Saliers, who released her solo debut, “Murmuration Nation,” in 2017, has also branched out into writing for the theater. She co-wrote the musical “Starstruck” with Tony Award nominee Beth Malone and Mary Ann Stratton.
Credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Saliers recently answered some questions about Indigo Girls and the onslaught of extracurricular projects.
Q: How did “Glitter and Doom” and the documentary come about?
A: We heard about ‘Glitter and Doom’ and they wanted to use our music, which is really an honor. We read the script and loved the movie. Then the documentary has been four years in the making. We knew we didn’t want it to just focus on us. We wanted it to be a lot about our community. We really trusted the director, Alexandria Bombach. She’s the one who put it together. We didn’t know what exactly it was going to be until we saw it, so we had a lot of faith in her vision. We’re really, really happy with it. There are a lot of different ways to tell the same story and she did a great job. Then it went to Sundance, which is really cool and an honor, and now it’s starting to get played in theaters and going to streaming services so people can see it. Hopefully people will check it out.”
Q: What about the “Barbie” movie?
A: That was crazy and exciting when that happened. There have been a lot of cool things that all materialized during the same period of time, but it was really like that dropped out of the sky. We love Greta Gerwig, and I loved the movie. It’s just such a thrill to be part of it and not only have the song in the movie but have the song be part of the story. I can’t even describe how thrilling that was. It’s very unusual for that to happen but we’ve just been around so long, and that song meant something to Greta personally. If you stick around long enough you just never know what’s going to pop up.
Q: How did you get involved in working in musical theater?
A: I’m working on some musical theater projects now. I’m actually hunkered down working on one of those, but it all started with my friend Jennifer Nettles. She wanted to work on a musical and we just started talking about possibly doing that. That sort of gave me the bug. I’ve always wanted to write music for other people to perform. I’ve always wanted to write a song a country artist would sing so doing this has been a wonderful experience.
Q: It has been a few years since “Look Long” came out. Is there a new Indigo Girls album on the horizon?
A: That album came out right as the pandemic hit so it’s been a bit of a slow burn. We do have our sights on making a new album, but we play a bunch of those songs from ‘Look Long’ every night in concert. We put a band together last year. This year starting in August we’re going to put a band together again and we’re going to go out with Melissa Etheridge in August. Then we have shows with Amos Lee in September.
Credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Credit: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Q: Indigo Girls has been doing symphonic shows for more than a decade. How do you like those?
A: We really love doing those shows. That’s another awesome thing that just came up. We got an offer to have some scores made for our songs to share with symphonies and it has been such a wonderful experience. Each symphony is different. Each conductor is different. It’s challenging to perform with the symphonies, but it brings the songs to life in a completely different way.
It has added a layer of depth to our repertoire and live performances.
Q: What are your plans for the summer?
A: We’re going to take this summer off for the first time ever in our career. We’re super excited to play shows with Melissa and Amos after that. We’re going to continue to do songs from ‘Look Long.’ We’ll probably end the shows with Amos singing a bunch of songs with us. We hope to do stuff with Melissa too. We’ll make it the usual Indigo Girls hootenanny experience to the best of our ability. I should mention Ari Hest is opening the show in Dayton. He’s a wonderful artist and I don’t want people to miss that. When we first saw Ari, we were just blown away. He’s such a great artist and singer and writer so we’re really looking forward to some shows with him.
Contact this contributing writer at 937-287-6139 or donthrasher100@gmail.com.
How to go
Who: Dayton Live presents Indigo Girls with Ari Hest
Where: Victoria Theatre, 138 N. Main St., Dayton
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 23
Cost: $50.50 to $70.50
More info: 937-228-3630 or www.daytonlive.org
Artist info: www.indigogirls.com
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