The Indigo Girls Cover:
Dire Straits, Violent Femmes, Gladys Knight, Pete Seeger, and more!
As I noted this spring over at Star Maker Machine, I was an active Indigo Girls fan throughout and beyond my late adolescent protogrunge period. Strange Fire and its follow-up, the 1989 eponymous major label debut Indigo Girls, were staples on the turntable in a world otherwise filled with heavier fuzz and sonic experimentation from Primus to Dinosaur Jr to the Lemonheads, and I attended several concerts over the years, if only because someone had to sing the Michael Stipe part in Kid Fears.
But though their first two albums remain the gold standard for their dark acoustic alternative folk, in many ways, the aptly-named 1992 release Rites of Passage, which many ex-fans mark as the beginning of the end, was also the best of their subsequent high-production albums, most notably for the way the full studio pop orchestration and percussive rhythms that pepper the disk support the duo’s already stellar vocal harmonies and strong hook-heavy songwriting. Indeed, one of the reasons I stuck with the Indigo Girls for so long after my ears had moved past the stripped down alt-grunge of the late eighties and early nineties to a more contemporary folk sound is that the evolution of their on-album sound matched my evolution as a music fan.
Since then, though they stopped releasing singles for the popcharts just before the turn of the century, the Indigo Girls have spent a rich career going back and forth, continuing to include a broad set of song styles on each album, and - in concert - often performing with full band for one set, and then returning sans back-up for a return to their earlier, rawer sound. As such, although with one notable exception — a Dire Straits cover which appears on Rites of Passage — the Indigo Girls don’t generally cover songs on their own studio albums, their authorized live output, coupled with a few stellar appearances on tribute compilations, has resulted in an unusually diverse body of coverage which well represents the full spectrum of their style, from acoustic alt-folk to full-bore contemporary popfolk.
Though true fans of Amy and Emily may have already collected the majority of the live rarities, and recent release aptly called Rarities actually compiles several of these onto one somewhat inconsistent disk, there’s still something here for everyone today, whether you’re a fan of the sparser campfire folkstuff or the layered folkrock, or just looking for a new thrill. In chronological order, then: the Indigo Girls cover the world of folk, and then some.
- Indigo Girls: American Tune (orig. Paul Simon)
(from Ben & Jerry’s Newport Folk Festival ‘90, released 1991)
- Indigo Girls: Uncle John’s Band (orig. The Grateful Dead)
(from Deadicated, 1991)
- Indigo Girls: Romeo and Juliet (orig. Dire Straits)
(from Rites of Passage, 1992)
- Indigo Girls: Tangled Up in Blue (orig. Bob Dylan)
- Indigo Girls: Down By The River (orig. Neil Young)
- Indigo Girls: Midnight Train to Georgia (orig. Gladys Knight & the Pips)
(from 1200 Curfews, 1995)
- Indigo Girls w/ Jewel and Sarah McLachlan: The Water Is Wide (trad.)
(from Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music, 1997)
- Indigo Girls: Blister in the Sun (orig. Violent Femmes)
(from EP [out of print], 1998)
- Indigo Girls: Letters to Eve (orig. Pete Seeger)
(from Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs Of Pete Seeger, 1998)
- Indigo Girls w/ Ani Difranco: Ramblin’ Round (orig. Woody Guthrie)
(from ‘Til We Outnumber ‘em, 2000)
- Indigo Girls: Wild Wild Party in the Loquat Tree (orig. Rand Bishop)
(from Mary Had a Little Amp, 2004)
- Indigo Girls: Mrs. Robinson (orig. Simon and Garfunkel)
(from the Desperate Housewives soundtrack, 2005)
- Indigo Girls: Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (orig. Elton John)
(live; released on Rarities, 2005)
Previously on Cover Lay Down: The Indigo Girls cover Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright live with Joan Baez, circa 1995 (plus 11 more covers of the Dylan classic!)
Category: Indigo Girls
September 10th, 2009 at 1:42 am
The Indigo Girls also did a great cover of “Clampdown” by The Clash for a Clash tribute album back in 1999. It resurfaced in 2005 on that rarities collection you mentioned.
I wish, wish, wish, I still had the copy I used to have.
September 10th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Thanks for the tip, Nelson — I’ll keep an eye open for it!
September 10th, 2009 at 6:26 am
[...] Click here to go to CLD to check a batch of Indigo Girls covers…they take on the following: Elton John’s “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters”, Neil Young “Down By The River”, Dire Straits “Romeo and Juliet”, Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue”, Gladys Knight “Midnight Train to Georgia”, Violent Femmes “Blister in The Sun”, and more. [...]
September 10th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Don’t forget Joni Mitchell’s River also on the live album 1200 curfews.
September 10th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Absolutely, Mswas…but I have to give people SOME reason to BUY the album, eh?
September 10th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
I’ve been meaning to ask you for Uncle John’s Band. Thank you for posting it.
September 11th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Great job. They also covered “All Along the Watchtower” on their first live album and they have a song on the Vic Chesnutt tribute album “Sweet Relief II”.
They’ve also done several more Neil Young songs: “Cortez the Killer” (with Band de Soleil on “Redemption Dream”, live with Matthew Sweet on the “Goodfriend” promo CD, and live on their own), “Rockin’ in the Free World” (live on a CD single with K’s Choice), and “Southern Man” (live on their own).
September 12th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Nice additions, FiL; I knew about most of the Neil Young coverage — much of which is not at all “folk”, which is why I skipped it — but seem to have missed the Vic Chestnutt…
November 4th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
[...] Indigo Girls: Clampdown (orig. The Clash) (from Burning London: The Clash Tribute, 1999; more Indigo Girls) [...]