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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (June 26, 2008)
music BY SUZI STEFFEN How Much Have You Grown? A Q&A with the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray W hen my sister and brother started coming home from church camp in 1991 playing the fi rst Indigo Girls album incessantly, I resisted. Then I gave in, after some discussion. Them: “Did you know they were lesbians?” Me: “Did you know they were Christians?” Equal amounts of disgust there, but we all kept on listening. Turns out that both Emily Saliers and Amy Ray kept on producing albums as well, sometimes together, sometimes solo. Ray has the stronger solo career, with her punk sound and her own record label, and both of them continue with various forms of activism, especially focusing on the environment, Native American rights and issues, LGBT youth and recovery from disasters like Katrina. Ray, a generous interviewee (and now a self-described “Pagan for Jesus”), spoke with EW about her career, activism, the elections and the Indigo Girls fi nding themselves major-label free. were brought up with from our parents, where you engage with your community. With church and youth camps, we were learning this whole idea of what’s happening around you and doing soup kitchens, homeless shelter work, AIDS work, environmental work. [As we became more successful,] we saw what we were doing as a tool to raise money and bring people together and take part in some community way. If we weren’t playing music, we’d still be engaged in the activism world. At this point, activism gives us energy. You have a new album coming out this summer on Daemon Records, right? Yes, August 5. [Didn’t It Feel Kinder] is a solo record. The Indigo Girls just fi nished one too, and it will come out in January or February. I think I like this album the best of all the ones I’ve done. Greg Griffi th produced it. I’d never worked with a producer in solo projects. It challenged me and brought me up a notch. I had free rein to create cool stuff. With my solo stuff, I have a little baby solo career, and so I have to really like it; it has to be a labor of love. For those who are perhaps new fans, could you talk about Honor the Earth (www.honorearth.org)? HTE is an organization that funds Native-led environmental action and also Native groups that do cultural sustainability. We raise money and give grants to existing groups that need money for gas to go to a blockade or for a recycling program in their community or doing something big like protesting uranium mines. We helped start it in the mid ’90s with Winona LaDuke, and it has grown beyond me and Emily. We don’t make decisions or sit on the board; we’re the mouthpieces or the amplifi ers, and we use our fan community to build support. It seems like you and Emily have felt a responsibility to a variety of people and causes. Where do you think that urge comes from? I don’t think we feel it as an obligation in a burdensome way. It was a thing we Musicians are supposed to be ironic and cool, but being an activist means you have to be earnest. How do you reconcile those demands? I think you can be ironic and earnest, actually, at different times, but really, we just can’t reconcile it. [Emily and I] are never going to be cool because we don’t care about that. What we care about is beyond who’s cool and who’s not, who’s on the cover of Spin. When you’re working with the Zapatistas, or you’re in New Orleans doing a Hurricane Katrina owned by Disney? No, we’re not anymore because we got dropped. We’re happy about it. It was a good moment for me. I felt like we were really not happy with that situation. We liked the people, but on a business level, they weren’t doing a good job. What’s going to change? Nothing. Mitchell Froom was still planning on doing our new record, and we recorded a record. It’s mixed; it’s ready to go, but we wanted to have some time to fi gure out a business plan. Obviously, we’re going to stay independent and do it ourselves. Who are some musicians you’re listening to right now? I have a band that I love that I worked with on my solo record: Arizona. These guys are awesome. They play this music that’s like a combination of The Shins and The Who. They’re super-smart and nerdy in the best way possible. They’re coming out with a new record in the fall. What are your thoughts on November’s election? workshop, cool goes out the door. When Well, we have voter fraud, and we’re you’re looking at the people who have run by something that has to do with lost their houses and their culture, cool corporations, but I still believe we affect just goes out the window. the system, I really do, because I’ve And we know that we’re queer and worked on issues and won battles that these kind of unimaginable women shouldn’t have been won if the system who are what we are, and that’s never was completely in charge. I do believe we going to go over well in a white straight can affect change. I have a lot of hope; male media. Ever. I struggle with it on a I think Obama could political level. Why is it win, and I think he can so fucked up? Why does Indigo Girls, be a great leader, and it have to be that way? I Brandi Carlisle I’m gonna be so relieved see younger friends who 7 pm Friday, June 27 when George Bush gets should have access, but Secret House Vineyards, out of that White House. they still don’t. When Veneta Obama’s this visionary; you start talking about $33 adv., $36 door if something really bad that versus activism, the happened, tons of voter activism part feels so fraud and corruption and he wasn’t able much better than the other part of our to win, I think people would rise up. He career. It’s fun, it’s successful, it matters commands that kind of revolutionary more than whether you’re on the cover spirit in people. Obama’s got something of some magazine or not. about him that just makes people feel like they can win, and they’re not going Can you believe you’re signed to a to accept anything else. label (Hollywood Records) that’s ew Drinking? 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