This Indigo Girls biopic explores their musical career in the face of sexism and homophobia, but also their evolution as activists focusing on the deepest relational contexts to the earth, Indigenous communities, and the LGTBQIA+ community. We break down Alexandria Bombach’s IT’S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL in this episode.
Sundance 2023 Section: Premieres
Distribution: Not available. Updates from Multitude Films
From Sundance’s website: Atlanta-based singer-songwriters Amy Ray and Emily Saliers began performing together in high school before becoming the acclaimed folk-rock duo Indigo Girls. After playing local clubs for years, Indigo Girls and their distinctive vocal harmonies slipped into mainstream consciousness in the late 1980s and early ’90s with a Grammy win and hit song “Closer to Fine.” Over the years, Ray and Saliers have maintained musical careers on their own terms with their resolutely political lyrics and commitment to LGBTQ rights and visibility. Since 1993, they have also found purpose in partnering with Indigenous activist Winona LaDuke in the fight for environmental justice.
Intimate, fun, and filled with great music, It’s Only Life After All allows Ray and Saliers to look back on their musical partnership, personal demons, and careers spanning three decades with self-criticism, humor, and honesty. Weaving Ray’s personal audiotape and camcorder footage with insightful interviews and archival footage, director Alexandria Bombach returns to Sundance (On Her Shoulders, 2018 Sundance Film Festival) with a film about truly independent artists that will delight both longtime fans and those ready to discover the Indigo Girls.
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.501] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. And I'm Wonder Bright. And welcome to another episode of Story All the Way Down. We're going to be talking today about another documentary film from Sundance 2023. Today's episode is It's Only Life After All by Alexandria Bombach. This is a biopic about the Indigo Girls, both their musical journey and how they met and the constraints that they had within their music career because they're very politically oriented lesbian women that were speaking about things that not a lot of out musicians were at the time. And so I think they faced a lot of misogyny, a lot of sexism, a lot of homophobia. throughout their careers, but also a whole lot of activism in ways that they're engaged with the wider world, both from what they're doing directly with their music, but also how they're using their influence to shine a spotlight on whether it's indigenous rights or the environment. So I feel like they're both ahead of their time. And I've personally always been a fan of the Indigo Girls' music. And so it was a real pleasure and joy to hear a little bit more about their story and both ways that they've been able to excel and exceed despite all the different obstacles, but also some of those ways in which the broader culture, in fact, was probably limiting the success that they might've had had we not been in a largely misogynistic or homophobic culture. So yeah, I'd love to hear some of your initial thoughts on It's Only Life After All.
[00:01:35.807] Wonder Bright: Well, I had their self-titled Indigo Girls album by the time I was like 19 or 20. It came out when I was 19 in 1989. And I never got another album after that, but I have listened to that album in decades since. So they left an indelible mark on me because of their harmonies and the sound of their voices. And I just really love that first album. So I've always loved them because I associate that album with a time in my life and with an experience of a certain kind of angst that I was going through at that time. And they're sound and their camaraderie and their joy in living where they found themselves was just so heartfelt and fulsome for me. And as a queer person, I was really, really lucky in the way that I was accepted by my family and also the community around me and had a lot of queer friends growing up. Well, I mean, still today, that's kind of unusual. So I can't explain why my particular location was the way that it was, but I was just extremely lucky. And so the Indigo Girls have always felt like family to me in this funny way, even though I'm not a fan fan. I've never gone to their concerts. I didn't buy subsequent albums, but they've just always been a part of the way that I see the world and think about it. And so I was excited to watch this film when it showed up and just really so truly fully enjoyed the story as it unfolded and developed a whole new love for them that is, you know, not surprising, but was just truly delightful.
[00:03:28.483] Kent Bye: I saw on an AP interview that Alexandria Bombach said that she had sifted through over a thousand hours of archival footage. And so Amy Rae is one of the Indigo girls who was actually filming a lot of their lives over many years with the intent to someday pass it along to her children to be able to show this adventure that they had gone with or musical partner, Emily Salyers. And for me, there's this really funny moment where the filmmaker asks Amy and Emily, what's this film about? And they're both like, I don't know. We were hoping that you were going to figure that out. It's so good. But they do give an answer to that, to how they think about their careers. And what was really striking to me in both of their answers was they want to see how their music and their career is operating within this broader cultural context. And so how does their work influence the community that they're a part of with the LGBTQIA plus community with their music and what their music has meant to that community, but also the ways in which their work is reaching outside of their immediate community and into the different activism work that they've done. And so I think they've identified with working with indigenous activism and they come to this self-realization where they were talking about the environment and sort of, we got to recycle, we got to save the whales. And I don't know what the exact turning point was, but they kind of had this realization that they were taking a very middle class white woman approach, as they self describe, and they end up working with Winona LaDuke.
