My hometown was all cotton mills, down on the N.C./S.C. border, about an hour away from Charlotte but it might as well have been on another planet compared to an urban center like Charlotte. And I think about my brother’s experience, too. My younger brother was gay, and he didn’t know who he could talk about sexuality with. He didn’t have anyone he could come out to. You come out to the wrong friend and you’d get your ass kicked. I mean, I would get my ass kicked by so-called “friends” just because I started growing my hair longer in junior high. That’s the kind of time and place it was.
That’s for sure. And when I was in high school, I didn’t even know what the word “gay” meant. Even though I was in love with this girl my senior year—I was so in love and we did everything together, and I said I loved her to my mom. “I’m in love with her, mom!” But I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t have any concepts when it dawned on me that [whispers dramatically] it was not supposed to happen! That’s when it was kind of crushing, at that point.

What about Prom song “Rural Faggot”? Is that a composite or about someone specific?
It is sort of a composite. The guy that I’m talking to in some of the song is a guy who did not end up being gay. He was kind of more of a gay basher. And I still know him, and we’re friends and stuff. But I saw him go through this terrible teenage time of basically being this real jerk [laughs] and kind of hateful. I’m like, “Why are you telling me all these things? I’m gay! Don’t you understand?” He goes, “Oh, but you’re different!”

Is that where the lines, “I know you want to know the truth/And I’m the dyke who will give it to you” come from?
Yeah. But I was also writing about a friend of his that ended up being gay, that also would be kind of a gay basher when he was going through his discovery period. You know what I mean. So I kind of conflated two people that were, to me, part of each other almost. One of them ended up moving down to Atlanta and one of them stayed here. I saw quite a few men—boys—go through discovering they were gay. I was down in Atlanta a few months ago and this guy came up to me. “Hey Amy, remember me? From the neighborhood?” And I recognized him. He was another gay guy who’d moved to midtown. So that song’s kind of about all those boys. I saw them go through a lot of shit. And they spent a lot of time defending themselves to me!

Let me turn things around here now. From talking about universal themes we get to some incredibly personal material on Prom. “Sober Girl,” for example, where you talk about “I felt the loneliness of the world, in the city, so I got out of there” or “when it comes to love, I wanted purity.” The way you combine that ache of loneliness and romance.
Yeah, it’s a love song. Definitely. But it’s also the kind of love song where it’s hard won, after years of sort of trying to define yourself and convince the person you’re with and the people you’ve lived with of the things that you need. And then coming to this place and finally finding this person. You’re right, it is a lonely kind of song. But it’s also a love song like, “I found this person! Who believes the same thing and says the same thing!”

Is that what you mean by “purity”?
I think when I talked about purity I was thinking about youth and innocence and nature. That song is also a love song about nature and about my need to live in the country and my need to not drink and to be close to myself all the time and to not have all these things that interfere with my ability to feel life. Because I went through such a long time when I was not necessarily feeling life all the time. It’s everybody’s own choice.

After you released Stag in 2001, what was the general response in your opinion? It had some pretty pointed political material. The song “Lucystoners” in particular, with its feminist angle and the way it called out the white-boy network as epitomized by Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner, got a lot of press attention. Were there any repercussions to that? [Among the lyrics: “Janny Wenner Janny Wenner/Rolling Stone’s most fearless leader/Gave the boys what they deserve/But with the girls he lost his nerve.”]
Somebody at Epic had said that the record was reviewed [for Rolling Stone] but the review was pulled. But I think Stag was treated pretty well. I didn’t feel any backlash. I don’t read much of my press; I’ll read something by a writer who I think is a great writer, but I don’t dwell a lot on reviews because it makes me think about it too much.

So there were no reviews going, “Shock, horror—sweet Indigo Girl uses the words ‘queer,’ ‘faggot’ and ‘dyke’”?
No, and I think people sort of expected it. Especially from me. And also because Emily and I are so political anyway.

Given how personal your solo material is, when doing Indigos stuff do you ever feel any pressure from your label, Epic, not to veer into areas or language they might be uncomfortable with?
No, I think it’s a pretty clear slate. But then, I don’t feel like we’ve necessarily pushed it that much, either. And it’s interesting, because when I played “Lucystoners” for Emily, she didn’t really have an appreciation for it and didn’t really want to do it. So it was destined to be a solo song. And I think just the natural differences between how we express ourselves are going to make some things fall into the solo category, something that might be more graphic or that she might feel less comfortable with.

