JM: Do you have a recent example? AR: It was in a song called "Shit Kickin'." There was a lyric in it where I'm talking about my granddad. We'll process lyrics if one of us thinks that someone needs to define something better or polish it up or if it's clumsy sounding, but only if the other person asks. It's an unspoken rule.Įvery now and then I'll be like, "What did you mean by that? Or what are you writing about?" But she doesn't really say, she holds her cards pretty close. JM: When you first hear a lyric like that from her, do you stop and process it together? AR: No, we're not allowed to process each other's lyrics together. I mean, it stands the test of time and probably one of the ones that's the most requested too. It's always been one of my favorite songs of Emily's, for sure. I just think of it as this force that's so married to the music. It's almost so epic to me that I never take the words apart and look at a sentence on its own. Because that melody is so sweeping and she can write a melody. That's one of my favorite songs that she's written actually. JM: There's a lyric in the song, "Ghost," that goes, "And there's not enough room in this world for my pain." AR: Emily wrote that too. A lot of people can relate to it at different stages of their life." I can even look at it from the outside and be like, "It's a classic song. It's some crazy quality she has to just put her finger right on the pulse. Because that song, Emily knows how to write a song that resonates with people in this way that I can't do. JM: Looking across your entire catalog, does it surprise you that it's "Closer to Fine" that's still one of your most famous songs? AR: It does not surprise me. But this feels amazing." It was always about, "This feels amazing." It wasn't like, "We're going to be famous." It was like, "This is the most fun I've ever had. When I heard us singing together, when we first were in my parents' basement learning a cover song, my head felt like it was going to explode. JM: The magic that you have when you're playing together, did you have that from day one or did you have to work to find it? AR: I feel like it was there from day one. A lot of stuff that was just anything but the music, anything they could talk about except the music. And a lot of it had to do with homophobia, some kind of weird -ism against lesbians playing guitar. A lot of it, I think, had to do with sexism and not understanding how to deal with masculine women. I mean, we got insulted constantly for our appearance, what our audience looks like, for being butch, for being lesbians with guitars and how mediocre it was. I don't want to look like a real estate agent." They were like, "Should we dress them a certain way? What do we do with these ladies?" Sometimes I would have to tell the makeup person, "Just pretend I'm a guy and you're putting makeup on a guy. As far as the label went, they didn't understand how to market us necessarily. But the business end of things was a mess. ![]() I mean, our audience knew how to process it because they were right there with us. Did you feel like people didn't know how to process your gender performance back then? AR: That's an understatement. JM: In the early years of the Indigo Girls, sexuality aside, you were presenting as a butch woman in public. ![]() And I definitely relate to people more that are fluid and I feel at home when I'm with people that understand that. But I definitely call myself genderqueer. I think because I've lived for so long in my life and struggled to be at peace with she, that that's what I embrace. JM: Do you ID as trans or genderqueer? AR: I ID often as genderqueer. And the one thing that I do know is that you honor everyone's way of doing it.
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