The first time I heard an Indigo Girls folk-rock anthem, I was a 19-year-old college student volunteering at an early childhood center in Durango, Colo.
A group of us spent our spring break working with children served by the Head Start program, many of whom were part of the Southern Ute Indian tribe. Among our group there was a student who played the guitar and two others with vocal ranges that harmonized beautifully. We were in that phase of life when young people are trying to figure out who they are and what they are meant to do.
It was just a matter of time before we were singing along to the melody and countermelody of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers’ biggest commercial hit: “Closer to Fine.” Back then, as a person of deep faith wrestling with the big questions in life, I felt those lyrics in a spiritual way, especially when sung by my peers. They spoke to my own search for meaning. At that age, music feels so vital and personal that it imprints upon your experiences, becoming the soundtrack to your memories.
I recently had the chance to talk to Saliers, now 61, who wrote the 1989 hit song. I asked her what, decades later, has brought her closer to fine.
“Sobriety and not feeling like I have to stick to a doctrine to be a person of faith,” she said. She reflected on how much her faith has formed her and the ways it intersects with her intellectual understanding and personal growth.
The groundbreaking Indigo Girls have spent their careers and lives as artist-activists, supporting causes including gay rights, reproductive rights, the environment and the rights of Indigenous peoples. I was curious about how the journey had changed Saliers, and even more so about how she has managed to stay so earnest, engaged and hopeful despite the painfully slow pace of change.
She said she gets away from the despair rampant on social media and seeks the company of those in the trenches, doing the hardest work. She talked about working with people like Camille Bennett, founder and executive director of Project Say Something, a nonprofit working for reproductive justice and to dismantle white supremacist narratives in Alabama.
“She’s trying to help women in their real lives in rural Alabama,” Saliers said. “I want to hang out with people like her.”
‘Kept showing up’
I called Bennett to find out how their friendship began. She said the Indigo Girls reached out to her organization in 2020, when the nonprofit had been protesting for months to relocate Confederate monuments in Florence, Ala.
As a Gen X, Southern Black woman, Bennett had had friends in high school who were Indigo Girls fans, but she wasn’t familiar with their music. Well aware of the disconnect between Black feminism and mainstream feminism, she said she wondered what these white women were really about.
“They just kept showing up,” she said. They wanted to learn and support the movement she was building. “They protested with us. They did a Zoom with us. They did a concert for us,” she said.
In the process, Bennett discovered songs that resonated deeply with her. In “Look Long,” the lyrics call out the forces she is fighting against — fascism, racism, sexism, inequality and poverty.
“But then, they ask us to cling to faith and hope,” Bennett said. “I was bawling my eyes out.”
I had a few moments like that when I attended their recent concert at St. Louis Music Park in Maryland Heights, part of their current nationwide tour. At the show, thousands of fans, mostly women, traveled back in time to when they first heard many of these songs.
Amy and Emily rocked out in front of a backdrop screen of bookshelves filled with banned books. They never called out any politicians by name, although Emily mentioned that a woman would be on the ballot for president — to a roar of approval from the audience. They let their lyrics offer whatever political commentary the listeners wanted to hear.
For those of us in midlife, they showed us that your bodies, your faces, even your voices will change as your power, wisdom and strength grow. I remembered the idealistic young woman I was when I was introduced to their music. They were as humble and fierce as I might have imagined decades ago.
I finally realized that we aren’t trying to get to a destination of ultimately being “fine.” It’s OK to struggle to figure out how you can make the community around you better — for everyone.
It’s that journey that brings you closer.
