Indigo Girls "Uncle John's Band"

One of the weird phenomenons of being married is that while you do so much together, there are other things you simply can't do, because your partner is the one who does it.

For instance, 99% of the time I drive if my wife and I go somewhere. It's not that she can't drive or really despises driving. It's just something I do, and she doesn't.

How many times have we gone to visit her friend Nikki, who lives near Worcester? Half a dozen times in the last two years?

One day last year, she had a day off while I was working, so she decided to pack up the kids and go for a visit. I got a call from the road:

"How do you get Nikki's?"

She'd been down the path many, many times, but because she was in the passenger seat, the turns and landmarks had never really stuck with her, and she had no idea how to get to what should have been a familiar destination.

I was thinking about this when I played The Indigo Girls version of the Grateful Dead song "Uncle John's Band."

Sometime in the late 1990s, my friends and I drove down from where we lived in Virginia, to a club in Asheville, North Carolina, to celebrate Daemon Records 10th Anniversary. Daemon is the record label started by Amy Ray, one-half of The Indigo Girls.

Several of the artists on her label played that day, and of course, Amy did a short solo set. Vocal Indigo Girls fans were shouting out requests between songs, and Amy finally relented to a pair of persistent squawkers.

"What do you want me to play?" she asked. They requested a tune that The Indigo Girls had covered on a Grateful Dead tribute album called "Deadicated."

She hemmed and hawed, seemed to think about rejecting the request, and then just decided to go for it.

She got partway through the song, and you could see she was in trouble. And then she abruptly stopped.

She apologized. "Emily sings that part. I don't think I know the words . . ."

They'd no doubt performed "Uncle John's Band" many times before, but because she'd never sang certain parts of the song, she'd never retained them. And without those parts, the song fell apart.

You go through life in perfect harmony, but sometimes you don't really know just how much you need your partner until you're singing solo.

Indigo Girls with Michael Stipe “Kid Fears”

It was Spring 1990, and my college roommates and I had picked up tickets to The Worcester Centrum to see R.E.M. We were pretty dare excited, since a love of the band had played a large part in forging our friendship in the dorms of UMass Amherst.

So as not to miss a minute, we were sure to be on the scene very early and we caught the opening act, some band I’d never heard of.

It’s funny, 20 years later, to remember a time when I didn’t know who the Indigo Girls were. But at the time of this story, I was open ears, and ready to be impressed.

Not surprisingly, they won me over pretty quickly, but the most entertaining part of the night, was when, part-way through the start of a somewhat dark song, a figure emerged from the shadows to join the girls.

Michael Stipe’s soaring vocals joined a song I’d later learn was “Kid Fears.”

From the moment he opened his mouth, the crowd---who was there to see R.E.M., not this no-name opening band---went wild. Seeing Stipe an hour earlier than planned just sent them into spasms of fan-ecstacy.

Then another figure emerged from the shadows. An audible gasp rose from the crowd. Then waves of applause.

Mike Mills? Bill Berry? Peter Buck?

No, it turned out to be a roadie, carrying out an extra mic stand.

Sheepishly, he waved to the crowd, and with a big smile on his face, he faded back into the shadows.