[00:05:04.858] Wonder Bright: I mean, that is the turning point. They end up working with Winona LaDuke on a project that becomes so much bigger than I think they expected it to
[00:05:15.603] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's called the Honor of the Earth. And at the time of the recording, they had been doing it for over 30 years. One of the things that they were saying in the documentary was that that had such a profound impact on them because they were working with these indigenous women that changed their way that they thought about activism into this community-based activism and grassroots activism and how you have to connect to where the zeitgeist of the community grassroots organization is already happening, and then to leverage those movements that are already happening to then build upon that. And I think those were some of the key lessons that they were articulating that I think is a through line through all of their work, because it is about trying to build up this larger relationality and awareness of these deeper contexts and to really think about this indigenous philosophy of how we think about the earth and all the ways in which the colonial impulse has brought about harm amongst these indigenous communities. And so, as artists, I think they faced a certain amount of misogyny and homophobia throughout their careers. There's one moment where they actually thought that they faced more from sexism and misogyny in the culture more so than the homophobia, that just being women artists, that they felt like they were being held back from whether it's getting their music on the radio or different opportunities. So they really had to take this independent track that they didn't have as much help from the broader culture, but they still managed to persevere and be successful despite all of that. And so that was interesting to hear all the ways that they're butting up against some of the more sexist aspects of just the way that they're being interviewed, the different types of questions that they're being framed. And there's this line that they said, the critics could understand a band like Rage Against the Machine, but yet they couldn't understand the Indigo Girls of being politically minded lesbian women. that were putting forth these messages that were not understood by the largely male critics. At some point, they read this really harsh critique from a New York Times critic. They just read through it and they're like, is this critic actually giving this same level of vitriol to the counterpart folk male artists? Answers clearly know that there's this deeper strand of sexism that is preventing them from taking off even more so I could only imagine what their careers would have been like had they not had to face all these different obstacles. So those were some of the different things that I was taking away.
[00:07:45.254] Wonder Bright: It's interesting that they would describe experiencing more resistance as women than as lesbians. And I think that the two things are actually inextricable. Ultimately, it comes down to misogyny, which is in many ways what little Richard faced as well, in terms of like any kind of resistance to his queerness, because it was associated with this trans expression of femininity. And although we often say in our culture that like Madonna made a song about how, you know, it's okay for a girl to wear jeans, but it's not okay for a boy to wear a skirt because it's just not okay to be a girl, basically. So Madonna is saying that like it's sort of widely accepted that that's the case. And yet I actually have some resistance to that notion. It may be okay for girls to wear jeans, but it's actually not okay for women to completely reject the heteronormative styles that women are expected to wear. The thing that makes me feel like I'm home when I look at Emily and Amy is that they just are like, not a part of that. There's this Belgian feminist named Luce Irigaray who spoke about lesbians as having taken themselves off the market. They're not available for men. And so since they're available for women only, they don't need to think about the things that you do in order to please men, which, of course, are cultural constraints that we've somehow decided upon. Like, that's what's sexy. And therefore, that's what women should aspire to. But obviously, you know, not too sexy. But my God, you know, like lose some weight, put some makeup on, be a girl. Right. And I would argue that even though the resistance that Emily and Amy may have experienced was really sexist, it's actually their lesbian identity that allowed them to eschew these ideas of what femininity is. It's sort of interesting contrasting that with Little Richard, who became this pop sensation and revolutionized the world and changed everything largely because he was able to access that transgender identification with femininity. And yet here we have the indigo girls who eschew all those markers of being on the market. Therefore, they aren't on the market at all, right? They're not marketable because they can't be women. and look the way that they do, because that's not what women look like, apparently. And this is one film among quite a few that showed up at Sundance this year, where we're seeing women who are older and we're seeing women who aren't necessarily concerned with heteronormative beauty standards in our culture. And there is shooing this idea of being on the market But Emily and Amy really go the distance with that. They're just truly in their own bodies. They're their age that they're at, and they're just experiencing the world from this deeply human space. which is just powerful to experience, right? Independent of the brilliance of their music and the openness of their activism and their willingness to put themselves in places where they don't know what's going on and where the interrogation of their whiteness is potentially that thing that like, you know, as white people, we don't want to do that homework. And yet they like just blast right through that in 1993 when they meet Winona Duke and they're like, yeah, hit me with it. Give it to me. I need this. This is going to expand my experience of being human. Right. And it's all independent of being on the market. And it is in its own way, as powerful a revolution as anything, you know, because just because it's invisible from the market, because the market doesn't want to see it. That is what's so revolutionary about it, just from the start, just from the way that they're being and how they're loving themselves. And through that space of love, their audience also is able to love themselves.
