The two women met as students at a Decatur, Georgia grade school. In high school, they started performing together. Emily graduated and started attending Tulane University. A year later, Amy graduated and started at Vanderbilt University. Homesick, both returned to Georgia and transferred to Emory University. By 1985, they started performing together again, this time as the Indigo Girls.
Their first release in 1985 was a seven-inch single called Crazy Game; the B side was Everybody's Waiting. That same year, they put out a six-track self-titled EP, and in 1987, released their first full-length album, Strange Fire, recorded at John Keane Studio in Athens, Georgia, and including Crazy Game.
The success of 10,000 Maniacs, Tracy Chapman, and Suzanne Vega encouraged Epic Records to look for other women singer-songwriters; Epic signed the duo in 1988.
Their first major-label release, also self-titled, included a new version of Land of Canaan, which was also on their 1985 EP and on Strange Fire.
About this time Amy founded Daemon Records, which has signed Ellen James Society, Kristen Hall and James Hall, among others.
The second album, Nomads Indians Saints, went gold, but was not as successful as their first. They followed it with the live Back on the Bus, Y'all. 1992's comeback album Rites of Passage was an enormous success, as was Swamp Ophelia in 1994.
Albums
External Links