lifeblood: listlogs: 2008v10n124-news

ig-news-digest friday, june 13 2008 volume 10 : number 124

today's subjects:
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[ig-news] little rock show review from arkansas online [sherlyn koo <sher]
[ig-news] seattlest emily interview [sherlyn koo <sherlyn@pixelopolis.com]

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date: fri, 13 jun 2008 11:26:56 +1000
from: sherlyn koo <sherlyn@pixelopolis.com>
subject: [ig-news] little rock show review from arkansas online

hey folks,

here's a review of the little rock show, from arkansas online. you can
read it online at
http://www2.arkansasonline.com/news/2008/jun/12/music-review-indigo-girls-carlile-form-po-20080612/?subscriber/national.

cheers,
sherlyn

- ---begin forwarded article---
arkansas online
music review: indigo girls, carlile form powerful trio

by yavonda chase

thursday, june 12, 2008

little rock b the indigo girls marked their first concert in little rock
with a performance at robinson center music hall that mixed old songs with
new, providing enough hits for the casual listener and old gems for the
diehard fan.

and when opening act brandi carlile joined the indigo girls onstage for the
first of many times during tuesday night's concert, the laid--back crowd
was treated to more than a typical show -- they got a musical
collaboration.

indigo girls' amy ray and emily saliers never missed a beat when joined by
carlile. their tight harmonies merely became richer with the addition of a
third vocalist.

the night was about women. with just three guys backing up carlile, men
were slightly outnumbered on the stage and vastly outnumbered in an
audience that spanned generations. about 1,200 attended, robinson officials
said.

the indigo girls have been around since 1985. that left them a lot of
ground to cover in nearly two hours.

while applause was generous for older songs such as "world falls" and "hope
alone," and ample for unreleased tunes including "sugar tongue" and the
gorgeous "fleet of hope," it was the hits that shook the audience out of
their stupor.

"power of two," turned into a singalong, while the upbeat "get out the
map," featured ray on the mandolin, saliers on the banjo and accompanist
julie wolf on the accordion.

"shame on you," pulled a few more crowd members onto their feet, but it
wasn't until "closer to fine," which featured the indigo girls, wolf,
carlile, twin brothers tim and phil hanseroth and josh neumann on cello,
that the crowd finally let itself go.

the crowd's more energetic vibe continued through the encore of "tried to
be true," "rock and roll heaven's gate" and of course "galileo."

carlile, whose songs have found a wider audience thanks to exposure on
grey's anatomy, had plenty of fans in the little rock crowd. her powerful
voice, reminiscent of a smoother emmylou harris, and introspective songs
provided a great kick--start for the night. and when she covered johnny
cash's "folsom prison blues," she assured her place in the crowd's favor.

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date: fri, 13 jun 2008 11:29:29 +1000
from: sherlyn koo <sherlyn@pixelopolis.com>
subject: [ig-news] seattlest emily interview

hey folks,

here's an emily article from seattlest. you can read it online at
http://seattlest.com/2008/06/11/where_seattlest_interviews_indigo_g_1.php...

cheers,
sherlyn

- ---begin forwarded article---
june 11, 2008
where seattlest interviews indigo girl emily saliers

emily saliers, indigo girls
when seattlest was just a wee lesbian growing up in a small southern town,
we did what we reckon other wee small-town lesbians did: we listened to a
lot of k.d. lang and the indigo girls. we went on long road trips across
the whole state with the windows down, our other closeted friends with us,
singing "galileo" at the top of our lungs. ah, those good ol' days of
closeted small-town life.

it's been 20 years since the indigo girls' debut album hit stores (back
when you could get it on cassette). since then, they've released several
other albums, have launched a cooperative indie record label, written
books, and traveled the world. their latest album, despite our differences,
highlighted their differing songwriting techniques, and they've just
finished recording its follow-up, due out in february.

so what do a duo of lesbian folksingers from the suburbs of atlanta, ga,
have to do with seattle? they'll be playing at the zoo on june 29balso,
as luck would have it, the last day of seattle pride weekend. tickets,
according to the zootunes site, are sold outbyou snooze, you lose. but,
in the meantime, here's what indigo girl emily saliers had to say when
seattlest got her on the phone this week (full interview after the cut):

it's been 20 years since you made your first recordbthat's kind of a
milestone. not a lot of bands get that far. what's your secret to staying
together for 20 years?

