Indigo Girls consists of Amy Ray (vocals, guitar, mandolin, harmonica), Emily Saliers (vocals, guitar, banjo, mandolin).
The Indigo Girls are an American folk-rock duo, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. They got their start in Atlanta as a regular act at Eddie's Attic and were tangentially part of the Athens, Georgia college rock scene that included The B-52's, Pylon, R.E.M., the Georgia Satellites, and Love Tractor.
The two women met as students at Laurel Ridge Elementary School in De Kalb County, Georgia just outside of Decatur, Georgia. While attending Shamrock High School, they started performing together as the B-Band and Saliers and Ray. 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 (for Someone to Come Home)". 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". With this release, they secured the services of Russell Carter, who remains their manager to the present day; they had first approached him when the EP was released, but he told them their songs were "immature" and they weren't likely to get a record deal. Strange Fire apparently changed his mind.
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 titled Indigo Girls, included a new version of "Land of Canaan", which was also on their 1985 EP and on Strange Fire. Also on the self-titled release was "Closer To Fine", their first hit single, which got into the top 30 on the charts. In 1990, they won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Recording.