All Folked Out

I had a good friend in high school who graduated a year before me. She went off to college, learned how to be a conflicted and introspective college girl, and tried to introduce me to conflicted introspectiveness when she came home the next summer. The best way to be conflictive and introspective? Spend an afternoon lying on your bed, analyzing your life and listening to the Indigo Girls.

I wasn't terribly impressed when I first heard the Indigo Girls (which was a full listen-through of their 1200 Curfews double live album.) Kinda wussy. A little mopey. But the Conflicted and Introspective College Girl just beginning to flutter inside my heart fell deeply in love with Power of Two.

(Okay, hands up if this is Your Favorite Indigo Girls Song Ever. Right. Me too. It's cliche. We'll move on.)

Then I went to college and oh my gosh if I didn't find a dozen other girls just like me, all dolled up in Birks and clothes made of hemp. Well, no, I didn't have the hemp dresses, but I did go to Lilith Fair and I did make many a mixed tape highlighting the Sheer and Utter Beauty that is the Indigo Girls singing harmony.

But I started dating a guy. (Dude, I went to a Dar Williams show a year or two ago and she told us she got married. And then, a few seconds later, she felt compelled to add, "To a MAN!") Also, I got my degree, a full time job, and my own teeny tiny shoebox-sized studio apartment. So, yeah, the Indigo Girls? Still near and dear to my heart, but (sit down!) there came a time when they rolled into town and I, the Biggest Folky Freak Of Them All, did not buy a ticket. I know! Incredible!

Now it's just kind of tradition. My friend Amy and I still attend the Pier concert every summer. It's a fun time. It's what we do. (Although this may be the last time. Did I mention the dying of the heat?)

This afternoon we went to a Songwriting Seminar with the Indigo Girls. Really. We did this. Because we are still pathetic fanboys. Concert ticketholders were eligible to pick up free tickets to this event at the Experience Music Project (that museum designed by a bunch of crack smokers that hangs out under the Space Needle). Did you read that? It was FREE, people. So of course we had to go and of course I made up for the free-ness by having to pay for parking, but in a small way it was worth it. The Indigo Girls? Still fabulous despite the bad haircuts and the overuse of the word 'energy'. The crowd? Still loud and proud in all their mulleted gloriousness. And the concert tonight? Promises to be large doses of each, plus some extreme sweating-out of toxins, an opening act spent in the beer garden, and much singing along to the old favorites that made us love them in the first place. Ooh ooh I hope they play Galileo!