In 1990, as her duo Indigo Ladies have been heading to platinum-selling success within the US, Amy Ray based her personal label referred to as Daemon Information, shaped as “a supportive community for one another inside it, nearly like a co-op,” she says. She internalised this “ecosystem thought” from Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye and the Washington DC punk scene, in addition to the 90s riot grrrl motion.
However the inspiring new documentary, It’s Solely Life After All, makes it clear that Ray additionally discovered fairly a bit concerning the energy of neighborhood from Indigo Ladies themselves: the folks band she co-founded in Atlanta with high-school choir buddy Emily Saliers. The duo twice broke into the US Prime 10, gained a Grammy, and offered thousands and thousands of albums within the late 80s and early 90s, and immediately stay a dependable, busy touring and recording act – even incomes a high-profile spot within the Barbie film. Neighborhood is woven into each side of their lives and careers: the ladies are principled activists and queer icons who’ve a fiercely devoted fanbase, and take nice care to nurture these relationships through their artwork and direct motion.
“We don’t need it to be an arrogance movie,” Ray says of It’s Solely Life After All. “We would like it to be concerning the neighborhood, as a result of that’s the place we got here from and that’s what we’re a part of nonetheless. And it’s greater than us, actually.” The movie duly underscores the duo’s dedication to causes similar to animal and reproductive rights, and Indigenous environmental activism; it incorporates transferring interviews with followers, who element the formative moments they’ve skilled alongside the Indigo Ladies’ music, similar to popping out, getting married or divorced, embracing sobriety and rising up queer.
Talking on a video name, the duo have the type of conversational ease and respect intrinsic to a decades-long friendship: neither interrupts the opposite. Ray has at all times appreciated the Indigo Ladies’ supporters and admired the “superb issues” they accomplish. “There’s academics, peace employees, activists, medical doctors, librarians and people who do artistic issues,” she says of their viewers. However listening to followers talk about the Indigo Ladies’ music within the movie – and bearing witness to the enjoyment of followers sharing it with one another – was “profound” for her. “The viewers is all one power,” she says, a reverent tone in her voice. “It’s all woven collectively so tightly. It gave me much more respect for what it’s.”
It’s Solely Life After All additionally honours the varied artists and musical communities which have supported the Indigo Ladies: the Atlanta membership Little 5 Factors, the place the duo honed their expertise as performers; pioneering queer musicians similar to Ferron and the Butchies; people icon Joan Baez; and fellow DIY-minded Georgia bands similar to REM, who tapped the Indigo Ladies to open an 1989 area tour. “We couldn’t have made it with out REM,” Ray says. “I imply, they gave us the most important break anyone had given us.”
However regardless that a significant label had snapped them up in 1988, the pair’s music didn’t match neatly into any kind of field. Their acoustic instrumentation and bewitching harmonies made them a logical match for the folks world, however the Indigo Ladies didn’t draw back from amplifying their acoustic guitars with pickups, giving their sound a rougher edge.
Their good, elegant lyrics coated the beautiful problems of life – longing, want, magnificence, darkness, anger – with philosophical dreaminess and southern gothic edge. Ray and Saliers have at all times written lyrics individually. In It’s Solely Life After All, each confess slight embarrassment at some previous songs: Saliers is incredulous about a few of her extra literary forays (“Who fucking writes about The Girl of Shalott?” she says, laughing) whereas Ray laments the solipsism of Blood and Hearth.
However individually, every come to an analogous conclusion about their particular person songwriting strengths: utilizing their lyrics to connect with, and empathise with, different folks. A signature track, 1989’s Nearer to High-quality, celebrated striving for optimism even when every part else on this planet felt unsure. That kind of factor riled up a cynical music press: It’s Solely Life After All illustrates that Indigo Ladies have been ignored by mainstream magazines or criticised for his or her earnestness, and dogged by sexism and homophobia.
Watching immediately, the invasive (or at the least ill-informed) traces of questioning from interviewers are surprising. Classic footage within the documentary features a journalist beginning out with this: “Y’all have kind of the fame now of being a ‘girl’s group’ – that if males hearken to you, one thing horrible will occur to [them].” In one other hanging second, Ray and Saliers are requested to learn a very harsh archive New York Occasions evaluate, with its first line: “Earnest pretentiousness has new standard-bearers.” Saliers replies: “Males people singers might get away with numerous these sentiments with out being destroyed in a evaluate like this.”
