Indigo Girls: the band that “changed something” for Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon
There’s something of an Indigo Girls revival going on at the moment. That’s largely thanks to their prominent place in Greta Gerwig’s new Barbie film, where the immediate trip out of Barbieland is soundtracked by the duo’s classic song ‘Closer to Fine’. For a whole new generation of music fans, the strummed acoustic folk track will forever be tied to Barbie. But for Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon, the Indigo Girls were an obsession long before Gerwig had even begun directing films.
Back in the summer of 2009, Vernon actually got the chance to open for the Indigo Girls for a few concerts around California. Vernon was in the immediate break-out phase of his career, as the debut Bon Iver album For Emma, Forever Ago had seen a major re-release by Jagjaguwar Records just a year prior. Vernon was in the process of redefining folk, but at that moment in time, he was still in a place to support some true legends of the form.
In a blog post for IndyWeek, Vernon described his experience opening for the Indigo Girls and how it had been the culmination of a lifelong fandom. Specifically, Vernon recalled seeing the Indigo Girls play at the New Orleans Jazz Fest back in the early 1990s when Vernon was still a kid. Seeing Amy Ray and Emily Saliers helped spark Vernon’s interest in creating music, influencing him to eventually pick up a guitar himself.
“I have started to understand that belief is a formative phenomenon: remembering the ride back on a New Orleans city bus that got lost for two hours, I was gazing from the window and knowing that something changed in me forever. This week might do the same: When I meet Amy Ray’s hands with my own and hear her speaking voice, something I know only by listening from afar, there will be palpitations, earthquakes where the plates of my past will shift—perhaps, finally, into place.”
Indigo Girls had always held a special place in Vernon’s heart, with the duo being responsible for his favourite song of all time. “It’s been kind of unfettered, unchanging for about 10 years now, it’s ‘Fugitive’ by the Indigo Girls,” Vernon recalled to Pitchfork in 2008. “It’s absolutely without question my favourite song of all time. When I first heard it I was in seventh-grade or sixth-grade and my mom and my sister brought me to an Indigo Girls concert and I was like ‘Ah, whatever, I’ll go see the show’ and it honestly…it just changed my life. I’ve realised over the years what kind of rep the Indigo Girls get, and I guess I’m not going to get in the business of trying to change that for people.”
“But this specific record is super brilliant and the guitar solo is unreal and the drumming– the studio drumming that’s on the record– and it’s some of my most favourite lyrics,” he added. “I’ve actually got some of the lyrics tattooed on my body, that’s how important the song is to me. I’ve got so much nostalgia attached to it, but when I throw it in and listen to it, it’s still got so much shit it in.”
Check out ‘Fugitive’ down below.
