The week before Trump was elected Kristen and I went to see the Indigo Girls performing at Rams Head Live in Baltimore. It was too good an opportunity – too good a venue, too close to home, too good a deal to NOT go see a duo that’d been pretty formative for me. Though my girlfriend in high school had introduced them to me long before I’d fallen in Love with guitar, the Indigo Girls were probably one of my first exposures to modern socially-conscious music that wasn’t simply heavy metal “justice is fucked and we’re all going to die from nuclear war”…
For months, with growing horror, and contrary to what all the new outlets seemed to believe, I was coming to be convinced that Trump not only COULD but certainly WOULD be elected, and so I was deeply saddened that the Indigo Girls, minus a token mention of the table in the corner where you could register to vote, kept their commentary on the world that day to “thanks y’all” and a setlist that stayed safely away from their more political themes.
They wouldn’t have made a difference, and in hindsight I wonder if they were exhausted, unaware, just wanted to play… it was a disappointing night. The music was good, but the spirit was not.
And so this Wednesday I was unsure of what I was walking into. A double bill pairing the pairing that is the Indigo Girls with someone who was far MORE formative to my actual musical stylings : Ani DiFranco. Our friend Amy had extra tickets and it was too good a venue, not TOO far from home, and simply too good a deal not to go, even in the (hopefully) tail end of a pandemic where we’d all have to wear masks for the whole concert – we’d be outdoors (whatever that means in a mass of thousands of people) and vaccine cards were required (whatever that means in a world where anyone could print their own pretty easily).
But the show was everything I could’ve wanted +/- a couple of favourite songs. Ani played a bunch of new stuff, groove-oriented jams with her bass / keyboard player and percussionist. Unfortunately the sound was really lack lustre for her set, boomy on the bottom and thin on the top, the only thing that sounded “correct” was her voice. Still – a great show and I was caught off-guard by how IMPORTANT some of her old songs still felt to me. “You Had Time” is still painful to me, and like with so many musicians I can’t sing along without breaking down, something worsened by wearing a mask and glasses… I watched her perform through the halo of fogged lenses.
Then we got the Indigo Girls playing with a violinist named Lyris Hung and vocalist Lucy Wainright Roche who we haven’t seen since she opened for Dar Williams back when Heather was playing percussion for her. It was a great lineup, and though I missed the percussion it didn’t matter on tunes that I Loved like “Kid Fears” or new songs that I didn’t know as well… I definitely wasn’t as into the new Ani material as it seemed to be more of a repeated loop groove aesthetic with loose poetry overtop whereas the Indigo Girls have simply gotten tighter and tighter. I don’t want to get too into remembering how Emily Saliers’ voice has devolved (especially as it seems her guitar playing seems to be suffering now too), Amy’s voice continues to get broader, deeper and more emotive – and though AS a musician I feel like I could see a lot of untaken paths towards adapting their old songs to Emily’s new voice – I really like the stuff they’re writing now which takes that voice into account just fine.
No fear of politics tonight either. Either because of time, context, or the presence of the uberpolitical Righteous Babe herself, they’d found their MISSION again.
And then the ending : there’d been mentions of how they’d all play together at the end and that did NOT disappoint. Especially as it rapidly became clear that THIS was what they’d actually soundchecked and FINALLY things sounded good! Though they opened with one of my least favourite songs “Angel From Montgomery”, they swept through a really incredible updated version of Pete Seeger’s “What Side Are You On?” and ended out with “Closer to Fine” and watching Ani sing some of those lines was just – the best thing ever.
I’m still trying to parse my feelings about having been in a huge crowd, but I stand by the idea that this is exactly how we CAN move forward – with vaccine mandates and masks making even huge events like this (hopefully) pretty safe. I wasn’t alone in feeling that way – in addition to Amy and her beau, we met up with our old friends Allie and James and some of their family, Michelle Swan and Greta Ehrig and Debby Saint Charles and Jillian Matundan…
There are a lot more thoughts all jumbled up here, and I’m mostly writing to get it all down just so I can remember – but it was a damned good Wednesday.