[00:12:25.305] Kent Bye: Yeah, they're really going beyond existing categories for both their music as kind of like a spiritual Christian folk, but it's got these other themes of their LGBTQ identity. And so the way that Alexandria Bombach told this film was she only does interviews with Amy Rae and Emily Saliers. You don't hear anyone else except for some fans that are speaking what their music has meant to them. And so you're getting them being able to narrate their own stories and recount the arc of their lives. And we hear other voices through some of those archival moments, but in terms of sit-down interviews, they get the opportunity to really narrate their lives and there is these moments where they're talking about how they had never been featured with Rolling Stone or Spin Magazine. And so, all these typical markers that you would see from what it would mean for them to be successful as artists, they weren't able to hit those normal milestones. And so, whether or not their music was being played on the radio or not, they kind of really had to forge their own path. And That's what I found really quite fascinating is that despite all that, they're still able to find success. And I think they're actually were asked a number of times, how do you define success? And you kind of see this tension in the sense that they know that's a very loaded question because of all the different obstacles they've had to face over the years. And you kind of have this sampling of different moments where they're talking about their success. I think another aspect of this film is they're also looking at the differences between their different temperaments and their different personalities, and they describe themselves as being these polar opposites in the way that they're collaborating. And there was this moment when Amy Rae is saying, look, we've never dated, we've never had any relationship at all, and she has a resistance to it. Why does it have to matter? But yet the culture has all these different institutional aspects of sexism and homophobia. So knowing that aspect of someone's identity allows you to understand the different obstacles that they may have gone through. And then there's another film that we watch called Kokomo City, where there's these trans sex workers who basically say, what does it matter who you're sleeping with? But there is this question of like, it shouldn't matter. But even Amy is saying like, she still succumbs to that of like when she sees people in a band or they dating? Are they together or whatnot? So there's these different aspects of the larger culture and how does a culture both influence and subtly shape and guide and direct these dynamics. And I think this as a documentary is able to give you this personal story for all the ways that they've had to navigate that and overcome all these different obstacles, but yet still find their own voice and find ways that they can work and collaborate with each other and overcome their own obstacles with Emily and her alcoholism and with Amy with her intense explosive anger. And so you watch them mature over the course of this documentary and these different personal character development aspects that they have to come over. But also through the heart of it, they're still found this magical alchemy in their harmonizing voices that they have. That just, for me, takes me to another transcendent level, just hearing them and the ways that they sing together.
