Close your eyes and pull up the sound of Indigo Girls: strummed acoustic guitars, harmony vocals, deeply researched stories, slyly complex song forms. You listened after a breakup, or driving cross-country with the windows down. It’s a distinctive space, carved out by Georgia-based musicians Amy Ray and Emily Saliers in the early ’90s and subsequently cloned over two decades by countless folk-rock acts.
Ray’s solo career began in the early 2000s; “Murmuration Nation,” Saliers’ first solo album, came out only this past August. Sonically, it’s surprising: Working closely with violinist and producer Lyris Hung over a three-year period, Saliers drew from hip-hop, heavy metal, electronica and Native American a cappella music, complementing the Indigo Girls catalogue while stepping outside of it.
Saliers, a New Haven native, performs with her band at Infinity Hall in Hartford on Nov. 19 at 8 p.m. She spoke to CTNow about “Murmuration Nation” and her earliest years in Connecticut.
Q: While making “Murmuration Nation,” were you hard on yourself?
A: There was a lot of self-imposed pressure, which I think is your typical artist insecurity: Will Indigo Girls fans like this album? It’s different than Indigo Girls records. The writing on some of the songs, I think, is quite different from a lot of songs I’ve written.
I wanted it to be really good, and I felt like there was a lot at stake. But in the scope of the universe, there was practically nothing at stake, when I think about wars and social problems and real issues. It took courage to make the record, I’ll say that.
At the end of the day, and Amy will tell you this, too: We’re collaborators. We like working with other people. Lyris [Hung] was my collaborator on the project, but I went through a lot of soul-searching and twisting and wanting it to be good. … It’s been incredibly hard work, but in the end, very gratifying. It was like, “OK, that’s one of those things in life that I wanted to do, and now I’ve done that.”
Q: Is recording, alone or with Indigo Girls, typically a process of balancing back-catalogue material with new songs?
A: Not really. For me, there were a couple of songs, like “Match” or “Slow Down Day Friend,” that I wanted to do in my own way, which is the reason I never brought them to Amy. I must have had a feeling that they were slightly different kinds of songs that I wanted to do in a different way. But typically, for an Indigo Girls record, there aren’t a lot of extra songs. We have what we have. Because [“Murmuration Nation”] was a culmination of years of germinating on the idea of a solo record, it made that different. The next time I make a solo record, and I will, it’ll be brand new songs.
Q: I’ve always thought Indigo Girls songs were slightly more progressive and complex than they’re given credit for. “Hello Vietnam,” from “Murmuration Nation,” seems to fall in that category.
A: Amy and I, when we arrange songs, we’re not lazy about it. We dig down deep. We try many different incarnations. We brainstorm. Sometimes we work out complex parts, and then we scrap them all and decide that it’s best treated more simply. I remember there was a shift at a certain point, maybe around the album “Become You” [released in 2002], where we just had many different descant parts, intro parts — typical of our style. And then we decided, for that record, to simplify the arrangements harmonically.
“Hello Vietnam”: Now I know it can be done, and it’s fabulous. That song starts fast — it’s like the journey part of the song. And then you land where you are in the song. The structure was intentional, but it’s not a song that starts and finishes in the same tempo, with a verse-chorus-type thing. I think that really paints the picture better than if I just started on guitar from beginning to end and just sung through it in the same tempo.
Q: Your family lived in New Haven in the 1960s. [Saliers’ father was a Yale professor.] What do you recall about that period?
A: It’s funny, because I really feel Southern. But I spent my formative, young years in New Haven, in the inner city, which had a huge influence on the kind of culture that I take to, which is really African-American music and culture. It so profoundly affects me, African-American music, hip-hop, R&B, gospel. If I had to stop and think about it, if I had to come up with the reason, I’d attribute it to those formative years when I was surrounded by it.
New Haven was rough when I was there. There was so much civil unrest. I was born in 1963, and we didn’t leave the city until I was seven, maybe. I have very clear memories and soaked in a lot. I wrote the song “Hello Vietnam” on the album. My parents watched Walter Cronkite on the black-and-white, three-channel TV. The rise of the Black Panther movement, the incredible racial tension in this country… I was a sensitive child, but because I was a child, I couldn’t understand adult things. I could feel what was happening. My mother was nervous and my dad was a theologian. It was a very tense, volatile time.
EMILY SALIERS performs at Infinity Hall in Hartford on Nov. 19 at 8 p.m., with Becky Warren opening. Tickets are $39-$59. infinityhall.com.
