More often, the humor was thrust upon them, as in a quickly glimpsed “SNL” sketch in which Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch portrayed the pair as over-earnest bores. It was presented as knowing, affectionate humor from the inside, but the pair now agree that there was a level of self-homophobia in those vintage gags. Occasionally they participated in the humor themselves, as with their appearance in a 1998 episode of the “Ellen” sitcom, set at a “womyn’s festival,” which the two singers watch back on iPads and grimace to recall today. The feel-good aspects are plentiful enough that it comes as sort of a rude reawakening late in the film when the filmmaker presents a pained segment that’s a sort of anthology of pop-culture moments in which the so-called “lesbian folk-rock duo” was the butt of a lot of jokes, usually based in the idea that the Indigo Girls represented something no man or straight person would want to go near. Perhaps most winningly of all for the film’s chances with a wider audience, though, Ray and Saliers just turn out to be a couple of women that almost anybody would want to spend a couple of hours with, whether you knew it or not from distant memories of the singers as one-time icons of VH1. Granted, there’s some of that, too, but any case Bombach builds for the Girls being heroes feels fairly well-earned, and less hagiographic than many recent music docs that have come down the pike. Those differences go a long way in making sure the film doesn’t end up being too much of a conferral of sainthood. It just means there’s a whole rainbow’s worth of shadings about what it means to be LGBTQ, or human, just between Ray and Saliers themselves. They've been outspoken and supportive of environmental, American Indian and No Nukes causes.Īlong with artists such as Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega and Etheridge, the Indigo Girls helped give rise to the burgeoning female music movement that has inspired dozens of new singer/songwriters and been celebrated with its own tour, Lilith Fair.In this case, “couldn’t be more different” isn’t a euphemism for “don’t really get along,” as it often is in duo or band situations. Throughout the '90s, the Indigo Girls have used their fame and popularity to address many social issues. Their self-titled Epic Records debut album was released in 1989, and on the strength of the single Closer to Fine, it sold more than 500,000 copies in six months and earned the duo a Grammy Award for best contemporary folk recording. Then one night in 1988, a talent scout from Epic Records happened upon one of their shows in Atlanta and immediately signed them to a major-label deal. They played college gigs and coffeehouses, then graduated to the Little Five Points Pub where they developed a large, loyal following.īetween 19, the Indigo Girls released several independent records and toured the Southeast as an acoustic duo. They became the Indigo Girls in 1983 while attending Emory University in Atlanta. The duo met while attending Decatur High School and began performing folk music as Saliers & Ray. Saliers moved with her family to Georgia when she was a young girl. Ray was born in Decatur, Ga., and Saliers was born in New Haven, Conn.
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