Amy Ray of Indigo Girls goes solo

From Port Folio Weekly

Being interviewed on her cell phone while on the road is a natural experience for Amy Ray. She has spent numerous hours driving between her farm in rural northern Georgia to a recording studio in Ashville, North Carolina. The process seems to get her creative wheels churning.

"I definitely think of lyrics in my head and work out harmony vocals while I’m driving," said Ray as she was motoring en route to Boston. "I’ll pull over and stop to jot down words."

Amy Ray is best known for her musical partnership with Emily Saliers in the Indigo Girls. The folksy-pop duo made its debut in 1987 with Strange Fire. After a longstanding relationship with Epic Records, Indigo Girls recorded their eleventh album, Despite Our Differences (2006), for Hollywood Records.

As a solo artist, Amy Ray has explored her more edgy musical side. In 2001, she unveiled Stag on Daemon Records, a not-for-profit label she founded in 1990 to help and promote indie bands from the Atlanta area, such as Three Finger Cowboy and Rose Polenzani.

While both Stag and Prom (2005) received positive reviews from music critics, her latest album, Didn’t It Feel Kinder, has garnered rave reviews, and she appears to finally be carving a niche separate from Indigo Girls.

From a recent issue in Paste magazine: "This is Ray’s first solo record guided by an outside producer, Greg Griffith, and you can see his influence: Ray’s voice pushes into new territory, and there’s some extra sparkle and sheen in the production. Don’t let Kinder’s name fool you—the grit of her previous albums, with their fuzzed guitars and angry lyrics, is still present."

Amy Ray said she needed someone who had a real sense of musicality, a sense of arrangement and knowledge in how songs are built.

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