i think it's a lot of different things. first and foremost, we're like
family. we grew up together, we've been together since we were in
elementary school. the trajectory of our lives followed the same pathbwe
went to the same schools, we ended up graduating from the same college, so
we have proximity on our side. from the very beginning, we had sort of a
yin-yang thing coming together with the music, because amy was very good at
holding together the rhythm and rocking out, she had a lower voice and i
had a higher voice, and i was more of a finger-picking style guitar player.
so, musically, we just had this combination of what we brought to the group
that worked well. she writes her own songs, i write my own songs, so we
have that creative autonomy...despite our differences, what's kept us
together is that we're very old friends, we're family. we have a very good
democracy and we know how to work it and when to take breaks. we live very
separate lives, we have different projects we work on apart from the indigo
girls. we come back to do what we do, and we're always happy to be back
together doing it, so it's worked out well. it's pretty amazing, though,
it's a long time to be working with somebody. especially in a band.

what about the collaboration still inspires you? or is it just the fact
that it does feel like family now and it's just what you do?

well, i mean we have the most amazing fans. they're incredible. they just
keep coming back to the shows, thank god. we can take it for granted that
we just have a very, very loyal following. so that's inspiring to know that
we have that. but, in terms of music, i really like amy's songs a lot. we
just finished recording a new studio album that'll come out in february, by
the way. and, it doesn't take anything to be inspired by that, really. she
brings good songs to the table and i bring her mine, and she likes mine.
it's just nice to work.

we spend a lot of time arranging [our songs]. we're very careful going
about different permutations of harmonies and instruments and what we can
best bring to the songs. so, it's a creative process that's very involved
and also inspiring. and it's just fun. it's fun to play music and it's fun
to arrange songs. i don't get tired of it. you know, every night that we
play music, we make a fresh set list, so we're not playing songs we don't
want to play. we're playing songs we chose for that night, for that very
concert. and we also try to honor requests so we can stay fresh. and we
also trust the process. we've done it so long, we know what works and how
to keep ourselves inspired.

yeah, i was going to say about requestsbi've never been to one of your
shows where people weren't screaming out requests the whole time. i wonder
if that's something that ever gets old, or if it's just nice to know so
many people are touched by so many of your songs?

no, it doesn't get old. the only thing is that we feel guilty if sometimes
we don't know them [anymore], or we can't fit them in. but, no, it's great
that people are participating. we try to put in as many requests as we can
that people are calling out. but there always has to be a limit. when we
make the set list, we try to be comprehensive in terms of covering our
discography; or now we have new songs, we're playing some of the new songs
that are on the record that people haven't heard yet. so, we try to make it
a good balance. hopefully we cover most of those requests in the set list
already. if not, we'll try to put them in as best we can.

about despite our differences, that seems to be a record about keeping the
faith and endurance. is there a part of that that comes out of your
collaboration over the last 20 years, or is that more of a generality about
where these songs were coming from at that point in time?

i think that definitely plays into it. you don't always knowbeven if you
write the songbyou don't necessarily know what it's about or what's got
into it. sometimes you do, obviouslybyou have the content you're working
on, you try to shape it and have it make sense and be effective and
well-craftedbbut there are all kinds of things that go into a song that
you may not even realize until you get some perspective on it through time,
look back on it. that's happened to me a lot. i think i'm writing the song
about someone else, but then i get some space and some time, and i look
back on it and think wow, i just wrote a song about me and didn't realize
it. i'm sure our collaboration and our history and our friendship and all
those things play into that spirit of keeping on going and keeping the
faith.

let's talk a little about this book you wrote with your dad about music and
spiritualitybwhich, as a musician, seems to go hand in hand. however,
this stirred up a little controversy. can you talk about that a bit?

which controversy are you talking about?

just people getting upset that...i was looking at some articles where
people were upset about having you come talk to their church.