[00:15:42.017] Wonder Bright: Yeah, sort of in keeping with that, I want to touch on a point in the film where I did feel a real kind of sadness. And that was when Amy Rae was looking back at earlier incarnations of herself when they were first starting out. And she was expressing a lot of anger or a lot of flamboyance in her style as she was playing and that the lyrics from her songs at that point were very angsty. And of course she's talking about the very album that I am like the most closely identified with because it was like speaking to an angst that I was experiencing, you know, at 19 and 20. And she's expressing a lot of like really shame around how she was, you know, and in that I hear a number of things. One, I hear like what a revolution it was for her to encounter Winona LaDuke and to embark on this journey of exploration through service to something larger than herself and to feel a part of things that were larger to herself. And then I also just hear like what whiteness does to us, right? In another film, Melissa Tondo, we'll talk about this when we get to it, but there is a person in that film who, a white person who names that she thinks that whiteness is about cruelty, that there is this inherent cruelty to whiteness. And to be super clear, I'm not talking about white people, but the concept of whiteness. that this is an invention of humans and it's used to leverage power and domination over others. And one of the tools of that cruelty is to use shame and whiteness, shames and other rises, people who don't fit within the conventions of what might be preferred in that culture. And by shaming people, we remove them from their experience of authentic grief around what they were or what they are. And I recognize that shame in my own self, you know, like my suffering is not on the magnitude of indigenous people or people who've been segregated or people who don't. experience the privilege that I do as a white person. And simultaneously, I think we need to recognize that that is literally the function of whiteness, to distance ourselves from our pain so that we don't feel it, so that we can't experience empathy for ourselves. And I suspect that one of the things that happened for Emily and Amy in the creation of their self-titled album, and possibly other music, is that they were able to cathartically release that pain. And it's only through experiencing that empathy and through Connecting with other people who were also experiencing that pain and could recognize it in one another that they were then able to like move forward and into this space where they could have the room to empathize for people outside of their own experience. So I just want Amy Rae to know that I just love her exactly as she is. I love her anger. I love all of her outward and flamboyant expressions when she was young. And I love the ways in which she's muted it now in service for something larger than herself. But it's all a part of a whole for me. And that album still carries a lot of meaning for me when I'm in a space of pain and the Prince of Darkness comes to me. You know, like to find my way through those things, we also have to just name them and say, this is happening. This is where I'm at. I'm angry. I'm hurt. I'm at the mercy of these forces.
[00:19:38.622] Kent Bye: Yeah, in that moment of looking back on their lives. I mean, as artists, they're wearing their heart on their sleeves a lot of times. And so there's these moments where they're looking back and having these cringe reactions to different moments. And I think the thing that she had said that if she was a better songwriter, she would have had a reaching out. So she wouldn't be so focused on herself, but that she would be having some way in that she's connected to the outside world. And so I think that was a theme that I saw in this film, Where you see Emily, she's being praised and how brilliant of a songwriter she is, and she's a genius. And then she just turns the tables and says, look, I think it's really important for people to be kind in the world. And that kindness makes an impact in a way that you don't even know. And so they're dissolving their own egos in a way that they're not really focusing it just on themselves. Or if they have fans come up to them and say, your music changed my life. And they're like, well, we're just a vessel communicating these things. And they don't have much power to know what happens when they send these songs out into the ether. At that point, it doesn't really become their belongings anymore. It's a part of the culture that they've surrendered to. So I feel like a part of the artistic process for them, they've learned that they can't hold on too tightly, but also that they have to be in this deeper relationality. And I think that's what I took away is that Amy's sort of looking back of saying she's grown and evolved as a songwriter and that these are ways that she's matured. There is this way in which Amy's comparing herself to Emily and her songwriting skills. But the fact of the matter is that both of them each love singing each other's songs and that they wouldn't be the Indigo Girls without each other. And so there's this magical connection that they have with the way that they work together. And Amy talks about this moment where she sees these religious protesters against their music, and she sees these little kids holding these signs, and they're clearly not of age of consent of knowing what they're really doing, but they're in this religious cultural context of communicating these messages of hate. And so she writes a song called Let It Ring, which is this reaction to that. So you see these different inspirations for different songs. You get a little bit more of the backstory for how they came about. And Emily is telling this makeup artist and hairdresser that the only thing she really knows how to do is write a song. But writing a song is so important to be able to capture the essence of these emotions and these experiences that poetically transcends space and time in a way that connects us to something much deeper. That's the experience I've had with listening to the Indigo Girls, and I have seen them in the concert. I'm a fan. And so just the tonality and the sound of their music, but also the lyrics takes me to a whole other place. So to me, I really loved being able to get their story, but also there is a bit of a sadness just to see all the different ways that they could have been so much more had they been in another cultural time, but at the same time, the time that they grew up and they're both born in like 63 and 64. So they're born in this cultural milieu and the zeitgeist of the conjunction between Uranus and Pluto that is bringing about all these liberation movements for gay rights and women's rights and civil rights and being connected to the earth. And so you have this zeitgeist of liberation movements that are happening and they're really carrying that torch throughout their career in different ways and being icons from the LGBTQIA community and You do really get to hear from communities that they've been connected to, to see the impact that their music has been able to have on so many different people around the world.
