Indigo Girls bandmates Amy Ray and Emily Saliers explore their musical approach in a conversation with journalist Jewly Hight and producer Jordan Brooke Hamlin, recording at the Museum on September 23, 2015. A two-song performance follows the interview.

Ray and Saliers, friends since elementary school, begin the panel discussing the Indigo Girls’ early days as a bar band and their ongoing commitment to removing distance between themselves and their audience. The two also answer questions about making room for one another creatively and developing their harmony-driven sound, and offer insight into their role as activists. The panel later touches on Ray and Saliers’s roots in the American South, as well as their interest in Nashville’s cultural scene.

When the conversation turns to country music, Saliers notes, “I think a well-written country song, one that really grabs you and hurts your heart, is one of the best kinds of songs there could be.” The key, she says, roots back to “an economy of words and an economy of chords.”

“I am very inspired by all kinds of country music, from roots music, from [Woody] Guthrie, to contemporary country pop,” Saliers says. “They’re just well-written songs and I’ve always had a dream that I could write a good song like that.”

The Indigo Girls released Nashville-made album “One Lost Day,” produced by Hamlin, shortly before the program, and that album’s opening track, “Elizabeth,” pairs with “Kid Fears” (from their self-titled major-label debut) during the duo’s performance.

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