A lot of artists defy categorization. Some do so because they are tirelessly searching for the place they fit, while others are constantly chasing trends. Some, though, are genuinely exploring and expressing their myriad influences. Amy Ray belongs in the latter group. Pulling from every direction — Patty Griffin to Patti Smith, Big Star to Bon Iver — Ray's music might best be described as folk-rock, though even that would be a tough sell, depending on the song.
Ray's musical beginnings trace back to her high school days in Atlanta, Georgia, when she and Emily Saliers formed the duo that would become the Indigo Girls. Their story started in 1981 with a basement tape called “Tuesday's Children” and went on to include a deal with Epic Records in 1988, a Grammy in 1990, and nearly 20 albums over more than 35 years.
Rooted in shared passions for harmony and justice, the Indigo Girls have forged a career that combines artistry and activism to push against every boundary and box anyone tries to put them in. As activists, they have supported as many great causes as they can, from LGBTQ+ rights to voter registration, going so far as to co-found a Native environmental justice organization, Honor the Earth, with Winona LaDuke in 1993. As artists, they have dipped their toes into a similar multitude of waters — folk, rock, country, pop, and more — but the resulting releases are always pure Indigo.
Ray's seven studio records — and three live albums — have charted even wider seas, from the political punk of 2001's Stag to the feminist Americana of 2018's Holler. Each effort seems to lean into her influences in different ways, whether it's the Allman Brothers or the Carter Family. One album finds the Butchies on full blast, another features Alison Brown on bluegrass banjo.
Both Stag and its follow-up, Prom (2005), found Ray addressing societal woes, ranging from the dangers of homophobia to the machismo of rock & roll, all while channeling her inner Replacements into a Southern punk sound that she has called "subversiveness with a smile." Ray softened her sonic stance a bit for her next two efforts, 2008's Didn't It Feel Kinder and 2012's Lung of Love, both of which felt closer in tone to her work with Indigo Girls, confronting cultural issues alongside personal ones.
In retrospect, it's easy to see how songs like Lung of Love's “Bird in the Hand” and “The Rock Is My Foundation” served as signposts of what was to come next for Ray. With Goodnight Tender in 2014, she recorded in Asheville, North Carolina, and stepped squarely into the country music that has been a part of everything she's done. But it's not the kind of country heard on the radio; it's the country music culled from folk, bluegrass, gospel, and Southern rock, going so far as to title a tune after Duane Allman.
For 2018's Holler, Ray recorded, once again, with her Carolina country kin, adding horns and strings to all but split the musical distance between Kinder and Tender to create a soulful, country-tinged, gospel-infused Americana sound. More cohesively than her prior releases, Holler encompasses and imparts all the disparate aspects of Ray's influences in a singular offering.
Ray's vast artistic inspirations are matched only by the deep peer admiration that is reflected in her albums' guest appearances, which have included Vince Gill, Brandi Carlile, Justin Vernon, Jim James, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Phil Cook, and others. That kind of good will is something only built from a lifetime of good deeds and great music.
When 2020 found the world immersed in a pandemic, Amy and her band turned to the digital world, and started producing and recording singles from their own makeshift studios. “Tear it Down” released along with a video in November, 2020 wrestled with Amy’s upbringing in the cradle of the confederacy and pays tribute to activists working to dismantle racism.
In February, 2021, Amy Ray Band released another video and song, “Muscadine”, to sing of dogs and what they teach us of unconditional love. Another song, “Chuck Will’s Widow” about the incessant call of the night jar came out in 2021.
These singles laid the groundwork to go into the studio in the winter of 2021 in Nashville and record a full-length record to analog tape. The upcoming release, If It All Goes South is due out in September 2022. IIAGS digs deeper into Amy Ray and her band’s musical roots and showcases their bond and agility of 9 years and running. She is revisited by old friends Alison Brown (banjo), Phil Cook (keys and vocals), and Brandi Carlile (vocals). The addition of guest vocals by Allison Russell and Natalie Hemby along with mandolin and vocals from Sarah Jarosz bring fresh influences to the mix. The record also brings us a collaboration with Bluegrass / Americana greats I’m With Her, where they reimagine the song “Chuck Will’s Widow”.
