The acclaimed indie-folk duo plays two Michigan shows this coming week, including a sold-out stop at Meijer Gardens. Writer Dave Gil de Rubio interviews Emily Saliers about her challenges and more.
Still Captivating Fans: Emily Saliers and Amy Ray of The Indigo Girls. (Photo/Shervin Lainez)
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO
Support our coverage of
West Michigan's music scene
Fortitude and passion.
What else can you say is driving Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls?
In a recent video statement, Saliers and creative partner Amy Ray shared that the former is dealing with a pair of incurable conditions — cervical dystonia and an essential tremor — that have affected the Connecticut native’s ability to sing clearly and constantly.
The message was more of a heads-up about what concertgoers can expect at live shows with Saliers sharing that she’s getting a combination of therapeutic massage, physical therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture and Botox shots along with working with a vocal coach skilled at working around this condition to address these physical obstacles.
But during this particular interview earlier this year, Saliers was focused more on optimism than dwelling on this most recent announcement as she discussed different musical projects within and outside the Indigo Girls. First and foremost is her involvement in writing songs for the musical “Starstruck,” a project on which she collaborated with spoken-word poet Mary Ann Stratton and Tony-nominated performer Beth Malone.
“Today the sun is shining, the tomatoes are planted and all is good here in Atlanta,” she said. “We started working on it (“Starstruck”) during the pandemic. It’s a story loosely based on ‘Cyrano de Bergerac.’ Beth was a big fan of the movie ‘Roxanne’ with Steve Martin. She wrote the story and I wrote the music.”
The musical debuted in February and March at Bucks County Playhouse up in New Hope, Penn., a run that broke “all the box office records for a new musical in the history of the playhouse,” Salies noted, adding that the hope is for “Starstruck” to eventually get presented on Broadway.
Musical theater aside, The Indigo Girls continue to be the full-time venture for Saliers. With a catalog that runs 15 studio albums deep and includes such classic songs as “Closer to Fine,” “Galileo” and “Least Complicated” there’ll be no shortage of material to draw from in concerts.
Stage Favorites: The Indigo Girls last played Grand Rapids at Studio Park in 2023. (Photo/Holly Holtzclaw)
The Indigo Girls play a sold-out concert at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park at 7 p.m. Monday (Sept. 14), with Brian Dunne opening the show. They follow that with a Sept. 17 tour stop at Meadow Brook Amphitheatre in Rochester Hills, with special guest Linda Perry. Tickets, $35-$143.50, are still available for that concert online here.
Saliers noted that contingency plans are in place for her vocal issues on the current tour, with singers Lucy Wainwright Roche, Lyris Hung and Jeff Fiedler on hand to beef up the trademark harmonies of Ray and Saliers.
“On stage, it’ll be me and Amy and Lucy Wainwright Roche, Lyris and Jeff Fielder,” Saliers said. “It’s kind of like a band without drums and extra keyboards. Jeff is going to be playing some bass, keyboards and different instruments. We’re going to be focusing a lot on the harmonies — bringing Lucy’s voice in, and in particular support of my (vocals), but also all the beautiful harmonies she does…It’ll be all of us on stage and then a mix of songs from albums past, including solo stuff.”
For the 62-year-old Saliers, music has been a constant in her life dating back to childhood. Her path began to take shape when she was 12 and her father, a professor at Yale, moved the family to Atlanta to take a job at Emory University. There, Saliers quickly found a group of friends and even went as far as forming a group in seventh grade with two other girls called The Blue Skies.
But it was connecting with Ray, who was a grade younger and “the other kid in school that played guitar,” where the seeds were planted for what became The Indigo Girls.
After a brief stint attending college (Tulane for Saliers and Vanderbilt University for Ray) the homesick duo eventually transferred to Georgia’s Emory University. The duo’s 1987 debut album “Strange Fire” was independently released on Canada’s Indigo Records before the duo signed a deal with Epic Records, which re-released the debut the following year.
In the subsequent decades, The Indigo Girls enjoyed considerable commercial success during a nine-album run on Epic (which included three platinum-selling releases and worldwide touring) before moving over to Vanguard Records in 2007 and most recently forming IG Recordings, their own independent imprint.
For Saliers, the duo’s longevity can be traced to a blend of differences and philosophical intersectionality.
“Amy brought something I didn’t have, so we brought two different things,” Saliers said. “We’re different kinds of songwriters and have different sensibilities, so there’s that. Our values were aligned so when we learned about activism and learned we could blend/marry music to social justice causes we were both aligned in what we wanted to do in terms of that.
“In terms of breaking it all down, she had a lower voice and I have a higher voice. She struck the guitar like a rock star and I was more of a picking person. We never wrote songs together. We still don’t. But we were able to arrange them together, which has been our super power together.
“We had a lot of amazing people who mentored us and we had a lot of great experiences, different concerts, different people we opened up for. It’s been such an amazing ride.” – By Dave Gil de Rubio, Last Word Features
VIDEO: The Indigo Girls, Live with the Binghamton University Symphony Orchestra
Copyright 2026, Spins on Music LLC
