The Amy Ray Band Comes out West with ‘If It All Goes South’

No matter what genre of music she’s playing — from the punk rock of her 2001 solo debut, Stag, to the country crooning of her 2014 album, Goodnight Tender, and the tight catchy harmonies of the folk-pop Indigo Girls, a performing duo since 1981 — singer/songwriter Amy Ray’s big-hearted, optimistic spirit shines through with every note.

She’ll be in Santa Barbara with the Amy Ray Band, co-headlining an evening at the Marjorie Luke Theatre with pop-folk alt-country artist Dar Williams on Monday, January 15. Ray will also be back in town this fall with fellow Indigo Girl Emily Saliers, performing at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, September 21.

While next week’s show will draw from all 10 of Ray’s solo albums, the group’s most recent album, If It All Goes South — an intimate and powerful work featuring guests like Brandi Carlile, Allison Russell, and I’m with Her (whose band member Sarah Jarosz will perform a solo show at the Lobero on February 29) — will be at the forefront. 

It’s a longtime collaboration. “Except for the keyboard player, we’ve been playing together for 12 years,” Ray told me in a phone interview from her home in rural Georgia, her home state. While the eight-member band makes touring a bit more complicated, not to mention expensive, Ray says, “We kind of play the best when we’re all together. And it’s a big band. So it’s kind of a heavy lift, but it’s just, we’re happiest when we’re all playing together and we don’t have to compensate for someone not being there.”

For this kind of tour, she shares the driving with two other bandmates, so there’s not a lot of time for sightseeing. “There’s not usually too much you get to see — you load, unload, play, do the show, eat, sleep. That’s about it. But the beautiful thing in the drama is, we get to see the road. I love seeing where I’m going,” she says.

As to how her solo efforts differ from the Indigo Girls, “The Indigos are more poppy, I think, in some ways,” says Ray. “Emily leans that way more, more like folk pop. She doesn’t lean as much Americana as I tend to sometimes … I might lean more rock or something.” 

Referring to the Amy Ray Band, Ray says, “We take our cues from traditional country and Americana and bluegrass, and old mountain music and kind of stuff like that. So it’s really in that vein, musically; it’s very Southern.”

The violinist for the Indigo Girls “comes from a prog-rock, metal background that is very classical,” while the Amy Ray Band has a fiddle player that is “just much more organic. Just like a different sound. So, I guess it’s just, when it’s me, it’s just me, you know; it’s my perspective. And when it’s the Indigos, there’s a lot of different perspectives.”

Ray adds, “But I like harmony. So I like for everyone to sing. And we do arrangements and stuff, which is definitely influenced by Indigo Girls, the way we arrange our harmonies and stuff.”

She continues, “Songwriting is really important to us, you know, in this band. It’s something I work on really hard, and my producer [Brian Speiser] that works with us has done all of our records.”

The attention to songwriting pays off, with Ray’s nuanced exploration of both the personal and the political.

“One of the things I love about this band is that we do everything super organically,” says Ray. “We record to tape, we can play live … it’s important to us.”

As Ray has been in the industry for almost her whole life, I ask her about the impact of technology on her work. “For me, it’s like the best of both worlds now. I’m a big fan of Bon Iver, and Billie Eilish, and people that really dig into that technology. So the pop side of me and kind of the Indigo Girl side, I guess, is what it is that rubs off; I love it. I’m just really into marrying that with vintage gear, too, you know, like the way a real amp sounds and the way old mics, you know, from the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s sound…. It’s a really good time to be a musician. I think of everything you have at your fingertips now.”

Dar Williams with Amy Ray Band performs at the Marjorie Luke Theatre (721 E. Cota St.) Monday, January 15, 7 p.m. For tickets and details, see luketheatre.org.