Review | Indigo Girls Still Have Much to Teach Us

“What a beautiful night. We’re so happy to be here with Amos Lee and all of you people,” greeted Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls. It was indeed a beautiful night at the Santa Barbara Bowl and I too was happy to be there.

I’ve learned a lot from the Indigo Girls over the years — these two queer gals from Decatur, Georgia, who met in elementary school, stayed friends and musical partners for decades, have somehow managed to respectfully embrace both the good and the bad of their southern backgrounds, and still use their music to call out the racism, sexism, and prejudices of the world. They’ve been doing it since 1981, and I’ve been listening for all those years as well.

The sweet sounds of their voices melding together have always been of the you-catch-more-flies-with-honey variety, and they still are. But there’s more to harmony than just voices, and these two have earned so much good will and respect from their audiences over the years that, despite the fact that Emily’s voice doesn’t sound like it once did  — whether for medical reasons or age or some other reason is a mystery — she and Amy Ray still make beautiful music together.

Songs like “Power of Two” (which was dedicated to Claire, someone in the audience who was getting engaged, and whose Aunt Holly texted Amy earlier that day and made the special request), “Kid Fears” (with the lyrics “Are you on fire/From the years?/What would you give for your/Kid fears”), and “Lay My Head Down,” are such an indelible part of the soundtrack of our lives that just about everyone was singing along.

I’d been looking forward to this show since it was announced, and especially after interviewing Amy Ray for her solo show back in January at the Marjorie Luke Theatre, and then going to it. It was great to see the more rocking side of Amy, and it also made me appreciate the distinctive fine tunes of the Indigo Girls even more.

They really are poets, with beautiful word play like “I’m stacking sandbags against the river of your troubles” (from “Come on Home”) and “How long ’til my soul gets it right/Can any human being ever reach that kind of light/I call on the resting soul of Galileo king of night vision/King of insight” (from “Galileo”) still resonating 20 and 30 years later. They’re just that kind of band.

Case in point: the resurrection of their 1989 classic “Closer to Fine” appearing not one, not two, but THREE times in the Barbie movie has embedded the Indigo Girls’s music on yet another new generation. They sang it as the finale at the Bowl, bringing in still more harmonies from Amos Lee, who had his own excellent performance of folk, rock, and soul earlier that evening — including a dynamite cover of Stevie Nicks’s “Landslide.”

During his set, Lee talked about learning from the Indigo Girls and said, “I’m honored to be with the Indigo Girls. Growing up, my two favorite bands were the Indigo Girls and Boyz II Men.” He wasn’t the only one admiring and still learning from the Indigos. They’ve taught us about the power of longtime friendship, about harmony, and more recently, about the power of focusing not on what you don’t have any more but on the power of focusing on what you do have and what you are still able to do, which in their case, is deliver a powerful evening of music and connection.