lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: come on home

2005-07: holy listening, sojourners magazine:

stories of people and their passions and heartbreaks fill emily and amy's songs, often carried forward on scriptural images or themes. there's a line in "come on home," a track on their recent album all that we let in, that says, "there's a bag of silver for a box of nails." the imagery is simple, sharp, and cutting, full of power. for emily, the bible's imagery is a great source of inspiration. "as a songwriter, when you're thinking about the craft, you want to make things tactile. you want to evoke the senses, as much of them as possible. i couldn't think of a better way to illustrate how important love is in the way we treat each other than to think of the betrayal of jesus. the act was simple but it affected the rest of history."

"those biblical images," adds don, "are ways of reading the world and our experiences in a way that connects the personal and the intimate with the deepest mysteries of being. we forget a lot of the stories, but take one really good image, either a prophetic image that's sharp and strong, or an image about human suffering, or images about what we are yet to be - i think we're always looking for the concrete universal, the specific image that carries with it this larger sense of mystery and hope and god."

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2010-07-28: even closer to fine, the new england bay windows:

bw: live albums can be tricky. how did you decide to do one?

es: our fans really liked "1200 curfews," which was our last full-length live release. we have this group that's been recording shows over the past three years, and we thought it would be a good time to put out a live record, because we had all these live recordings at our fingertips. we knew that our fans in particular liked live recordings, and we had a lot of good recordings.

bw: the new album comes with liner notes that describe your memories from each of the concerts featured on the album. did compiling those notes bring up any old memories, and which were your favorites?

es: oh, different things. on "come on home," [pianist and accordionist] julie wolf just played incredible piano, and that struck me as an example of what she brings to us when she tours with us.

basically, each song was chosen because it sounded really good to us, and it had something special about it. and we worked really hard to make it something that fans would like. it's cool for the fans who were at the shows. it's cool as a listener to have been there and now to hear the song on the album.

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2015-08-19: es.2003, official indigo girls "a year a month blog" on tumblr:

i wrote one of my favorite songs on the record, "come on home." very rarely do i write a song that fulfills what i feel is its promise in terms of words and images locking in with the music. but "come on home" resonated with me completely and still does now. the song on the record has my favorite bass part of all time by clare kenny. i remember driving home from the studio and blasting the rough mix of that song, over and over. when i listen now, i am transported back in time. it was a year of great darkness and light.

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2015-10-17: e.s. 2004, official indigo girls "a year a month blog" on tumblr:

i love all the we let in, and getting to tour with brady, clare, and carol and play all those songs was sweet. the songs reflected the disturbances of the time, particularly the u.s. invasion of iraq, in "tether" and the title song. i was depressed by the war and bush's administration and i felt anxiety about the upcoming presidential election. i tried to make sense of the big and the small, the events of now and the huge, sweeping hand of history in "all that we let in" ("one day those toughies will be withered up and spent, the fathers, sons the holy warriors, and our president...").

i still think that "come on home" is one of my best songs, or i should say, one of the very few that i almost feel "proud" of because i was able to capture just what i wanted to say. obviously the song is rife with war imagery, suffering, and betrayal.

but my personal arc bends more towards hope and resurrection than complete despair. "free in you" was inspired by a great visit and writing session in nashville with my friend, annie roboff, and "rise up" was all positive vibe. joan osborne slayed her vocals on that one ("move your body to the music and rise up!"). incidentally, i played the lead on "rise up" with amy's high-strung guitar and, although we rarely played the song live that year and never do now, it is my favorite lead of mine.

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2018-08-24: an interview with amy ray of indigo girls, qnotes:

gs: what were the parameters that the university of colorado symphony orchestra met?

ar: number one, they're just really good. the conductor was someone we felt like we could work with on a project like this. where we could say, "we're going to need to come in and have an extra-long rehearsal, record rehearsal and then record the show, and may have to do a song over." they're grad students and community members. they're at a university, so it's not under the guidance of a union, which gives us a lot more leeway on how many times we can do a song and how long it takes. with a union symphony, they kind of changed the rules around. it used to be where you paid one set cost to record with the whole symphony. now you pay each member individually. for us, we wouldn't sell enough records to cover that. we had to find a way to record it where we could pay the symphony what they deserve, but it would be a smaller symphony and more student-oriented. in the end, it was probably a better move. they symphony was made up of grad students, community members and professional players, running the gamut of different styles and approaches. the dynamics end up being a little more engaged in a way. the players are fresher to what we're doing. some of them are younger. every orchestra we played with was amazing! it was already on another echelon from what we were doing. but the thing that makes it special with this particular symphony, and we had played with them before... as soon as we played with them, to emily i was like, "this is the one!" their dynamics are incredible. they're totally engaged. they're excited about playing. their conductor is super-easy to work with. the conductor is the key to everything. they build that bridge. we've had quite a few conductors that we really love, and gary is one of them. for me, it was a no-brainer [laughs]. we talked about it, made the arrangements, and a year later they had the time in their schedule for us to go back and have the time to do rehearsal, a show and record and work it all out.

gs: of the 22 songs chosen for the album, were there any for which the transition to an orchestral setting or arrangement proved to be more challenging than expected?

ar: yes. i would say that it depended on the symphony, too. there are songs where some symphonies would nail a song and some symphonies wouldn't. it's all about people's preferences and the way they play and the way we're playing that day. there are certain ones that are inherently more difficult, like "happy in the sorrow key." "come on home" is a pretty hard song. one of the measures of who we wanted to record with was a symphony that landed the difficult songs, too. it's not a judgment on who's better, symphony-wise. some symphonies get some songs, and others don't. or that particular night, maybe we weren't in the right vibe, so we couldn't get it; and that doesn't reflect on the symphony at all. some symphonies are just easier to play with and it's not because they're better [laughs]. is the conductor in the space that you're in? every symphony has their own symphony hall and that had a lot to do with things. the way the symphony is in that space and how you can work together as a team.