Georgia-based band moving forward by getting back to their roots

Por Antonio Rey | Editor SDUN

Georgia-based and world-renown duo the Indigo Girls take the stage as part of the Humphreys By the Bay concert series on Friday, June 15, and Amy Ray, one half of the group, said this time they are getting back to their roots.

“We’ve always taken friends out with us, and we’ve always had opening bands that … we were big fans of but also wanted to play with,” she said. “It’s kind of been a part of our world because it’s sort of how we came up through the scenes in Atlanta. … We sort of just see it as an extension of what we’ve always done and what’s been done for us.”

Ray,  with bandmate and friend Emily Saliers, is welcoming the Georgia-based band The Shadowboxers on the tour, to both open the show and support the duo for the remainder of the show, as well.

“They’re a fantastic band,” Ray said. “It’s just going to give us a lot more to work with than usual.”

The Humphreys concert sits at the beginning of a two-month tour in support of Ray and Saliers’s latest album, last fall’s “Beauty Queen Sister,” however Ray said they always pull music from their entire career – which spans over 25 years – for the shows.

Recorded in Nashville, Tenn., “Beauty Queen Sister” brought the Indigo Girls back together with producer Peter Collins, who worked with them on 1992’s “Rites of Passage” and its follow-up, 1994’s “Swamp Ophelia.” While “Beauty Queen Sister” is similar in tone, Ray said the group continues to look forward in their music.

“We work with [Collins] every now and then, when we need somebody to kind of shake us up a bit,” she said. “He’s really good at seeing where you’ve been, seeing where you are and … trying to give you something to look at differently. [He] brings in different players that he thinks might draw something out of you, that’s different than what you’ve done before.”

The Indigo Girls’s recording career has produced 14 studio albums, as well as several live recordings and greatest hits compilations. The band has sold over 12 million albums worldwide, with “Beauty Queen Sister,” the fourth to be released on their independent label, IG Recordings.

Ray said that in the start of their career – the two met in elementary school and started performing regularly while attending Emory University in Atlanta – they relied on other bands to give them a chance to play in front of an audience, and now like to do the same for up and coming bands, such as the Shadowboxers.

“We haven’t done this in a long time,” Ray said. “We’ll probably do a lot of the set with full band, and then some of it we’ll break off and do alone. I guess it will depend on the crowd and the night.”

The June 15 show at Humphreys by the Bay begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $45 for reserved seats and $112 for dinner and show packages. The venue is located at 2241 Shelter Island Dr. For more information and tickets, visit humphreysconcerts.com or call 619-224-3577.