They saved it for the last song of the night and acknowledged that many attendees were hearing it live for the first time.
"If this is your first time seeing us, then welcome," Emily Saliers said to a crowd twice the size of what she and bandmate Amy Ray normally draw in the Twin Cities.
After a few familiar acoustic guitar chords, audience members joined in right on cue for the opening line: "I'm trying to tell you something about my life. …" And for the next four minutes, 4,000 people helped turn a warm summer night in Minnesota into an ultra-warm campfire singalong.
That typical big moment in an Indigo Girls concert was made all the bigger Saturday night at the Hilde Performance Center, when the enduring Atlanta folk duo played Plymouth's grassy outdoor amphitheater riding a resurgence of sorts from a seemingly unlikely source.
Their harmonious 1989 anthem "Closer to Fine" — saved for the closing number Saturday — is suddenly a hit again thanks to the new "Barbie" movie. Not only is it prominently and repeatedly featured in the film, it's used in a way that poignantly speaks to the film's powerful message of finding self-love and your own strong identity. If it wasn't already an iconic song before 2023, it certainly is now.
With that movie breaking box-office records, it's no surprise Saliers and Ray are also seeing a boost in their own ticket sales.
Granted, a majority of Saturday's crowd was still made up of diehards who turn out to see the Indigo Girls year after year. You could tell how many were there when they also sang along loudly to the lesser-known opening songs "Fill It Up Again" and "Yield." But there were clearly some newcomers, too.
For instance: the person who took up Saliers' offer to ask a question while Ray tuned her guitar a few songs deeper into the 100-minute set.
"Are we sisters?" Saliers good-naturedly repeated the query, sparking laughter.
The singer then asked back with a sweet smile, "Did you find us through the 'Barbie' movie?"
Only sisters in the sense that they grew up together — "seeing each other's evolution over the years," is how Ray put it — the longtime bandmates' uncanny musical bond was on bright display underneath the Hilde's impressive four-story band shell.
They performed as a stripped-down trio with only ace violinist Lyris Hung for extra musical accompaniment. Hung's valuable contributions ranged from a light and beautiful coating in the pure-folk ditty "Share the Moon" to dark, stormy layering for the rockier mid-set standout "[Expletive] Kickin'."
With lines about riding horses and dirt bikes as a kid but becoming "a little bit left of the salt of the earth," the latter song was one of a handful selected off the richly lyrical Indigo Girls album issued near the start of COVID-19 lockdown, titled "Look Long." Another new gem, "When We Were Writers," found Saliers reminiscing about pulling all-nighters and having "smoked a joint with Jackson Browne." Neither song would've fit the "Barbie" movie but were highlights Saturday.
Other fan favorites popped up intermittently throughout the show, including (in order) "Get Out the Map," "Shame on You" and "Least Complicated" before the pre-encore finale "Galileo." They dug up "Kid Fears" by request to start the encore. Then opening act Kevn Kinney of the Georgia band Drivin N Cryin — who lovingly covered the Replacements' "Here Comes a Regular" with Hung during his set — came back out to help sing "Closer to Fine." As if an extra singing voice was even needed.
Perhaps as much as the "Barbie" scenes, credit for the Girls' bump in attendance this time around can probably also go to the gig's scenic location. It was good to have the Music in the Zoo regulars performing outdoors again and to have kinks from previous concerts at the Hilde (i.e., long concession lines) worked out. Consider it further proof that if you build Minnesota music lovers a decent, working amphitheater, they will come.