oh, yeah it was a big gathering of united methodist women and there was
just a small faction, a conservative faction within that body who took
issue with my sexuality. but it was one of those things, and this has
happened to us beforebnot in this contextbbut all these people, like
over a thousand people wrote emails about their support of me being there.
so, just an overwhelming response to that was a positive one and a
welcoming one. it was just a small, small group and they had their say, but
it overall turned out to be a good performance and a welcoming one. but,
you know, that's the church.

my experience with the church has been mostly a positive one, because i'm
running in more liberal circles. i'm part of a progressive church that
doesn't take issue with sexuality, that's going to ordain gay people and
the change is going to come, but it's going to be slow. but there's always
going to be people who are more fundamentalist and conservative who'll have
their issues. it's a bummer to me, it can be hurtful and i don't really
understand it, but that's just the reality.

but over the last 20 years...when you first came out, that was before ellen
came out, before this big cultural shift that we've gone through over the
last 10 years. your records have soundtracked so many people's coming out
process. but, have you seen a big change? how do you feel about how far
we've come? obviously we still have a ways to go.

that's how i look at it. i feel we've come a long way in a short period of
time, but i still feel like we've got a long way to go. i mean, that's
evolution. if you look at the history of civil rights movements, there's a
long, long period of oppression and injustice, eventually protection comes
through the law, but there's still prejudice after that. it's the
unfortunate reality that people are prejudiced and can be hateful and judge
people. but it hasn't been that long since stonewall, and we've made great
strides. especially in the entertainment industry with people like ellen
having their shows and being out, that's very important.

you have people fighting in the courts in california, who are saying it's
okay for same-sex couples to marry. that was a beautiful, big day, you
know, i remember that day hearing about it. but then immediately you have
the onslaught of people putting it on the ballot so that they can ban it
constitutionally. so it's sort of a two steps forward, one step back
[thing]. that's just the reality of the evolution of civil rights. but,
we'll get there. it takes a lot of work and a lot of perseverance.

you guys have done a lot of work for a lot of different issues and causes
over the years. how do you decide what you're going to support and what
you're going to write about? and do you struggle with writing those topical
songs?

the songs, obviously, certain songs have elements of politics or social
issues, and then some of them don't. in fact, most of them probably don't.
i mean, they could just be songs about other things, questioning what it
means to be human, how we treat each other and stuff like that. i think you
can extend that to the realm of social issues, but we just write about
whatever's on our mind at the time.

as far as the other question, it's hard to say no because there's a lot of
great groups out there that are working, that need support. we tend to
support grass-roots groups. we know that the money that's being raised is
being spent affectively, not a lot of overhead or unnecessary cost....we
pick grass-roots groups that are being effective on the ground. they're out
there making changes, we look at their histories and what they're involved
in.

most of our work has been done with a group called honor the earth. they
work with indigenous communities who are primarily fighting environmental
battles. we've done work trying to stop nuclear waste dumping on indian
land, or coal mining, putting up new power plants and things like that. you
know, a lot of indian people were pushed to different places to live and,
it turns out, they're sitting on all these [natural] resources that are
getting exploited by big companies. a lot of those communities don't have a
very strong political voice. so, early on, amy and i decided we couldn't
see environmentalism except through the lens of the indigenous perspective,
because they're land-based people. so these grass-roots groups were trying
to protect the earth, and we just felt a kinship in our spirits with that
kind of environmentalism. that's how we picked that group.

so, what's your favorite thing to do in seattle?

i like to go running down by the water. i like to go to the market and just
walk around. i love oysters, so i always eat oysters when i'm in seattle. i
have friends out there, so we get together and just walk around, but i love
being down by the water. i miss the days when we played at the pier. that
was one of my favorite venues in the whole country.

yeah, i've heard talk that they're thinking about bringing it back.

i have, too. i hope they do. i miss the sound of the tinkling masts, and
the clinking of the people on the boats and just that balmy weather. it's
just great memories. but seattle's one of my favorite cities in the whole
country. it's just an amazing place for so many reasons. we always have a
good time while we're there.

by kim ruehl in arts & events

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end of ig-news-digest v10 #124
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