Legendary, Grammy-winning alt-rock and country-folk artist Amy Ray's seated in a backstage dressing room at the Grand Ole Opry, wearing a cream, customized pin-striped western shirt, brown dungarees and brown work boots that appear to have more than served their intended purpose.
In four hours, the suburban Atlanta-born co-founder of the Indigo Girls will play during the Friday evening program at the Grand Ole Opry.
"I'm going to change into a different shirt, pants and boots when I get onstage," she jokes, in a room where photos of rhinestoned country legends adorn the walls.
For 35 years, Ray's bold expressions of her Southern, ruggedly lesbian and genderqueer background are part of the same America's modern social progression as the 1969 Stonewall riots or the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples.
In 1989, when the Indigo Girls released their eponymous major label debut album, Amy was, as writer Karen Tongson refers to her in a 2020-released NPR piece, "an aloof yet accessible alpha butch whose salt-of-the-earth zeal, both political and emotional, broke a lot of guitar strings, and presumably a lot of hearts."
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Back in 2023, Ray is preparing to take the stage in support of "If It All Goes South," a disarmingly optimistic yet wholly dystopian album featuring pro-LGBTQ artists --Brandi Carlile,Allison Russell and TheHighwomen's Natalie Hemby among them -- all who have graced the Opry's stage in the past twelve months.
"I'm not here on the one weekend when they're just allowing queer people to play the Opry," Ray continues, joking.
"We're sprinkled in with everyone now. The point is to bridge these gaps deeper."
For people typically acquainted with Ray's work via Indigo Girls songs like "Closer To Fine" and "Galileo" -- or even "Tear It Down," her 2021-released solo duet with Allison Russell -- the unrepentant joy on her face would appear stunning.
She's not at peace with the era in general.
However, in this moment, she's cautiously giddy before achieving an unimaginable life-long goal.
"I think ["If It All Goes South"] answers the question of if we're even 'Closer To Fine' than we were 30 years ago by saying that we're even further away from it," says Ray.
"Innately, as a writer, I was working through alienation, discouragement and isolation when writing my latest album," Ray continues.
She describes the time as a "crazy confluence" of an existential malaise driven by a global pandemic, marches, racism, shootings and more.
The album benefits from her deep intellectualism induced wordplay on the Russell collaboration "Tear It Down," which contextualizes the 110-year-old country-meets-gospel anthem "The Old Rugged Cross" against describing four-century-old American racism as a "ragged cross" that must be destroyed.
It's a deft turn of phrase for the Methodist-born Ray, who notes that her religious upbringing by generations of Southerners "colors her vocabulary" with the duality of definitions of how both liberals and conservatives alike have rationalized anti and pro-racist sentiments in religiosity for ages.
"Reverence for engaging in racist thought is not deserved in any way, shape, or form," Ray says adamantly.
Dig into "Cowboys and Pirates" and the intentional allegories delve deeper and more intersectional.
Where was she when she wrote the anthemic song about American citizens conquering what she perceived as America's "mythological wilderness?"
Florida. Yes, the home of social media's favorite rural cause and icon -- both célèbre and macabre -- "Florida Man," plus the locale of Palm Beach's near century-old Mar-A-Lago resort, owned by former President Donald Trump.
"Like America, fame and wealth have disrespected and leeched Florida for every facet of its value and it's folding in on itself. How this [plays in relation to America] is wondering how do we solve climate change, the economy and human rights if the people who need to accomplish that either aren't here or lack the social and economic tools to fix these issues?"
For solutions, Ray takes the song "Muscadine" as an attempt, like country crooner Johnny Lee did in 1980, to "[look for love] in all the wrong places."
Settling for petting her dog with "a hand that's kind" because she "can't love [her] Valentine" is a timely, political punch to the gut and knife to the chest combination.
"I wrote it from my heart," says Ray.
An immensely poetic heart bleeds with former American poet laureates Joy Harjo, Natasha Trethewey and Charles Wright, and legendary "swamp rat Rimbaud" Frank Stanford.
Flatly stating heartbreak in a tone that is both moral and non-judgemental not only defines this song but "It All Goes South" and her four decades of art in general.
"These times are what they are. I live in a pod in the woods with my wife and kid. However, that pod occupies space that the Cherokees walked on during the Trail of Tears, so there's all of this suffering happening on the landscape around within and around me."
"Wow," says Ray, exhaling.
Taking in the profundity of the scene around her at country music's iconic destination locale, in her life being closer to fine than ever, perhaps her work can finally achieve pulling the world closer in focus to her existence.
