[About this summer’s Traveling Companions blog series:  To give myself the excuse to listen to more music this summer and to evangelize a little about some of my favorites, I decided to do a relaxed series telling stories about and highlighting songs/albums/artists that have accompanied me along the way.  Here’s the first post in the series.  I promise this whole series won’t be about the Indigo Girls, but they have been traveling with me for a long time now and I just saw them in concert last week, so here they are again.]

When I was 23, I sang along to all the songs on Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Shooting Straight in the Dark album.  One of the songs, “Middle Ground,” has the lyric, “She’s 33 this time around” and whenever I got to that line I sang, “23” instead, feeling in synch from 10 years behind MCC.  Around this same time I made a mixed tape (translation for younger folks: playlist) of favorite songs, including that one, and called it my “Trying to Tell You Something about My Life” tape, titled after a line in the Indigo Girls’s anthem “Closer to Fine.”  I gave copies to close friends and I played it until it wore out.

Those were the years between college and seminary, the first time I lived in Appalachia.  There was no internet.  We thought nothing of driving 2-3 hours to visit friends for dinner and then driving back home again the same night.  There was ample time for listening to music and dreaming.  I stayed three years before heading to Atlanta for seminary.

On the way to Atlanta, I lived in Nashville for about 6 months.  I was ready to go but nervous about the change in work and the pace of life there.  The night I arrived, my friend took me to dinner at a sushi place near Music Row.  As we sat at our table chatting, I heard a voice I recognized at the table behind me.  It was the low, sultry, very-slightly-southern voice of Mary Chapin Carpenter and something about hearing and seeing her there on my first night in Nashville served as a blessing on the new chapter I was beginning.  I would be all right.  I wasn’t accustomed to asking for or looking for signs but somehow seeing and hearing her right then seemed to be a good one.

About four years earlier, still in college, I went to my second Indigo Girls concert.  It was a summer night at Wolf Trap, where we spread a blanket on the lawn and looked up at the stars while they sang.   They were touring for their first widely distributed album, Indigo Girls, the one with “Closer to Fine” and “Kid Fears” (which featured Michael Stipe in a haunting harmonizing vocal).  When they were getting ready to sing “Kid Fears” they paused to introduce a special guest about to come out and sing that third vocal with them.  The kind of people who yell out commentary from the audience were yelling, “Michael Stipe” – which I was pretty sure wouldn’t happen since he didn’t live near Washington D.C. and since he had his own tours to carry out.  I was aware that MCC lived in the D.C. area at that time and I had this small sliver of hope it might be her, though I’m not sure I had any proof before that night that they even knew each other.

I was right.  It was a special treat to hear that version of the popular song, and to know these three women I admired and listened to actually knew one another.  At the end of the concert during the encore, Amy and Emily brought Chapin back out and they capped the evening with an a cappella version of “The Water is Wide.”  It was chilling.  For me, it was church.  I have remembered it – the sounds, the feeling, the moment of it – for 26 years.  (And, no, I never once before this moment thought of looking on YouTube to see if there was a recording of them singing this together!)

Over the ensuing decades, I’ve heard them all play many times and brushed past them in real life.  When I lived in Atlanta I found myself pumping gas next to Emily Saliers one day.  Heading down the stairs from Eddie’s Attic one night, I heard an unmistakable voice talking to friends heading up the stairs and looked over to see I was passing Amy Ray.  A few years back I attended a wonderful preaching/writing workshop co-led by Emily and her father (and my seminary professor) Don Saliers.  The past few Advent seasons at the Wesley Foundation, we’ve become fond of singing Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Come Darkness, Come Light.”  She now lives in Virginia, not too far from me, so I wasn’t surprised when we were in the same Starbucks getting coffee last year.

Last week my husband and I went to a benefit concert for the Charlottesville Free Clinic.  From the moment I heard the Indigo Girls and MCC would be the performers, I hoped they might sing together again like I have remembered all these years.  Amy and Emily sang the first set, then Chapin sang.  At the very end, she called Amy and Emily back out and the three of them sang “Closer to Fine.”  Then, just as I’d hoped, they sang “The Water is Wide,” first with accompaniment and then, on the last verse, only their three lovely, miles-traveled-together voices floating into the sticky hot night.  I looked up at the stars again but I also closed my eyes to drink it in.  It was worth waiting 26 years to hear again.

I own every album Chapin and the Indigo Girls have put out, I’ve gone to countless concerts, and we have crossed paths over many years, though I realize I’m the only one of the four of us who realizes this.  That’s fine.  Each of those crossings has been a blessing and a sign, a reminder of the places and times they’ve been my traveling companions.  I’m 47 this time around, which means Chapin’s 57.  I’m still singing along.

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photo credit:  © 2006 Mike Evans, CC BY 2.0