It was like they were saying, ‘Shawn, it’s OK. I had a contract with the Army to fulfill, but seeing the Girls’ success really inspired me to choose the Reserves over regular Army. I hadn’t been in touch with Amy or Emily in a couple of years. “I was at a military college and writing songs, but feeling stuck. “When I first heard it on the radio and saw the video on MTV, I knew that my friends had ‘made it,'” Mullins recounts. Such was their connection, he remembers the first time he ever heard “Closer To Fine” break wider. Though deeply inspired by her songs, his career path took a detour into the military before settling into music. They struck up a friendship on the spot and kept in touch thereafter. Mullins first met Ray when she played and spoke at his high school. Indeed, the Indigo Girls helped lead Atlanta-based singer/songwriter Shawn Mullins to his truth. The song’s lyrical resolution - “The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine” - is a testament to the spiritual notion that we each have all the truth and wisdom we need right here inside of us and, the more we look for it outside ourselves, the further we get from it. Once again, that questioning spirit of hers comes barreling through, as she turns over every rock, from the insight of sages to the council of children, understanding that the most complete answer to anything is never under just one of them. She had just graduated from college and was ruminating on a world of academia that seems fraught with seemingly sure-footed answers that often fail to be full. Kicking off the set was “Closer To Fine,” written by Saliers on a porch in Vermont while vacationing with her family. That hard work came to fruition on this wonderful album.”
However, I’ve seen how hard they work, since their humble beginnings, to make it sound effortless. “Their vocals sound naturally intuitive, and I’m sure a lot of it is, at this point. “ is now a classic largely because it captured the essence of that thing Amy and Emily have always done so well: vocal harmony weaving through well-written, sincere songs,” Malone contends. Carefully yet intuitively arranged harmonies bob and weave throughout the collaboration, with Ray providing ballast to Saliers’ buoyancy.Īs part of their inner circle, blues singer Michelle Malone watched the Indigo Girls up-close and early on. While they wrote (and continue to write) separately, their voices joining together has always been where the magic happened.
As the daughter of a theologian and a librarian, Saliers was instilled with a questioning spirit early on. “Love’s Recovery,” for example, has stood the test of time as a classic Saliers composition in which she looks at a love from every angle, acknowledging its faults and flaws, while still uplifting its heart and hope. Her physical voice, at that time, was cloudier than it’s sounded in more recent years, but her metaphorical voice was as heart-achingly romantic as ever. On her four contributions, Saliers’ lighter touch serves as a counterweight to Ray’s fiery passion. Taking six of the 10 songs - including “Secure Yourself,” “Kid Fears,” and “Blood And Fire” - Ray puts her husky alto to work digging through the rubble of who she was and is, in order to figure out who she wants to be in relation to the world around her. The album, therefore, is brimming with explorations both sacred and mundane. On its way to selling more than two million copies, the latter also nabbed the Girls a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, as well as a nomination for Best New Artist, which they lost, rather memorably, to Milli Vanilli.Īt the time of Indigo Girls’ writing and recording, Ray and Saliers were in their early 20s, wrestling with the faith, fear, family, and fidelity that is part and parcel of moving into adulthood with a seeker’s soul and a Southern upbringing. and Tracy Chapman got them signed to Epic Records, which led to the re-release of their Strange Fire LP on followed by the self-titled album on Febru30 years ago today. The two had been friends since elementary school, eventually gigging around the Atlanta area, playing punk clubs and community pubs.
Though it wasn’t their debut album, the Indigo Girls’ 1989 eponymous release might as well have been, as it was the first thing most people outside of their hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, ever heard by the duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers.
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