Where Seattlest Interviews Indigo Girl Emily Saliers

What about the collaboration still inspires you? Or is it just the fact that it does feel like family now and it’s just what you do?

Well, I mean we have the most amazing fans. They’re incredible. They just keep coming back to the shows, thank God. We can take it for granted that we just have a very, very loyal following. So that’s inspiring to know that we have that. But, in terms of music, I really like Amy’s songs a lot. We just finished recording a new studio album that’ll come out in February, by the way. And, it doesn’t take anything to be inspired by that, really. She brings good songs to the table and I bring her mine, and she likes mine. It’s just nice to work.

We spend a lot of time arranging [our songs]. We’re very careful going about different permutations of harmonies and instruments and what we can best bring to the songs. So, it’s a creative process that’s very involved and also inspiring. And it’s just fun. It’s fun to play music and it’s fun to arrange songs. I don’t get tired of it. You know, every night that we play music, we make a fresh set list, so we’re not playing songs we don’t want to play. We’re playing songs we chose for that night, for that very concert. And we also try to honor requests so we can stay fresh. And we also trust the process. We’ve done it so long, we know what works and how to keep ourselves inspired.

Yeah, I was going to say about requests—I’ve never been to one of your shows where people weren’t screaming out requests the whole time. I wonder if that’s something that ever gets old, or if it’s just nice to know so many people are touched by so many of your songs?

No, it doesn’t get old. The only thing is that we feel guilty if sometimes we don’t know them [anymore], or we can’t fit them in. But, no, it’s great that people are participating. We try to put in as many requests as we can that people are calling out. But there always has to be a limit. When we make the set list, we try to be comprehensive in terms of covering our discography; or now we have new songs, we’re playing some of the new songs that are on the record that people haven’t heard yet. So, we try to make it a good balance. Hopefully we cover most of those requests in the set list already. If not, we’ll try to put them in as best we can.

About Despite Our Differences, that seems to be a record about keeping the faith and endurance. Is there a part of that that comes out of your collaboration over the last 20 years, or is that more of a generality about where these songs were coming from at that point in time?

I think that definitely plays into it. You don’t always know—even if you write the song—you don’t necessarily know what it’s about or what’s got into it. Sometimes you do, obviously—you have the content you’re working on, you try to shape it and have it make sense and be effective and well-crafted—but there are all kinds of things that go into a song that you may not even realize until you get some perspective on it through time, look back on it. That’s happened to me a lot. I think I’m writing the song about someone else, but then I get some space and some time, and I look back on it and think wow, I just wrote a song about me and didn’t realize it. I’m sure our collaboration and our history and our friendship and all those things play into that spirit of keeping on going and keeping the faith.

Let's talk a little about this book you wrote with your dad about music and spirituality—which, as a musician, seems to go hand in hand. However, this stirred up a little controversy. Can you talk about that a bit?

Which controversy are you talking about?

Just people getting upset that…I was looking at some articles where people were upset about having you come talk to their church.

Oh, yeah it was a big gathering of United Methodist Women and there was just a small faction, a conservative faction within that body who took issue with my sexuality. But it was one of those things, and this has happened to us before—not in this context—but all these people, like over a thousand people wrote emails about their support of me being there. So, just an overwhelming response to that was a positive one and a welcoming one. It was just a small, small group and they had their say, but it overall turned out to be a good performance and a welcoming one. But, you know, that’s the church.

My experience with the church has been mostly a positive one, because I’m running in more liberal circles. I’m part of a progressive church that doesn’t take issue with sexuality, that’s going to ordain gay people and the change is going to come, but it’s going to be slow. But there’s always going to be people who are more fundamentalist and conservative who’ll have their issues. It’s a bummer to me, it can be hurtful and I don’t really understand it, but that’s just the reality.

But over the last 20 years…when you first came out, that was before Ellen came out, before this big cultural shift that we’ve gone through over the last 10 years. Your records have soundtracked so many people’s coming out process. But, have you seen a big change? How do you feel about how far we’ve come? Obviously we still have a ways to go.

That’s how I look at it. I feel we’ve come a long way in a short period of time, but I still feel like we’ve got a long way to go. I mean, that’s evolution. If you look at the history of civil rights movements, there’s a long, long period of oppression and injustice, eventually protection comes through the law, but there’s still prejudice after that. It’s the unfortunate reality that people are prejudiced and can be hateful and judge people. But it hasn’t been that long since Stonewall, and we’ve made great strides. Especially in the entertainment industry with people like Ellen having their shows and being out, that’s very important.

You have people fighting in the courts in California, who are saying it’s okay for same-sex couples to marry. That was a beautiful, big day, you know, I remember that day hearing about it. But then immediately you have the onslaught of people putting it on the ballot so that they can ban it constitutionally. So it’s sort of a two steps forward, one step back [thing]. That’s just the reality of the evolution of civil rights. But, we’ll get there. It takes a lot of work and a lot of perseverance.

You guys have done a lot of work for a lot of different issues and causes over the years. How do you decide what you’re going to support and what you’re going to write about? And do you struggle with writing those topical songs?

The songs, obviously, certain songs have elements of politics or social issues, and then some of them don’t. In fact, most of them probably don’t. I mean, they could just be songs about other things, questioning what it means to be human, how we treat each other and stuff like that. I think you can extend that to the realm of social issues, but we just write about whatever’s on our mind at the time.

As far as the other question, it’s hard to say no because there’s a lot of great groups out there that are working, that need support. We tend to support grass-roots groups. We know that the money that’s being raised is being spent affectively, not a lot of overhead or unnecessary cost….we pick grass-roots groups that are being effective on the ground. They’re out there making changes, we look at their histories and what they’re involved in.

Most of our work has been done with a group called Honor the Earth. They work with indigenous communities who are primarily fighting environmental battles. We’ve done work trying to stop nuclear waste dumping on Indian land, or coal mining, putting up new power plants and things like that. You know, a lot of Indian people were pushed to different places to live and, it turns out, they’re sitting on all these [natural] resources that are getting exploited by big companies. A lot of those communities don’t have a very strong political voice. So, early on, Amy and I decided we couldn’t see environmentalism except through the lens of the indigenous perspective, because they’re land-based people. So these grass-roots groups were trying to protect the earth, and we just felt a kinship in our spirits with that kind of environmentalism. That’s how we picked that group.

So, what’s your favorite thing to do in Seattle?

I like to go running down by the water. I like to go to the market and just walk around. I love oysters, so I always eat oysters when I’m in Seattle. I have friends out there, so we get together and just walk around, but I love being down by the water. I miss the days when we played at the pier. That was one of my favorite venues in the whole country.

Yeah, I’ve heard talk that they’re thinking about bringing it back.

I have, too. I hope they do. I miss the sound of the tinkling masts, and the clinking of the people on the boats and just that balmy weather. It’s just great memories. But Seattle’s one of my favorite cities in the whole country. It’s just an amazing place for so many reasons. We always have a good time while we’re there.

photo courtesy of Flickr user Bryan Ledgard