Hey, I’m in this movie about The Indigo Girls! Perhaps I only utter a few words (on the tour bus, evidently) but I had to sign off on it.
SUNDANCE 2023 world premier – “It’s Only Life After All” 40 years of home movies, raw film archive, and intimate present-day vérité.
How’d I get on their tour bus? Well… in 1998, I went on tour with them, not as a separate “act”, but as part of an experiment 
called the Suffragette Sessions Tour. We played about 12 dates in large venues. Some very large… like arenas.
It’s the only touring I’ve done by proper tour bus. It left me feeling utterly gleeful that Mecca Normal has toured almost exclusively by car. We take so many side trips, stop at restaurants, go to museums etc.
The participants included Gail Ann Dorsey (bass for David Bowie), Lisa Germano, Lourdes Pérez, Kate Schellenbach (Luscious Jackson, the Beastie Boys), Jane Siberry, Jean Smith, Josephine Wiggs (the Breeders) and Thalia Zedek (Come).
Amy Ray / Indigo Girls: “The Suffragette Sessions Tour is a socialist experiment in rock and roll. Gather a bunch of musicians from different musical genres who are relatively unfamiliar with each other…throw them on a tour bus together…drop them off at a rock club, and see what happens. No hierarchy, no boundaries.”
The YouTube poster calls me guesting on one of Emily’s songs a highlight of the show! Wow! Oh, actually, I just sing parts of Mecca Normal songs in the middle of her song. The nerve!
“Soon be to Nothing” / “Her Ambition” “The Dogs”
I opened the show with “Everwilling” in Minneapolis at the First Ave (1550 capacity). I’m very sure this is not what these Indigo Girls fans came to see. Oh well. Nice reaction from the audience though. Part of this must be as the others came on stage. Likely Thalia backing me up, although I was playing guitar on this tour, so maybe the accents are mine.
“Everwilling” is a 2 Foot Flame song from our second album “Ultra Drowning” (1997, Matador)
We did a few days of rehearsal at SIR in NYC before we hit the road. I’d just done a 2 Foot Flame tour in New Zealand and Australia on which I played electric guitar on every song (as the only guitar), so I was keen to play guitar. I think the Indigo Girls thought they were getting a spoken word artist.
Mecca Normal 