Still a ‘go

Kirk Baird

Friday, July 27, 2001 | 8:42 a.m.

Sometimes success is all in the timing.

For the Indigo Girls, the opportunity couldn't have been much better.

Formed in the early '80s, the acoustic-guitar driven duo were the beneficiaries of a female folk-singer revival later that decade that also gave rise to such diverse artists as Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Sinead OConnor, Shawn Colvin and Melissa Etheridge.

Not wanting to be left out of the latest musical trend, Epic Records signed the Indigo Girls in 1988 and released the band's first major-label album the following year. The record was a success the duos biggest to date reaching double-platinum status based in large part to the soul-searching single "Closer to Fine."

It wasn't long before the Indigo Girls, who perform tonight at Mandalay Bay's Beach, were the most recognizable folk duo from the '80s.

But times changed and so have the band's fortunes, apparently.

"Now we can't get people to return our phone calls at the record company," said Emily Saliers, who, along with Amy Ray, makes up the Indigo Girls.

To what extent if any Saliers was joking was never really made clear.

But in a recent phone interview from her home in Atlanta, the singer-guitarist was adamant that it's not just the record company that's ignoring the band. Alternative radio, at one time the life blood of the Indigo Girls, has also turned its back as well as to most of the other female folk artists it helped promote.

"The thing was women like us and (others) were able to get some radio play back in the day. (But) what's happened is the public's voice has been eaten up by commercialism and corporate control," Saliers said. "What gets out there in popular culture is not necessarily a reflection of what people would listen to across the board if they were offered more opportunities. And the music experience suffers from that."

Instead, for the time being stations have shifted their focus to a younger male audience, she said, which means younger male bands are the driving force of alternative radio.

"It's Creed, Blink whatever and Staind -- bands like that," Saliers said. "Which is great; they've got their thing that they do that's appealing. But there's not enough diversity.

"If you're an alternative woman artist, forget it. You give me one example of a woman alternative writer/artist doing well, and you probably can't."

So where does that leave a band such as the Indigo Girls, or most of the other artists from the late '80s folk "movement"? Irrelevant or even nonexistent, Saliers said, if one were to equate a band's worth to the amount of media attention it receives.

"When you get a lot of coverage from the press, it seems like a big movement is happening, and then it just disappears when the press stops or when the radio play stops," she said. "But in fact everybody just keeps plugging along with their careers."

Friends since their days in a high school choir class, Saliers, 38, and Ray, 37, have made Indigo Girls their careers -- even changing universities so they could continue to play together.

Although their musical approaches differ drastically -- Saliers is the more "folksy" of the two, with Ray providing the "harder-edge" to the group -- Saliers said the disparate styles are what lends the band its unusual sound.

There's also the nearly angelic harmonies; voices blending so well together it's impossible to imagine them mixed in with anyone else.

"I think it's kind of mystical, in a way, the balance," Saliers said. "I think I was fated to work with her. And we have a good balance personally. When we come off the road we don't hang out. We're not like buddies. We have some of the same friends, but we allow each other space in our lives and it works out really well."

Which is different than the public's perception. Since both are openly gay, there's often the assumption the two are in a relationship with each other -- they aren't -- or, at the very least, are always together.

Saliers said the idea that she and Ray hang out all the time because they're in a band together is a bit "weird" to her.

"I'll be somewhere and someone might come up to me and ask, 'Where's Amy?' I'll say, 'I don't know. I don't know where she is. She may be tending her garden; I live a long way away from her.' But I just think that's where people's minds go first," she said.

Other than the occasional social setting, benefit show or activist gathering, Saliers said she and Ray rarely see each other away from work. And even that's not very frequent.

"Early on in our career, Amy and I made a decision about the quality of our lives and decided that we're not going to be one of those bands that does everything: commercials, burns the candle at both ends and stays out on the road for months and don't get to see our partners and our families," she said. "We made a conscious decision to improve the quality of our lives by staying home some and turning things down.

"Maybe we suffered a little bit in terms of public exposure for that. There's no doubt that our politics and our being gay has hurt us -- in terms of a lot of public exposure -- but I wouldn't have it any other way."