Amy Ray Does It Her Way

Back in November 1999, Amy Ray told Girlfriends she would be working on a solo punk album in 2000 to be recorded on her 11-year-old Georgia-based indie label, daemon records. It didn't help my nerves that Ray was also talking about her new girlfriend and how she was considering settling down and starting a family. Of course, I was thinking: "Oh no, it's the lesbian equivalent of Yoko and John. God save the Indigo Girls."

I needn't have worried. Ray's solo album is out, the Indigo Girls are working on an acoustic album to be recorded this summer, and Ray is still baby-free. (She's also still with girlfriend Jennifer Baumgardner, a 30-year-old New Yorker who co-authored the recent overview of third-wave feminism, Manifesta. Sorry, girls.)

The new album, Stag, is a very lesbian record -- from the cover art of a butch/femme couple dancing, to the lyrics within. But the most interesting thing is the richness of the material, drawn from a tangle of genres: folk, rockabilly, punk, and riot grrl righteousness. Guest musicians include The Butchies, Luscious Jackson, some of Daemon's own bands (Rock*A*Teens and Mrs. Fun), and punk legend Joan Jett.

If you're expecting Stag to be a 10-song marathon of the angry thrash that was "Compromise" -- a song Ray wrote for Indigo's last studio album, Come on Now Social -- you'll be disappointed or pleasantly surprised, depending on your taste. The album is radical more for how it was made than how it sounds.

At its center, Stag is about values and politics, as is just about everything Ray does or says. And the freedom of going solo and working beneath the corporate radar seems to have calmed and focused this part-time Indigo.

I won't say 'so much for that; what do you do when it's done?' 'Cause I know we grow when it's over.

How was it for the 36-year-old Ray to write and record without using her Indigo Girls partner Emily Saliers as a sounding board and collaborator, as she has for 20 years?

"It was strange. I did try to keep it separate, but she would always ask how it was going, which was cool. And I'd tell her, 'I'm having trouble with this one thing,' and she would be supportive and sympathetic, but she didn't get involved in the specifics."

Saliers recently told Ray she loves Stag and has been playing it constantly. I can hear in Ray's voice the pleasure that idea gives her, and the mutual admiration that makes these two work together so well. Ray likens it to the early days of the Indigo Girls when they would record their own songs on cassettes and trade them. "We'd wear out each other's demos."

Says Saliers, "I love it. It's very raw and honest and emotional. I keep skipping around to a new favorite song. They stick in your head. Right now, I've got 'Late Bloom' in my head." "Late Bloom," evocative of early nineties Seattle grunge, isn't exactly an "Emily" song.

"Amy has really turned a corner in her songwriting on this album, but also on songs [from the last Indigo Girls' album] like 'Gone Again,' and even 'Go.' Those songs are really well constructed," said Saliers. "I'm really proud of her."

Ray says writing for her solo album was a new experience. "When I would be writing for an Indigo Girls album, I would be thinking about leaving space for harmonies or counter melodies, for Emily to come up with a riff, things like that. But there is a self-consciousness about the way I write for the Indigo Girls, that I can't put my finger on, that dilutes the intimacy. I need to be less self-conscious."

Going solo has helped. Although collaborating with Saliers is enjoyable, challenging, and productive, Ray says the relationship creates undeniable tensions -- who's playing or singing lead on a given tune, for example. "Writing for this album, I could be less like a dog on a chain. I didn't have to protect my territory."