Ray will be tour with Indigo Girls and her solo band through 2022 and 2023.
If naming is a form of claiming, of being claimed, how is one tethered to both the physical landscape that surrounds us, as well as our own internal emotional landscape—at times calm, at times turbulent, and ever changing? H.C. McEntire’s new album Every Acre grapples with those themes—themes that encompass grief, loss, and links to land and loved ones. And naming—claiming land, claiming self, being claimed by ancestry and heritage—permeates the hauntingly beautiful landscape that is this poignant collection of songs.
The songs straddle the line between music and poetry, often weaving back and forth between each realm. In “New View,” McEntire cites poets “Day, Ada, and Laux, Berry, and Olds”—fixtures in the world of writing, whose works are beacons of light over bleak horizons. The beginning of the song is backed by soft guitar plucks that fall on the downbeat and spangle like stars, and, throughout, guitar, bass, and drums swell together gently, mimicking ebbing and flowing tides under the moon. McEntire’s voice (at once tender and fierce) intones the truth of both giving and taking, releasing and claiming: “Bend me, break me, split me right in two. Mend me, make me—I’ll take more of you.”
Permeated by the constant heartbeat-like drums, “Shadows” develops quiet ruminations on surrender and loss—reminiscing, moving on. “Walk your way into the river…Is it fever, or surrender?” This ponderous, dreamlike song asks the question of how “to make room,” lyrics that serve as echoing foils to the familiar: “Cornmeal rising high in cast-iron pans. Cattails catching all the copperheads.” How does one make room, for self and for renewal and surrender, when it is so difficult to leave what you know behind? There is the temptation to “leave [a] place just like you found it.” Playing with slivers of descending chromatics, along with the occasional downward-stepping bass, here McEntire yearns for home, and for nesting. And there is also the reality of life—sometimes a casting off, sometimes a shrouded letting go.
Perhaps one of the more grief-stricken songs, “Rows of Clover” is a lamentation, one that touches on the loss of a “steadfast hound.” The lone piano in the beginning of the song is rhythmically hymn-like. The stark verse arrangement gradually leads to a chorus that reads like a moody exhale, swollen with lush guitar strums and a Bill Withers–esque understated soul groove. Images of nature, often in mid-growth or decay, are braided through the lyrics. The clover covers “wasted dirt.” Cedars stand guard the ravaged land, a rotting pasture. But what stands out the most is an image of being “down on your knees, clawing at the garden”—the only explicit mention of a person in the song. “It ain’t the easy kind of healing,” sings McEntire, seemingly from further and further away as her voice echoes; and healing takes time, time takes time—truths that linger painfully.
“Dovetail” is a song that tells of various women and their various gifts, their various traumas. Instrumentally, the song moves back and forth between solo piano and the addition of bass and drums under vocals. Imagistically, there are women who barrel through. There are “sober and sunkissed” women who never cuss. There are weak women, strong women, women who “[starve] for fathers.” And there are women who leave, and women who stay, who “will never want you gone.” McEntire’s gentle, trembling vibrato—harmonized in thirds in a celebratory manner—calls to mind a rejoicing psalm and shines through these images, leaving the listener cuttingly fraught with emotions—such as wonder, sadness, nostalgia—that can only arise with these juxtapositions.
Every Acre is aptly named. Gracious (and graceful) with its lilting melodies and lush harmonies, the album explores the acres of our physical and emotional homes. These songs are not just lyrics; they are more than lyric, reaching for the kind of home that we all seek: one where we can rest and lay down (or tuck away) our burdens of loss. And maybe, moving through every acre of a world that often tries to tear our sense of identity and heritage down, McEntire sheds light on what it is to be human in this life—both stingy and gracious, both hurtful and kind.