Indigo Girls

The indigo girls were so deeply influential in my life — not just musically, but as an activist and as an out queer person. The representation and the visibility that they managed to scrape together, despite all odds and all the obstacles against them, were really important in my life. I needed them.

I was about 13 or 14 years old, and I had come home from a friend’s house — it was a girl who I had a total crush on — and I was very confused about it. I got home, and my parents had rented the movie Philadelphia on VHS. I snuck it into my bedroom, popped the movie into my VCR. It was so poignant to me that I felt this pull in my stomach. In retrospect, I was being galvanized toward something that I was only just beginning to understand about myself.

In the film, I heard these women singing this song: “I don’t wanna talk about it, how you broke my heart . . . ” I asked for the soundtrack for Christmas, and I got it, and that’s when I really heard the Indigo Girls. I was already a musician — I was obsessed with Elton John, and I had been singing since I was eight. But the Indigo Girls were a fork in the road for me, and because of them, I went in a different direction. One of my friends at school owned Swamp Ophelia, and it was backwards from there:

I don’t ever write a lyric that I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending to Emily Saliers.

Nomads Indians Saints, Rites of Passage, Strange Fire, Indigo Girls.

I met the Indigo Girls when I was about 17. I had a friend drive me to Portland [Oregon] in the pouring rain, because I had won a contest to meet them before a radio show. I took my first guitar with me, which was this shitty little beatup Ovation knockoff called an Applause. I met them, and they signed it. And I remember leaving so unsatisfied. I was like, “I have this signature, but I need to be friends with them. I need to get good enough to where they’re going to hear my music.” The very first thing I did, once I gained any notoriety at all, was find a way to reach out to them.

When I opened for the Indigo Girls on tour, I saw that they haven’t just gone to major markets and played Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco. They’ve gone to Door County and Fish Creek, Wisconsin. They take their music to the people, and the fans had an affection for them that was different than for other artists. I knew at that point that I wanted that relationship. I’m just like their other fans — I never would have missed a show, and there’s not a deep album cut I don’t know.

We’re very close — we have a family relationship now. They know all about my origins as a little baby lesbian who was obsessed with the Indigo Girls. I don’t ever write a lyric I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending to Emily Saliers. That’s a standard I’ve set. And I love that they’re moms now. They’re such punk rockers, and they have this incredible tenacity, and the fact that we now sit around and give each other mom tips is the coolest. It’s the fullcircle queer experience coming to a place that just makes me really proud to be their friend.