lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: center stage

1988-02-03: down home, the atlanta journal constitution:

indigo girls, caroline aiken, michelle malone and kevin kinney of drivin' 'n' cryin' will perform for "at home in atlanta," a benefit for our house inc. at 8:30 p.m. feb. 17 at center stage theatre. our house is a new day shelter for homeless children in dekalb county. tickets, $10, are available at the center stage box office and seats.

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1988-09-09: night beat, the atlanta journal constitution:

atlanta's indigo girls will begin work on their debut lp for epic records after performing sept. 16 at the center stage theatre. dede vogt wi ll open. $6 advance and $8 the day of the show.

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1988-09-xx: indigo girls sign major label deal; plan concert, (unknown):

the indigo girls have not only taken a scary step signing with a major label but they are also trying something a little different from the normal bar playing.

on sept. 16, amy and emily will be getting away from smokey bars and your typical bar sound system to perform at atlanta's center stage with great stage lights and a fabulous sound system.

"we are trying to break away from bars and see if we can still be successful," said ms. ray.

amy and emily are taking a different approach to their upcoming performance in that, according to ms. ray, they are rehearsing and making sure everything is "tight".

"it's going to be a lot different from our bar shows. we are arranging the songs in an order that will make them flow well; that way the concert will be more enjoyable for the listeners."

for long time fans of the indigo girls this could very well be a night to remember. ms. ray said they are planning to do songs that they don't often do in bars, and songs they haven't done for a while, such as "never should have crossed your path".

amy is planning to play some songs using her 12-string guitar which is a "treat" that listeners don't get to hear to often.

one or possibly two surprises at this friday's concert will be that amy and emily will be performing new songs that fans have never heard. "we will be doing a new song that emily has written and if we can get things together in time then we will also perform a song that i recently wrote."

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1989-12-06: indigo girls - wow! hot young georgia pair exudes firepower and charisma, the seattle times:

the dark-haired, self-assured ray was the more impassioned of the two. her singing was raw, hard and all-out, and she snapped guitar strings one after the other with her rough attack. when her guitar went out of tune during her one solo, "blood and fire," she stopped playing, grabbed the microphone and wailed the song a cappella, earning a cheering, stomping, standing ovation. it was the most electrifying moment of an incandescent concert.

strawberry-haired, soft-spoken saliers had her moments, too, especially when she sang the high end of stirring duets on such songs as "land of canaan" and "closer to fine." not only did their voices blend perfectly, their guitar duets were also in sync, especially during the powerful "center stage."

the two were so finely attuned that, when they talked, they finished each other's sentences. explaining they were "spacey" and "ragged" because they just returned from europe, saliers observed, "it's different over there," and ray added, without missing a beat, "there's nothing to eat."

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1997-09: no boundaries - indigos girls cut loose, acoustic guitar:

jpr: both of your guitar styles have evolved quite a bit over the last ten years. how do you think your playing has developed?

ar: obviously, we use a lot more tunings than we used to. i think all we used when we started was open d. and then emily would use some joni mitchell-type tunings.

es: mary chapin carpenter taught me a couple of tunings, but i didn't start using them until 'galileo' [rites of passage (the tuning is d a d g b c, the same as for carpenter's 'the moon and st. christopher,' with a capo at the fifth fret)].

ar: and i just turned to tunings as an alternative, you know, to have fun with it. 'center stage' [from 'indigo girls'] was in open d. i remember hearing the b-52s, that guy ricky [wilson] - he died. he played every song they had in a different tuning. he never played anything in a standard tuning, and i just remember thinking about that - it was really inspiring. the guitar became an endless spectrum at that point. i'm not a really good guitar player, so to change tunings opens up new worlds for me.

es: we try to make it as expansive as we possibly can with just the two of us, not just for the sake of being expansive, but because it's more than gratifying than, 'let's just play the same chords.' personally, i used to play much more jazz-oriented chords and was really influenced by this local singer-songwriter. and then i found after a while emotionally i just couldn't get as much out of playing that way. in some ways it's a lot easier technically to play in a more aggressive style, and emotionally it's much more accessible.