Interview with Indigo Girls

Your show at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, 20 years ago, was my very first concert. Do you remember your first concerts?

Emily Saliers (ES): John Denver.

Amy Ray (AR): Gosh, I think mine may have been John Denver too. Probably the same show. Wow, we were at the same show and didn't even know it.

The two of you don't write your lyrics together. What kind of setting do you each seek out when you're writing?

ES: I need a quiet setting. I write a lot at home. My past couple of songs I wrote at the beach. I sort of need quiet for my mind to work well. I seek out that type of setting, something that's familiar and that's kind of quiet.

AR: I'm sort of the opposite, of course. I write lyrics in my journal. I try to do that every day when I'm in a writing phase, which is 60 per cent of the year, I write four or five days a week. When I do the actual writing, jotting down as many things as I can to keep me going, I either need to be listening to music or riding on a bus, or anywhere that there's a lot going on – like a restaurant – it makes me feel calm, my mind just goes and I can write stuff. But when I'm actually working on the song itself I usually take about two hours a day and just sit in a room and have nothing else to do and make myself work.

You've both covered a broad range of topics. Has there ever been a subject you just could not make work?

AR: Wow, good question.

Why, thank you!

ES: Oh God, all the time! It's a very humbling experience to write a song. It's very rare for me that I actually get it, I always really want to get it. It's elusive, you know. So, that happens all the time. And sometimes you just have to leave a song behind. I'll start a song and get excited about it, but just cannot make it happen. So I just let it go.

AR: I think sometimes it's hard to write about a relationship that's going really well. That's something that I work on from time to time. It can be a friendship, it can be my lover, but I can be trying to work on a song that's about something that's really upbeat and not that complex, which I think is harder to do, trickier sometimes. So for me, that, and oftentimes there are political issues that are hard to write about without being too didactic and too preachy.

Any examples?

AR: A lot of the Native environmental work we've done has been hard to write about because it's so specific and there's a lot of facts and images, and you don't want to do a disservice, because you're working with these activists that are your mentors. You want to write about it in a way that really captures it, and that's accurate. So that has been really hard for me. I haven't really been able to reflect all of the work that we've done in Native issues in songwriting. I'll try to write something and it'll start sounding hokey, or not have the gravity it deserves. So that's something I try to write about in my lyric journal, just to see if there's something I can come up with. Lately I've been thinking that I should try to frame it in a more rhythmic style, almost the way Zack de la Rocha used to write [for] Rage Against the Machine about issues, where it's more of a hip-hoppy, rhythmic sort of language and it gives you a framework to talk about something.

You've performed with tons of amazing musicians. Are there still any you would kill to perform with?

ES: Lots still: Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Mary J Blige, Jay-Z…those are just some of the ones that come to mind.

AR: I would absolutely love for André [3000] from OutKast to produce a record for us, or just one song. Like when you start talking about hip-hop stuff, that's just one person that's from Atlanta [Georgia], who I think is brilliant, and I would love to see what he would do with us, and certain songs we have that are a little more rhythmic, and see how he could make that happen.

If you haven't already been told, Singapore is all about food. Is there anything you've tried during your first trip here that made an impression?

ES: I had conch last night, but they were little. Conch, typically from our part of the world, have big shells and are cooked Caribbean-style. This was very different. They were only about [gestures with hands] that big and in this unbelievable sauce with hot chillis, just orgasmic sauce! I've never eaten conch like that before. So that was something new.

AR: I haven't tried anything new yet because I am so addicted to Thai food. I just wanted to eat that kind of food on this side of the world where it's going to be really good. So I even ate at Thai Express last night and it was awesome, I don't know how it rates, but even that place was really good. It was inexpensive too. I had a really good green curry. I eat Thai food all the time. I'm going to eat Indian food in a couple of days and I'm looking forward to that too.

Any issues performing in a city that does not support gay rights?

AR: Well, I had heard a lot about that before we came, from a few gay activist friends of mine in Atlanta. I guess it's kind of like when we were in Cuba. In Cuba the government is really oppressive about gay issues as well, but the people aren't. So for me it's like when people say, how do you feel about going to the Deep South where people are all racist, and there's probably actually legislative racism. But there's enclaves of non-racism and progressiveness and radical left people and incredible integration. So I try to overlook the government. Because I don't feel repressed when I'm here.

ES: And they're still hanging people in Iran. So all over the world, the oppression of gay people is still rampant. Some cultures are more virulent about it and it will take a long time.

AR: But you don't get a sense that people are looking at you and thinking: You're a bad person for being gay. They just haven't caught up in a lot of places, and our government really hasn't either, for that matter.

You decided to make your new album Poseidon and the Bitter Bug [on sale 24 March] an independent release – something you haven't done since Strange Fire in 1987. How was this different from working with a record label?

ES: We had a smaller budget, so we had to be more expedient about getting it done. And you know, Mitchell Froom, he cut us a break by producing the record, just in terms of budget and time. Also, we're so excited to be independent, because it's so exhilarating to go into the studio and work really hard and quickly, and not belabour the decision-making process. So there's a sort of immediacy to the songs that just serve the record really well. So we're just in a good frame of mind to be on our own, everybody in the camp pitched in, took less…so that was just sort of the working environment. It was awesome.

AR: Technically it just means that you set up an infrastructure through your office where you hire a press person, and you hire a marketing person, and so on. But we have access to a distributor who distributes our records separately from our own little label. It's not that different from being on a major label when you're dissatisfied with the way they're doing things and you create your own infrastructure and start hiring your own people, which is what we were doing. It's kind of like you just create a team. A team of people to take care of each job and you draw them from different places.

What should people be expecting from the new album?

ES: Mitchell Froom plays more keyboards on the band version, he sort of became a band member, which is great because we love the way he plays. He's amazing. So there's that sonic difference. And it's a double release, so there are songs done with the band and songs we did with just me and Amy sitting around a bunch of microphones playing acoustic instruments. So that's kind of cool, because fans will get to hear those songs as they would just after she and I arranged them, and then get to hear them with bass, drums and keyboard.

AR: And I think Emily's songwriting on this one, if I can speak for you, has some moments that go into a really different place then she's been before, sonically, rhythmically and melodically, and that's kind of cool. After all these years it's hard to do that, so it's quite an accomplishment.

ES: I just want to be black.

AR: [Laughs] But that's not what it sounds like. It doesn't sound like you're trying to be black. It just sounds good. We focus on harmony and that's what we want to focus on. But the whole point is to evolve as songwriters, which I think we did. So in that way, for me, it feels like a better record than the last ones – well, I like the last ones too – but it just feels better, there's just something about it that hangs together more cohesively and much more melodically, and has a richness that is often hard to come across and I think that Mitchell really helped us find that this time.

ES: It feels comfortable in your own skin.

AR: But who knows, we'll probably change our mind in a month.

On a final note, any songs that fans shout for during concerts and you think: I cannot sing that again?

AR: There are songs that we don't remember sometimes, that people yell out. Like 'Blood and Fire', we don't remember that.

ES: Someone yelled out one the other day that was a good song for us, but we just hadn't practised [it] in a really long time. AR: It's really rare that people yell out a song that we don't want to do. It's just a matter of, did we practise it? Are we ready to play it?