lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: land of canaan

emily saliers quote from 1994-03: the indigo girls: the musical ties that bind, performing songwriter:

"i love her old standby upbeat songs like 'land of canaan.' i'll never get tired of playing that song, even though she does."

----------

amy ray quote from 1999-12-17: transcription, yahoo chat:

"that was just the basic unrequited love song. someone was cheating on me."

----------

2014-04-29: ar.1989, official indigo girls "a year a month blog" on tumblr

the record came out in march of '89, and then we hit the road. we did a bunch of shows opening for rem, and this launched our success. at the time, this kind of touring slot was invaluable to a band. it was a type of exposure you couldn't get any other way. there was no internet, so in order to play in front of a larger audience, you had to open for someone big or get a break at radio or tv. the rem tour led to so many opportunities for us, there would be no way to overstate the importance of the help they gave us. they treated us super well on tour and showed us the ropes. sometimes michael would come out and sing "kid fears," which would help tame the audience a bit. we did pretty well, but we were playing big arenas as an acoustic duo, opening for a superstar rock band on the rise, so it was pretty scary most nights. one night someone threw a bunch of m&m's at us during "land of canaan." it pissed me off and made me play twice as fast. most nights, i would pray that michael would show up and sing with us in the set, so people would take us seriously and i wouldn't be so nervous. it's a real game changer when you're opening for someone and they come out and sing or play during your set. to this day, a lot of folks that support our music still tell me that they first heard us when we opened for rem!