through it.
AR: Naw, it's the only radio play we can get!
Indigo Mom?
GF: Do either of you have plans for family?
AR: I gotta do my solo record first. Get the solo record out of the way and then I can decide whether or not to have a baby. I don't think you should have a baby before you're 40.
I have baby fever. I don't know how I'm going to do it because there's so much else I want to do. It's a big thing, and I don't take it lightly. My sister had two kids in the last two years, and so did my brother. My sister is gay and has a partner and they thought about it for a long time and they have done it right. But I have that super confidence that I don't have to change my life very much. I'm home a lot anyway, I do all my work from home except when I'm on the road. so I'll stay off the road awhile and it'll be great. I know that's so idealistic. My sister just laughs at me. But I have a lot of energy. When I decide I want to do something, I've thought a lot about it. I'm not compulsive about things like that.
ES: I don't really have a pull ot have kids. I can't handle as much as Amy can. I freak out if I have too much going on.
AR: She's gonna take care of my kids!
GF: Will you be a single mom?
AR: Well, I have a girlfriend. We don't live together because we have a long-distance relationship, but she is very supportive. If I want to have a family and work out a way, we can somehow coparent. I'm in a position where it's easy to think about. In two years, I may just be, "You were such an idiot, Amy. You cannot give a good life to this child." But I do want to be a foster parent and try to work with troubled kids. Maybe when we retire, be a high-school teacher. I love kids, and I especially love troubled kids; I have empathy for them.
GF: But you didn't have a troubled childhood.
AR: I'm a troubled person with a very good family. I had a lot of problems growing up. I have a really good family, but I have a lot of stuff going on in my head!
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