Fortitude and passion. What else can you say is driving Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls? In a recent video statement, Saliers and creative partner Amy Ray shared that the former is dealing with a pair of incurable conditions — cervical dystonia and an essential tremor — that have affected the Connecticut native’s ability to sing clearly and constantly.
The message was more of a heads-up about what concertgoers can expect at live shows. Saliers shared that she’s getting a combination of therapeutic massage, physical therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture, and Botox shots, along with working with a vocal coach skilled at addressing this condition to address these physical obstacles.
But on the day of this mid-April interview, Saliers was more about optimism than dwelling on this most recent announcement as she discussed different musical projects within and outside the Indigo Girls. First and foremost is her involvement in writing songs for the musical “Starstruck,” a project on which she’s collaborating with spoken-word poet Mary Ann Stratton and Tony-nominated performer Beth Malone.
“Today the sun is shining, the tomatoes are planted, and all is good here in Atlanta,” she said. “We started working on it (‘Starstruck’) during the pandemic. It’s a story loosely based on ‘Cyrano de Bergerac.’ Beth was a big fan of the movie ‘Roxanne’ with Steve Martin. She wrote the story, and I wrote the music.
“We just had a month-long run at Bucks County Playhouse up in New Hope, PA, that went really well,” Saliers added. “We actually broke all the box office records for a new musical in the history of the playhouse, so that was really cool. There is a lot of momentum and support for the show. We’re now looking for our next move, and it looks like it’s going to be New York. That means a workshop first or (a run at) an off-Broadway house. And of course, our eyes, like everybody else’s eyes that does musicals, are on Broadway.”
While musical theater is the Georgia resident’s side gig, the Indigo Girls continue to be the full-time venture for Saliers. The last album the duo released was 2020’s “Look Long,” but the combination of a solid backing band and a catalog that runs 15 studio albums deep and includes such classic songs as “Closer to Fine,” “Galileo,” and “Least Complicated,” means there’ll be no shortage of material to draw from in concerts. Saliers also pointed out that contingency plans are in place for her vocal issues on the current tour to beef up the trademark harmonies of Ray and Saliers.
The duo will be performing Thursday, May 14, at The Bellwether in Los Angeles with special guest Jessie Mazin for their only scheduled Southern California stop.
“Onstage it’ll be me and Amy and Lucy Wainwright Roche, Lyris (Hung) and Jeff Fielder,” Saliers said. “It’s kind of like a band without drums and extra keyboards. Jeff is going to be playing some bass, keyboards, and different instruments. We’re going to be focusing a lot on the harmonies — bringing Lucy’s voice in, and in particular support of my (vocals), But also all the beautiful harmonies she does. We do songs from ‘Look Long.’ Right now, we don’t have any brand new songs, but Amy and I are both writing songs right now. Our intent is to probably release a group of songs as single releases and probably not an entire album. However we end up getting those new songs finished and learned it’s still up in the air. It’ll be all of us on stage and then a mix of songs from albums past, including solo stuff.”
For the 62-year-old Saliers, music has been a constant in her life, dating back to an early musical memory of her being a diaper-clad toddler placing a hand on a piano at her grandmother’s house and being drawn to the sound of it. Coming from a musical lineage that included a grandfather who toured as a big band violinist/saxophonist, a vocalist mother, and a father who was an accomplished pianist/organist who veered into gospel music, pursuing a musical path was akin to pivoting into the family business. Key moments for Saliers when she was growing up included learning how to harmonize with her siblings and being inspired by her cousin to learn guitar around age nine, when she brought a flyer home from the YMCA advertising guitar lessons.
“My sisters and I sang together in this house full of music,” Saliers explained. “I learned about descants and harmonies singing in church choirs when I was really little, so that’s always been my jam. My cousin was a singer-songwriter who was very influential to me and my sisters. When I brought home this flyer about guitar lessons at the YMCA and said I wanted to do this, he helped me pick out my first guitar — it was $24. I’d already taken drum lessons for one second, and we all played recorder in school. But this was it. I took classical lessons when I was 11 for two years, but the start of it all was third grade at the YMCA.”
Sailers’ father, a professor at Yale, moved the family to Atlanta when the aspiring singer-songwriter was 12, to take a job at Emory University. There, Saliers quickly found a group of friends and even went as far as forming a group in seventh grade with two other girls called The Blue Skies. But it was connecting with Ray, who was a grade younger and “the other kid in school that played guitar,” where the seeds were planted for what became the Indigo Girls.
After a brief stint attending college (Tulane for Saliers and Vanderbilt University for Ray), the homesick duo eventually transferred to Emory. The duo’s 1987 debut album “Strange Fire” was independently released on Canada’s Indigo Records before the duo signed a deal with Epic Records, which re-released the debut the following year.
In the subsequent decades, the Indigo Girls went from a world of DIY touring on the college radio circuit to enjoying considerable commercial success during a nine-album run on Epic (which included three platinum-selling releases and worldwide touring) before moving over to Vanguard Records in 2007 and, most recently, forming IG Recordings, their own independent imprint.