[00:23:17.547] Wonder Bright: Well, and they're also born during Little Richard's first Saturn return, and all of the Fluxus movement artists first Saturn return. So Emily is born in 63. And she has Saturn in Aquarius. And Amy is born in 64. And her Saturn is in Pisces. But I think it does retrograde later that year back into Aquarius. So they both come from like an echo of that time where we've got once again, this Saturn that rules Aquarius. So there's this interest in rules, but in their case, interest in like understanding the rules and also breaking the rules and like a deeper meaning of like, what are these larger rules for living and for being human that they began to explore in their life? And I also want to pick up on what you were saying about how Emily says that if she had been a better songwriter, she would have found a way to reach out to others in those songs. And what my experience is, I identified so fully with the pain that she was expressing. She didn't need to reach out to me directly by saying and naming her pain. I found myself inside it. So this, I think, is part of what we were talking about, about the 12th house when we talked about the longest goodbye. This is like the experience of somebody who is so far away. Like the experience of exile, it puts us into a space of isolation and loneliness. And in the contemplation of that, We then find ways of tethering ourselves to the earth, find ways of tethering ourselves to other people, but we can't get there in the absence of that extreme empathy for ourselves. And so an artist who is speaking purely from that selfish space, because there is this isolation that is caused. The thing is, you're not necessarily just speaking about yourself when you do that. If people can find themselves in that space, that is one of the ways that you're tethering yourself to the earth. By tethering yourself to your own experiences, by saying, this is true for me, this is what I am feeling. And then when people say, oh, I feel that too, now you're tethered. So, I don't want to dismiss what Amy has said there because it's very clear that in the arc of their lives, through all of their experiences, she then found this extraordinary catharsis by becoming a part of something larger than herself, that it was no longer this insular experience of it was all about her. I'm just suggesting that it's not a problem that she made it all about her to start. That's all I'm saying. I'm just making a plea for young Amy Ray, who, through making it all about her, was able to reach me, you know, who also was making it all about me. But there are times when, like, that is forced upon you because you don't fit in. And so the only way out is through, OK, I don't belong. Well, that sucks. You have to be at the heart of the suckiness in order to like, get out. And I just I love those early songs. And I just love them. I love their whole arc, not just where they found themselves, but how they got there and where they started.
[00:26:48.284] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I really enjoyed this film because it helped me understand their journey. It's digging into an incredible archive of footage, and it's also situating their own journey into this broader context of the pockets of LGBTQIA communities and places where they found sanctuary. And yeah, I guess the thing that I'm taking away is just to hear the way that they're really emphasizing the relationality for how they're connected to this broader cultural context, that you have to understand the context under which that they're operating. And both in their music, but also their activism and how they were able to work for 30 plus years with these indigenous activists and the ways that they have really taken on this community-based activism and working with the grassroots and working with these badass indigenous women who taught them so much. And, you know, just listening to their harmonies is something that I'll also take away because the way that they sing together is really moving to me. So what are you bearing witness to?
[00:27:50.093] Wonder Bright: I want to bear witness to their capacity to decenter themselves in any story that they marry themselves to. I think you see that just in their relationship with one another in terms of creating harmony and honoring the other person's musical vision. And then you definitely see it in the way that the two of them together put themselves out there in the world in service to the organization that they founded with Winona LaDuke, Honor the Earth, and the way that they put themselves out there to play music and raise money for other organizations whose messages they want to perpetuate. And just the life of service that they've dedicated themselves to in this world is a really beautiful thing. And the humble way in which they embody that expression is a joy to observe. And it's really wonderful to watch their fans talk about the meaning that they've brought into their lives. And it is very restorative to think that these two women who through singing their songs in the way that they do for the people that they do, are able to create that kind of collective vision and sense of unity and wholeness.
[00:29:11.459] Kent Bye: Yeah. So yeah, that was It's Only Life After All, a biopic about the indigo girls by Alexandria Bambach. And at this point, I don't know if it has distribution. I hope it gets picked up for folks to say. I'm sure it will at some point, because I think there's such a strong vision about what they're doing and had such an impact on so many things. Yeah. And thanks for joining us for another episode of Story All the Way Down. And if you'd like more information, you can go to storyallthewaydown.com, find out ways you can support the podcast and get more information on this project. So thanks again for joining us today.
[00:29:46.508] Wonder Bright: Thank you so much.
