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The Honesty & Self-Reflection Of The Indigo Girls

Indigo Girls
Jeremy Cowart
/
Courtesy of the artist
Indigo Girls

Emily Saliers and Amy Ray of Indigo Girls are not only accomplished songwriters and performers in the midst of a 35-year career. They're also tireless activists for causes ranging from gun control to indigenous rights to, more recently, the removal of confederate monuments from town squares — something that Ray says, as someone who grew up in the South, took her some time to fully understand the implications of.

"I'm like a redneck.  I'm like somebody who had come to this, you know, from when I was a kid and having the rebel flag and thinking it was so cool.  I had to realize what all this meant."

That sort of self-reflection and honesty is frequent when you talk to the Indigo Girls — and when you listen to their music. It's part of the reason they're so beloved, and why they've been able to put out 16 albums, including their latest, Look Long, which was released in April. I spoke to them in mid-August, and today you'll hear our conversation and live performances they recorded of some of the new songs — and an old favorite of theirs, too.

Copyright 2020 XPN

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).
Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.