It’s Solely Life After All additionally explores how completely different the musical panorama was for queer artists when the Indigo Ladies first emerged. Each ladies had been out inside their very own communities earlier than signing to a significant label, however Saliers was reluctant to speak about her sexuality publicly: “When nationwide press was reaching out about being queer, I had numerous concern about it at first.” For starters, she didn’t need to be pigeonholed; however she was additionally a extra non-public individual, “protecting of my private life, as a result of I had an uncomfortable relationship with being within the public.”
Drawing on help from Ray, she ultimately got here out in public on her personal time and phrases. “After which it was like a veil was lifted,” Saliers says. “[It] was only a great freedom that occurred, after which there was actually no concern from that time on.” And immediately Saliers celebrates how there’s “a spot for queer artists that merely didn’t exist once we first began out. It’s good to keep in mind that.” Nonetheless, seeing the movie solidified “the truth that we had gone by means of some issues,” she says, “that we confronted pushback societally for being homosexual, and that we skilled sexism and homophobia and we skilled self-homophobia on account of all of the forces.”
A part of that arose from an oppressive cultural local weather, the place being queer was the punchline of a joke or greeted with hatred. (Saliers describes a harrowing incident of homosexual bashing the place she was punched within the face.) However this additionally stems from deeply private experiences. Within the documentary, Ray particulars a university relationship the place her associate had hassle accepting (and thus had disgrace round) being homosexual – and Ray subsequently went by means of a “self-loathing time”, exacerbated by the dawning realisation that not everybody accepted of the connection. “You suppose you’re simply in love,” she says within the movie, “and then you definitely’re like, ‘Oh, wow – no, folks suppose that is dangerous.’”
Director Alexandria Bombach anchors the movie with new, ultra-candid interviews similar to these alongside archive materials (fortuitously, Ray used to tote a digicam round on the street). The duo have been already accustomed to Bombach’s work – they have been moved by her award-winning 2018 documentary On Her Shoulders, about 23-year-old Yazidi genocide survivor Nadia Murad – and “trusted her instincts and inventive talents” as they made the movie. Ray thought to herself: “What’s the purpose of doing this if we’re not simply fully open about every part?”
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Being open got here simpler to Ray; she had beforehand publicly mentioned issues similar to residing with gender dysphoria. Saliers, nonetheless, was speaking about some deeply private issues – particularly her battle with (and restoration from) alcoholism – for the primary time in an in-depth means. Bombach’s “disarming” nature left her “actually free to disclose to her regardless of the issues have been that she was asking”. Over time, Saliers has additionally discovered it simpler to be open. “I nonetheless contemplate myself a reasonably non-public individual, however there’s a steadiness that I’ve been capable of finding.”
It’s Solely Life After All will get a wider on-line launch this week, nevertheless it premiered in 2023 as Nearer to High-quality was having its personal second in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, the place Margot Robbie as Barbie belts out the track throughout a transformative automotive journey. Saliers notes that after the film got here out, she first checked the Indigo Ladies’ listener stats on Spotify. “In fact, they exploded,” she says, after which chuckles loudly. “However then it simply acquired again to the standard quantity.”
However each ladies say the Indigo Ladies’ audiences have swelled since Barbie and It’s Solely Life After All, with the renewed pleasure rising “the numbers and the power and the keenness” of their dwell exhibits, Ray says. She cites the grassroots, word-of-mouth help that’s at all times sustained them: “People who had adopted us for a very long time, after they noticed these items occurring, they used it as a second for them to affect their friends to take again up the concept of popping out to see us play.”
This 12 months they are going to play a few of their greatest venues in 25 years, because of co-headlining excursions with Melissa Etheridge after which Amos Lee. “We couldn’t play most of these locations simply by ourselves as a headliner,” Ray admits. “We’re nonetheless a working band in numerous methods.”
Elsewhere, their songs propel one other latest movie, the jukebox musical romance Glitter & Doom, together with a stunning new unique tune referred to as What We Wanna Be; Ray launched a solo album in 2022 If It All Goes South through Daemon Information. Saliers is writing the music for a minimum of three musicals: Starstruck, co-written by Tony-nominated actor Beth Malone, plus one other based mostly on the Indigo Ladies’ 2020 track Nation Radio and yet one more on the 2018 documentary The Gospel of Eureka, about LGBTQ+ lives in small-town Arkansas.
For Saliers, It’s Solely Life After All is a reminder of “an incredible steadiness of variations” between her and Ray: “Totally different sensibilities, personalities, voices, songs.” However she explains how lucky they each really feel, with It’s Solely Life After All underlining “the fantastic thing about our neighborhood – individuals who maintain our musical actuality alive. We’re getting up there in age, and I really feel extra a resurgence of pleasure about enjoying dwell live shows. It’s truly as huge because it’s ever been, if not greater.”
