Atlanta’s Amy Ray helped shape modern folk music through her longtime band, the Indigo Girls, and her solo work. Tomorrow, the acclaimed singer-songwriter is lending her immense knowledge of the genre to WABE’s “Sounds Like ATL,” the station’s monthly musical showcase at City Winery.
Each month explores a different theme, and with this month’s focus on folk music, Ray makes a natural fit for hosting the show. The concert will feature three Atlanta folk artists: Rising Appalachia, Eliot Bronson and Joy Conaway. Before Ray hits the stage tomorrow, she joined “City Lights” senior producer Kim Drobes via Zoom to talk about her life in Georgia folk music.
Interview highlights follow below.
How the Indigo Girls embraced the folk community:
“When we started, it’s so funny ‘cause Emily [Saliers] and I really shied away from being categorized as folk because we were so intent on moving beyond that niche. I don’t know why actually; I think we had some hangups or something,” said Ray.
“But then we had some women that really took us under their wing and started, I think, schooling us a bit, and saying, ‘Don’t worry about categories, and just play your music and play for everybody,’” Ray went on.
“Caroline Aiken really helped us out a lot, and DeDe Vogt, and I think, helped us learn how to navigate the chip on the shoulder and how not to worry about things like that. And it’s funny ‘cause when you loosen up about that, you open up, and the scene feels more open as well, and it’s really just your perspective.”
On playing for audiences made up of all stripes:
“Women would approach us and ask us to play separatist events that did not allow men. At first, we were like, ‘We can’t do that because we need to connect to our male audience too,’ instead of realizing the politics of that and understanding that separatist events are good things, you know, in good spaces. But we also learned how to connect to a broader audience.”
“I guess I felt like I want people in the audience that are different from us. I mean, I don’t want it to be all gay women of a certain age and a certain race because it’s not real. I mean, I love that part of our audience; obviously, it has carried us through and has been the core of what we’ve done and our college audience when we started. But for me, I grew up in an environment with a lot of people that felt differently from myself. I’m used to that. I think it’s good for you to have to challenge that and know how to talk across the aisle and know how to talk about ideas with people that disagree… We just want to bring our music to whoever will hear it and let them take what they want from it.”
Giving some shine to this month’s Sounds Like ATL artists:
“You’ve got Eliot Bronson, who is… kind of a songwriter’s songwriter. I mean, he’s adored by many songwriters I know, and his audience is just, you know, in love with him,” said Ray. “When you listen to his music, it strikes me as very organic, and he’s done things like record to tape, and he’s made very old-fashioned sort of methods into what he does to capture that organic sound.”
“Rising Appalachia… are such a cross-pollination. I mean, they’re truly folk of all the world, world music folk. That’s really different. I mean, those two women pop up in very diverse places to play music and to gather sounds. So they’ve incorporated kind of an Appalachian route with world music,” Ray mused.
“And then Joy Conaway. I’ve heard her play folk songs acoustic; I’ve heard stripped-down acoustic songs and then full-on, what I would consider to be almost like R&B pop. So she, to me, is a cross-pollination, and she has joy in her songs – as she is aptly named.”
This month’s WABE “Sounds Like ATL” concert takes place at City Winery on July 12. Tickets and more information are available at www.wabe.org/events/sounds-like-atl/.
