{"id":777642,"date":"2026-05-06T16:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/777642\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T16:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:30:14","slug":"indigo-girls-emily-saliers-talks-optimism-upcoming-projects-ahead-of-tour-daily-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/777642\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigo Girls\u2019 Emily Saliers talks optimism, upcoming projects ahead of tour \u2013 Daily News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fortitude and passion. What else can you say is driving Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls? In a recent video statement<\/a>, Saliers and creative partner Amy Ray shared that the former is dealing with a pair of incurable conditions \u2014 cervical dystonia and an essential tremor \u2014 that have affected the Connecticut native\u2019s ability to sing clearly and constantly.<\/p>\n

The message was more of a heads-up about what concertgoers can expect at live shows. Saliers shared that she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cStarstruck,\u201d a project on which she\u2019s collaborating with spoken-word poet Mary Ann Stratton and Tony-nominated performer Beth Malone.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday the sun is shining, the tomatoes are planted, and all is good here in Atlanta,\u201d she said. \u201cWe started working on it (\u2018Starstruck\u2019) during the pandemic. It\u2019s a story loosely based on \u2018Cyrano de Bergerac.\u2019 Beth was a big fan of the movie \u2018Roxanne\u2019 with Steve Martin. She wrote the story, and I wrote the music.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just had a month-long run at Bucks County Playhouse up in New Hope, PA, that went really well,\u201d Saliers added. \u201cWe 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\u2019re now looking for our next move, and it looks like it\u2019s 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\u2019s eyes that does musicals, are on Broadway.\u201d<\/p>\n

While musical theater is the Georgia resident\u2019s side gig, the Indigo Girls continue to be the full-time venture for Saliers. The last album the duo released was 2020\u2019s \u201cLook Long,\u201d but the combination of a solid backing band and a catalog that runs 15 studio albums deep and includes such classic songs as \u201cCloser to Fine,\u201d \u201cGalileo,\u201d and \u201cLeast Complicated,\u201d means there\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnstage it\u2019ll be me and Amy and Lucy Wainwright Roche, Lyris (Hung) and Jeff Fielder,\u201d Saliers said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a band without drums and extra keyboards. Jeff is going to be playing some bass, keyboards, and different instruments. We\u2019re going to be focusing a lot on the harmonies \u2014 bringing Lucy\u2019s voice in, and in particular support of my (vocals), But also all the beautiful harmonies she does. We do songs from \u2018Look Long.\u2019 Right now, we don\u2019t 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\u2019s still up in the air. It\u2019ll be all of us on stage and then a mix of songs from albums past, including solo stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sisters and I sang together in this house full of music,\u201d Saliers explained. \u201cI learned about descants and harmonies singing in church choirs when I was really little, so that\u2019s 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 \u2014 it was $24. I\u2019d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sailers\u2019 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 \u201cthe other kid in school that played guitar,\u201d where the seeds were planted for what became the Indigo Girls.<\/p>\n

After a brief stint attending college (Tulane for Saliers and Vanderbilt University for Ray), the homesick duo eventually transferred to Emory. The duo\u2019s 1987 debut album \u201cStrange Fire\u201d was independently released on Canada\u2019s Indigo Records before the duo signed a deal with Epic Records, which re-released the debut the following year.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fortitude and passion. What else can you say is driving Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls? In a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":777643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,6080,5337,975,14539,1072],"class_list":{"0":"post-777642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-county","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-music-concerts","16":"tag-things-to-do"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116528587052467068","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}