Going Stag with Amy Ray

By Pam Huwig

“I feel like I’m really a late bloomer in life. I’m doing this solo record and I’m 36 years old,” says Amy Ray.

She may sing about blooming later than she would have liked (“Late Bloom”), but Amy Ray has accomplished more with the note in her 36 years than some musicians do in a lifetime.

Most of my favorite Indigo Girls songs have always been the grittier, darker ones, and while I’m a happy woman that Amy and Emily will continue their work together, my need for Amy’s shadowy side is fully satisfied in the tracks of her solo debut, Stag.

Amy says she’s taken a whole new approach to Stag. It shows. Deciding to get back to her punk roots for her first solo gig, inspired Amy to ask musicians such as Joan Jett, The Butchies, Kate Shellenbach, Rock-A-Teens, Danielle Howle, and 1945 (previously Three-Finger Cowboy) to contribute to the album. The results are nothing less than true indie and post-punk rock melded together with orgasmic neofolk. Ouch.

The Butchies’ signature vocals and grit-drumming do the job on songs like “LucyStoners,” “Measure of Me,” “On Your Honor.”

In the smart, in-your-face song, “LucyStoners,” Amy and the girls let loose on Rolling Stone’s wimpy business practices in dealing with female artists, making it loud and clear that they don’t need the big boys anyway.

“We were talking ticket slump/trying to put our finger on it/quantify the undoing/of each little step – it’s just a lack of press/The refrigerator down at the boys club/with its little magnets of poetry/finding one hundred different ways to say blow me/Well, Janny Wenner, Janny Wenner – Rolling Stone’s most fearless leader – gave the boys what they deserve/but with the girls he lost his nerve…/Testing 1, 2, 3 in the marketplace/it’s just a demographic based disgrace/and a stupid, secret, whiteboy handshake that we’ll never be part of…/Lucy Stoners don’t need boners/ain’t no man could ever own her/with the boys she had the nerve to give the girls what they deserve.”

And in “Hey Castrator,” Amy asked veteren punker Joan Jett and Josephine Wiggs [The Breeders] to work their dulcet magic. The song is a dreamy, tall glass of lemonade on a hot day blended with dark lyrics and riffs that put me in mind of bands like Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü.

“I wanted ‘Hey Castrator’ to be a mix of The Partridge Family and punk, [laughs],” Amy says.

“I don’t know really where it came from lyrically,” says Amy. “I was addressing a couple of different things – our own wrestling with the nature that’s inside of us. Plus, the stereotypical male kind of nature, and what we attribute to that – like exploitation, or possessiveness or objectivity. But also the high school side of that – everything’s always about sex [laughs]. It’s my response to that whole thing.

“[‘Hey Castrator’] was contingent upon what the rhythm and the drums were doing and it was very apropos for Joan to come in and play rhythm guitar on it. She’s a killer guitar player. And Josephine is someone I love jamming with when I’m New York. I really got some great people on the album; I’m happy with it,” she adds.

Collaborator and friend, Joan Jett agrees: “I came to the studio after performing in my Broadway show, Rocky Horror, so I thought I might have been too tired to get it going,” “However once I got there Amy, her other musicians, and the aura of the studio got me in a very good place mentally. Amy was looking for a natural performance on “Hey Castrator” without a lot a lot of polish.  I think we got great energy.”

She’s right. The great energy isn’t at all limited to any one track. I’d personally give anyone ten bucks if they could sit still through “Mts of Glory.” Growling guitars and provocative lyrics sprinkled with The Butchies is enough to make anyone stir.

“Call up my rockboy finally score/he’s got a drama like a toreador/me and the bottle we’re on the mend/tired of winning gonna lose again/gonna miss being the boy/gonna miss being the man…/I can’t get it out it’s kinda rough/I like the way it feels but its not enough…/Hey baby don’t’ you need me now/Mtns of glory, mtns of glory…”

“I address a lot of gender issues in ‘Mts of Glory’ and [throughout Stag]. I’m talking about my own wrestling with the part of me that really heavily identifies with men,” Amy explains. “And in a relationship I feel like the boy sometimes rather than the girl. We all wanna be both [laughs] – nobody wants to just be one thing. This was a specific breakup song, where it’s like what’s the thing I’m gonna miss most about this relationship? It was kind of ironic because I think I was struggling with not wanting to feel like the boy all the time, but when it was taken away from me, I was like, ‘Hey, wait a minute’ [laughs]. It’s supposed to be a sexy, punky, you know, fuck you sort of song.”

Stag is absolutely sexy and punky, and it makes perfect sense that Amy decided to release it on her not-for-profit indie label, Daemon Records.

“The label is very political and activist oriented,” she says. “I have people who have who have environmental consciousness and of a like mind of everyone else at Daemon. We’re very community based – we do a lot of support of other artists who aren’t on our label, with database sharing, mailouts for people, sponsoring other bands – we try to do a lot of stuff. I require that all the Daemon musicians perform 15 hours of work in their contract, either on their album or on someone else’s. That works out well because people feel a part of what they’re doing. I’ve always wanted to stay part of the indie world,” Amy adds.

“Amy Ray is one person that walks it like she talks it,” says Joan Jett. “She is committed to doing whatever she can to make the world better, and to fighting injustice wherever she can.  That is one of the many reasons I am proud to call her my friend.”