Welcome to the Fall Season of the New 12th Gate Coffee House!
After a break for the summer (not so much an intentional decision, but the results of my own distraction), I am happy to begin a new season of Saturday Night virtual events. This week, we will start from Atlanta, then our you-tube booking agent promises a full agenda. I expect to revisit some of the previous performers but am always looking for new talent as well. Suggestions are always welcome.
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers are too young to have actually performed in the original 12th Gate Coffee House. They got their start in a pub in Atlanta’s Little Five Points. They first met in elementary school then attended Shamrock High School in Decatur, Georgia. First going to different universities, they returned to Emory and the remarkable story of Indigo Girls has been going on ever since.
[I should note that most of the selections tonight are actually stock videos, and the embedding feature has been disabled. Simply click on the link to go to you-tube. Use the back arrow to return to this site. They do contain many great live performance shots. Many of the most recent offerings are not presently available.]
Nevertheless – Please welcome to our stage, folks, rock, and activist duo – Indigo Girls.
It’s been two decades since the Indigo Girls launched their career with their independently released debut album, 1987’s Strange Fire. Now, after entertaining millions of fans with their 10 major-label studio albums (nine on Epic Records and one, 2006’s Despite Our Differences, on Hollywood Records), Emily Saliers and Amy Ray have come full circle with the independent release of their new 2-CD album, Poseidon And The Bitter Bug, on their new label IG Recordings, distributed through Vanguard Records.
Indigo Girls activism is very important. I am particularly grateful as this past July, they have been active with the Rock for a Remedy Tour holding both people and pet food drives in associated with the national network of sister food banks.
Our fundamentalist friends on other networks would probably find this next song somewhat troubling. – Closer To Fine
In 2007, Charley Rose interviewed Amy and Emily – let me share a portion of that encounter. The video is 10 minutes long. Still it is quite interesting.
I find it perpetually puzzling that those who parrot the importance of traditional marriage, can not seem to see the wonder in all of the possibilities – The Power of Two
Finally, I’ll close with one of my favorites. How many lives have you lived? In this lifetime? Galileo
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Links:
Emily Saliers and her father, Don Saliers, a theology professor at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, released the book A Song to Sing, a Life to Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice. See Christian Century interview.
I heard Emily and Don speak at the last UMW General Assembly, and they talked about a lot of the same types of things in the Christian Century interview. I had completely forgotten about that until reading this here.
If you want to hang around the coffee house a little longer, I suggest checking out one of the other articles in that volume of the Christian Century — Back to the future:fourth-centruy style reaches Bay Area seekers. (or try http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_24_119/ai_95206014/?tag=content;col1 to link directly to the article). A very interesting look at a very different take on a seeker church, and one perhaps I may need to get myself motivated to get down to San Francisco early enough on a Sunday morning to visit. The website for the church is http://www.SaintGregorys.org.
After coming here, I just realized that this is the Emily and Don I heard speak at the last UMW General Assembly, in Anaheim, a couple of years ago.
Looking forward to the new file lineup! (and I’l look to see if some of my favorite artists might be lurking around on you tube)