You noted in some interviews around the time of Stag that you felt women had made a number of strides but were still finding themselves in a weird position in the United States. And it’s weird how some things never seem to change. I just came across a recent interview with Rufus Wainwright in Uncut in which some of what he says almost echoes what you were saying. He’s asked whether homosexuality is becoming more or less of an issue for him as his career develops and his response was essentially that homosexuality had become a paramount issue in the U.S. He said that for the people who voted Bush back into office, the real enemy today isn’t terrorism but gays and women.
Yeah, on some levels, definitely. It’s funny. People love Ellen (DeGeneres), but they wouldn’t love her if she talked about being gay on every show. They love her on a certain level. And pop culture is like that, where we have Will & Grace and we have Ellen and these pop-culture ways of kind of accepting gay people. But why doesn’t it connect with who we vote for? I just don’t know. It’s like it’s different to watch it on TV, or to say you like Ellen, than it is to say it’s OK for two people to marry each other, to vote for someone that’s pro-gay, you know? The disconnect is amazing.

Do you think what Rufus is saying is that politically and culturally, nothing will ever be copacetic?
Yeah, because it’s interesting how we are able to be a little more visible but—OK, women and queer people, mainstream rock radio? They don’t play gay people, and they don’t play women. Melissa Etheridge is probably the only exception to that. But I wouldn’t say she’s a real political left winger. They’re not going to play someone who’s not part of the celebrity system, who’s a gay person who’s really political. And mainstream media is not going to cover that many women. Women are not archived. Look at a show that’s the best of the ’60s and ’70s rock bands, maybe Janis Joplin is on there. All the rest are guys.

Throw in a sound byte from Grace Slick and you’re outta there.
And now, too. It’s not as if there are not women around making music. It’s that we’re not archived and we’re not played on the radio. It’s a mainstream media thing. The indie media is trying. But there’s still just a lot of homophobia and sexism. I think we have made some progress, but it’s this under the radar thing where you have all these women who aspire to be musicians and who look at that as something that they can obtain. That wasn’t necessarily the case a long time ago. And then you have someone like Rufus Wainwright who, 20 years ago, would have been in the closet, and just being willing to be out there now—that’s a difference.

In 2000 you keynoted the ROCKRGRL Music Conference in Seattle. Now, in 2005, with all the Ashlees and Jessicas and Gwens as the most visible faces of pop and rock, are girls growing up even getting to see the Brody Dalles who would otherwise be the role models?
No, because Brody doesn’t get any airplay. The closest they probably get is Avril Lavigne.

And she’s just finished a complete glamour makeover. She looks like Nicole Kidman now.
When I think about growing up as a very young kid, Partridge Family was the one. So maybe you have to get a little older anyway to get close to that stuff.

Do you think that an event like Lilith Fair would be possible in 2005?
I don’t think so. It might be possible, but I think there was so much backlash that no one wants to do it again! It was really successful, then everyone started being like, “Oh, we’re not going to play them on the radio. They’re a Lilith artist.” Lilith became almost a derogatory term—it became that way in rock magazines, too. Not just Rolling Stone, either. Even the cool rock magazines.

Tell me about some of the other activist-oriented things that are pushing your buttons these days. I know you attended the School Of Americas protest earlier this year.
Yeah. I go to that whenever I can. And Emily and I are constantly working on Honor The Earth. It’s an environmental group, but it’s indigenous—Native American—activism. We’re part of this group, but we’re not on the board. We sort of started the group but the board is all indigenous. They raise money, make decisions and give grants that are all for Native action like frontline environmental groups. And we work a lot against fossil fuels, uranium and nuclear power, and toward wind and solar power. A lot of our work has been around nuclear issues. And then we do a lot of work around toxic issues with water, PCB, dioxins, also issues around gold mining, logging and hydroelectric dams. It’s a very broad but necessary thing. I’m also going down to Mexico in May to spend some time on Zapatista issues. I did that about 10 years ago so I’m going to revisit that and see what’s going on. We’re also involved with the Future Of Music Coalition. That’s a really great group.

On the Daemon Web site, you refer to your label as “not for profit.” Does that mean officially non-profit?
No. We don’t have non-profit status. If we did, we wouldn’t be able to do all the political lobbying! [laughs]

You’ve been running Daemon since 1990. What’s the biggest challenge for an indie label in 2005?
For me, it’s deciding what your services are: how you can really serve your music community. There’s so much infrastructure that can be taken advantage of by an artist just by doing it themselves. You know, even indie labels take a percentage of what the artist makes, and it’s hard for an independent artist to make any money off their records. So I think it’s really important for a label to look at how it’s serving the artist, and that becomes harder and harder to figure out as record stores become less important. That’s unfortunate because I love record stores. But Internet distribution is really, really important now. All these other things are taking over, things that are self-made, a lot of DIY potential. So I think you have to figure out if you are serving the artist or taking a big chunk of their money.