By Quentin Yarolem
On Saturday, Iowa City will welcome the legendary folk-rock group Indigo Girls to the Englert Theater, 221 E. Washington St.
The band is on tour promoting its latest album, One Lost Day, released on June 2. The album is the duo’s 15th studio release and features the radio single “Happy in the Sorrow Day.”
Indigo Girls, whose members were unavailable for an interview, included the following quotes in an email from their representatives.
“I was thinking about the things that keep us weighed down with nonacceptance and a refusal to embrace impermanence and suffering,” said Amy Ray, who wrote “Sorrow Days.” “I don’t think you can make change for the good until you do, so it’s an activist part of me searching for a way to face reality and still have the energy and passion to work for good.”
After 31 years in the game, the band members are not afraid to shake things up and make changes to their surroundings, which band member Emily Saliers spoke about: “We took some chances on the making of One Lost Day, with a new producer, engineer, and various musicians. Stretching like that felt liberating to me.”
In many ways, the album functions as a sort of auditory scrapbook, in which each song is a photo that frames different events from various crevices of the duo’s lives. Those familiar with the band’s vast oeuvre can expect the classic Indigo Girls sound, filled with introspective instrumentals and nostalgic lyrics.
Album standout “Findlay, Ohio 1968” — a highly referential song that tackles the public and the personal with equal zeal, addressing everything from Vietnam to particularly memorable family road trips — showcases these nostalgic elements best.
“I spent parts of summers as a child in Findlay, where my mother was born,” Saliers said. “Ultimately, the song is an exploration of budding sexuality, tragedy, wonderment, and the clash of child and adult life. It is about a good girl but a fence-climbing girl, full of anger and excitement, entrapment and freedom.”
For Ray, the essence and meaning of the album can be found in the title.
“This is about the one lost day that rekindled and infused with our spirit to find that making music is just as vibrant and full of passion as it’s ever been before for us,” she said.
“Each song tells a story of where we’ve been and what we’ve thought about, whom we’ve met, and the travels we’ve had,” Saliers said. “It’s a travelogue on lessons learned and love lived.”
The music, however, can be seen to take a backseat to the underlying message that courses through their careers.
Throughout the years, the two have made a name for themselves as activists, promoting LGBTQ, Native American, and environmental rights, and campaigning for the ban of the death penalty.
The band has even gone on numerous group tours promoting its activism, including the 2007 and 2008 “True Color” tours, which benefited the Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy groups.