Amy Ray of Indigo Girls has been penning songs for decades now. The duo had a major hit with the song Closer to Fine in the late 1980s and have continued to write and tour in the years since. Amy has also established herself as a solo artist releasing seven studio albums and three live records on her own. Her musical style is best described as folk-rock, both as the duo and a solo artist. Throughout her career she has sought to bring elements of activism into her tunes. She has been a stalwart voice for the LGBTQ community, but also writes about disenfranchised people from all walks of life. She has established a loyal fanbase over the years and continues to write songs with her people in mind.
She will be bringing her music to our region playing in Grass Valley this Friday, January 19.
The song Closer to Fine was included in the movie Barbie last year, which became a cultural phenomenon. What is it like to be the force behind a song that has managed to become part of the cultural consciousness not once, but twice?
“Well, it was definitely, like a total surprise to have that happen. Greta Gerwig is such a great director, we were just excited to be part of what she was doing. You know, we’re just thrilled with it and everything. We noticed in our audience, some more young people and people asking for the song, and singing along and that was really cute and interesting. And it’s one of those weird things where you can’t really chase after it, it just happens and you’re lucky,” Ray said.
Her most recent solo album, If It All Goes South, came out in the fall of 2022. This album sees Ray reflecting on her Southern roots as a native of Georgia and features collaborations with other female songwriters from the modern folk/Americana scene. She teamed up with Brandi Carlile, Allison Russell, the band I’m With Her, and HC McEntire. The song Tear It Down is about the history of tense race relations in the South and she asked Allison Rusell to sing with her on this one.
“I wrote that song during the pandemic, when a lot of the demonstrations and protests were going on” Ray said, “ I had gotten involved with a group called Project Say Something out of Florence, Alabama, which is by Muscle Shoals. They have a great group that just had a history of working on dismantling racism, and they were working on a specific issue around monuments at the courthouse in their little town. And I got hooked up with the activist that leads that group, Camille Bennett, through a friend of mine. I was on a panel with Allison Russell, about racism, and just listening to what she was saying. She played too, and I was like, ‘Oh, man, I want to have her sing that song.’ She’s had a very interesting life and experience, in a family that’s mixed race, where she ended up being raised by people that were white nationalist. It’s incredible. I was down with her doing it. I appreciated it so much.”
On working with the group I’m With Her, which is made up of Sara Watkins (Nicklecreek), Sarah Jarosz and Aioffe O’Donovan, Ray said, “I asked the band if they would if I could send them tracks. And they did all their tracks [at] their individual houses. When I got it back, we took everything out of it that we had done, except for my vocals and it sounded amazing. And then we just started putting little things back in and it ended up being very much about them. We transferred it to tape so it would feel like the rest of the record. They’re amazing, I mean, all three of those women are something else.”
The song Muscadine performed with HC McEntire is another song that speaks to the Southern character imbued in the album, as Muscadine is a grapevine species native to the Southeastern United States. The song is about a dog she adopted and the unconditional love animals can have, and how we can learn from that.
“I wrote a song about that sort of unconditional love that he had for life and for me and loyalty. And the way that you can learn from a dog what love really is,” Ray said, “And just kind of wishing I could be more like that kind of dog you know, where you just take things in stride and you’re not always looking for what’s better or trying to have what you can. You just work with what you have.”
When it comes to working with HC McEntire, Ray had nothing but good things to say.
“She is one of my very, very favorite artists, and I’ve been doing stuff with her since she was in a punk rock band called Bellafea. But she’s also incredibly gifted as a songwriter, and musician, and just constantly reinventing herself and exploring new avenues. I love her voice,I love her. And so I always ask her to do duets with me on any record I make,” Ray said.
The Amy Ray band will be performing at the Grass Valley Center for the Arts January 19 with Dar Williams.
“There’s seven of us on stage, and everybody in the band, with the exception of me, is an incredible musician. And then I’m up there strumming away and, you know, they’re just really great players and really fun to watch. They’re great, Ray said. “We play songs from all of our country records. They know some of the old rock stuff too, so we’ll include a few of those. So that’s what to expect.”
In the pantheon of American songwriters Amy Ray is one one of the greats – making all of us in this region lucky to be able to see her in person.
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