Amy Ray

To Manchester tonight to see the phenomenal Indigo Girls at the Royal Northern College of Music.

This was the 5th time I've seen them and, as ever, they didn't disappoint!

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. First on stage was the wonderful support act, New York’s very own Lucy Wainwright Roche - almost a year to the day since I last saw her perform, at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. On that occasion she was playing with her sister, Martha, as The Wainwright Sisters and they were absolutely great. Tonight, solo, her between-song musings, impromptu Q&A sessions with the audience and revelation that, when in the UK, she always likes to catch up with The Archers storyline, were as entertaining as her songs were. Her genuine delight in discovering that, over here, the word ‘trump’ is a synonym for ‘fart’, was also very endearing!

She has apparently known Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls since she was 8 years old, when they toured with her mum’s band The Roches - and after her own set tonight she joined them, on and off, throughout the rest of the evening, providing additional harmonies and guitar.

Amy and Emily have, themselves, known each other since they were about 10 years old and attended the same school in Decatur, Georgia. Over the past 30 years they've recorded 14 studio albums of superb music - each writing songs individually and singing lead on her own songs, with beautiful harmony and instrumentation added by her bandmate.

I love them both dearly but, I suspect, all their fans have their particular favourite Indigo Girl and, I confess, mine is Amy. She's the Joe Strummer to Emily’s Mick Jones, the Lennon to Emily’s McCartney and they complement each other perfectly.

Tonight they were both on great form, musically and in relation to their onstage banter and anecdotes. Amy’s description of her thrill at her visit to Afflecks, Manchester’s famed ‘alternative shopping emporium’, was balanced by Emily’s description of her bafflement at the ‘strange to the American’ varieties of sandwiches available at the branch of Sainsbury's she’d visited earlier in the day! (LOTS of tikka, apparently).

I hope they come back again soon.

Tonight's setlist:

Get Out The Map
Heartache for Everyone
Power of Two
Spread the Pain
Cold Beer and Remote Control
Yield
Elizabeth
Share the Moon
The Wood Song
Olympia Inn
Love’s Recovery
Go
Least Complicated
War Rugs
Train Inside
Gone Again
Fill It Up Again
The Rise of the Black Messiah (Emily’s guitar playing on this was hair-raisingly good - she doesn't let rip on the electric guitar often enough for my liking! I noticed all the ushers sneaking in to watch/listen!)
Galileo
Devotion
Closer to Fine

Here's ‘Devotion’ for you www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl5Bfx_jHjE


The Extra Photos are of Amy and Emily together and of them both with Lucy Wainwright Roche.