For those who remember the earliest days of the Indigo Girls, it is difficult to grasp that Emily Saliers and Amy Ray have been recording albums together for nearly 30 years. Earlier this year, the duo released One Lost Day, a project that came with a behind-the-scenes documentary film on the making of the record. On Wednesday, Sept. 23, the Grammy winners will return to Birmingham with a performance at the Alys Stephens Center. Recently, Weld caught up with Saliers by phone from her Atlanta home.
Weld: How would you describe the creative process that led to One Lost Day? How did the body of work take shape?
Emily Saliers: For me, the songs were newer material. I sat down a year and a half ago to start writing songs for the record. That’s typically the way I do it; I don’t have a lot of them hanging around. If they’re good enough to be used, then they don’t last long — they go on a record [laughs]. Amy will put pieces of old songs together, ideas she’s had for a long time. Before we knew it, four years had passed since our last record, a lot of life had happened, and we realized it was time to make a record. We really buckled down and finished our writing.
Weld: How does the collaborative songwriting process work for the two of you?
ES: Amy writes her songs, and I write my songs and they’re done. We may tweak them a bit. We may change the structure, but we arrange them together and that’s when they become Indigo songs.
Weld: Do songs continue to evolve even after you take them into the studio?
ES: They do, and that’s a great point. We had a producer, Jordan Brooke Hamlin, who we’d never used before. She’s very talented and we made a lot of decisions in the studio even though we had plans for them beforehand. There’s a song of mine, “If I Don’t Leave Here Now,” that started out as a midtempo pop song with heavy lyrics and Jordan turned that into a ballad. It completely changed the focus of the song.
That’s the exciting thing about working with a producer and making a record — you have a plan, but exciting things happen that you wouldn’t have planned on.
Weld: Talk about the documentary film that was made during the creation of One Lost Day.
ES: It was done by our friend Kathlyn Horan. She took us through the whole process of the songwriting and recording and our thoughts about it. It’s excellent.
Weld: You and Amy often often engage your fans via social media. What draws you to that medium?
ES: I really like it for spreading music and getting people involved. Amy and I are always posting things now and it’s an awesome way to get your music heard. It’s just a wealth of information.
Tickets to the show are $45.50 – $63.50 and can be purchased at alysstephens.org.