![\"indigo-girls\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/indigo-girls.jpg\")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nAlthough it\u2019s been 26 years since the Indigo Girls scored with their 1989 folk-rock hit \u201cCloser to Fine,\u201d the Georgia-based duo\u2014Amy Ray and Emily Saliers\u2014has never stopped making music. In fact, their longest hiatus between studio albums\u2014four years\u2014ended with the release of their latest, One Lost Day<\/i>. \u201cAt this point we know what will work for an Indigo Girls album,\u201d says Ray. \u201cAt the same time, producer Jordan Brooke Hamlin worked differently than any other producer we\u2019ve used\u2014probably because she\u2019s from a generation that operates in the digital realm. No matter what though, we always put the songs before anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Secret to the Indigo Girls\u2019 longevity?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Emily and I are opposites\u2014it\u2019s clich\u00e9, but I live in the country and she lives in the city. But we have a lot of respect for each other, and we\u2019re fans of each other\u2019s music. What we have is special, so we try to protect that and not let egos get in the way. Plus we write separately, which helps.<\/p>\n
At what point do you work together?<\/b><\/p>\n
Just to arrange songs when we\u2019re working on an album. When it\u2019s time to make a record, we just feel it. This time we really felt it, because it\u2019s been four years since our last album. So when we both were ready, we started sending MP3s back and forth. Then when we get together, we write out the chord chart and lyrics for each other. Sometimes we work on the harmony first, sometimes the instruments. The melody and lyrics are done, so there\u2019s not a lot of fiddling around with those. But we might move around a chorus or a bridge and tighten things up.<\/p>\n
Do you play around with who sings what?<\/b><\/p>\n
(Laughs<\/i>) We should! I\u2019ve always thought it would be cool to write for Emily\u2019s voice. But we typically stick to our own songs because we write in our own vocal range. Emily\u2019s voice is higher, so that\u2019s one thing that dictates who sings what. Another is that when you write lyrics, you want to sing them\u2014for emotional or sentimental reasons.<\/p>\n
How do you feel about \u201cCloser to Fine\u201d?<\/b><\/p>\n
It\u2019s so old! But we still love it. Emily wrote it, but I never get tired of it. It\u2019s fun to play live because the audience always sings, and it\u2019s nice to have one song that anchors things. Even if you play a festival where people think they\u2019ve never heard you before, you play that song and they\u2019ll go, \u201cOh yeah, I know this.\u201d It\u2019s that kind of song.<\/p>\n
Ever feel pressured to create another hit?<\/b><\/p>\n
Not pressure that anyone puts on us, but we\u2019re aware of the business and that it would be good if we had a new hit. It would give us momentum and further diversify our audience. When a lot of different people hear your single, it rallies your core audience and engages people who may not be familiar with what you\u2019ve done in the past, hopefully encouraging them to seek out your new music. But it\u2019s not the be-all and end-all for us.<\/p>\n
Thoughts on the state of women in music?<\/b><\/p>\n
Women make strides and then there\u2019s a backlash, which happens over and over. Women always seem to be the exception to the rule. And that\u2019s possibly because the mainstream gatekeepers are still predominantly old white men, and it\u2019s going to be a while before they die off. (laughs<\/i>) I\u2019m sorry, because a lot of them are my generation. But I think the younger generation will move things in a different direction.<\/p>\n
\u2013Katy Kroll<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INDIGO GIRLS Decades after their first hit, they\u2019re still close\u2014and even closer to fine Although it\u2019s been 26 years since the Indigo Girls scored with their 1989 folk-rock hit \u201cCloser to Fine,\u201d the Georgia-based duo\u2014Amy Ray and Emily Saliers\u2014has never stopped making music. In fact, their longest hiatus between studio albums\u2014four years\u2014ended with the release […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[2294,7625],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15525"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15529,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15525\/revisions\/15529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}