Review | The Amy Ray Band and Dar Williams Take Us on a Musical Journey

MLK Day Concert in Santa Barbara Hits All the Right Notes

The Amy Ray Band | Credit: Courtesy

The best music is always driven by passion, something that Amy Ray and her band clearly have. Their Martin Luther King Jr. Day show at the Marjorie Luke Theatre took us on a rocking journey through a big, blue sea of topics — from love and personal relationships to political, racial, sexual, and class tensions — with the throughline being Ray’s beautiful (and oh-so-familiar from her “day job” in the Indigo Girls) vocals.

The Amy Ray Band and Dar Williams at the Marjorie Luke Theatre | Credit: Leslie Dinaberg

On the heels of their latest solo album, If It All Goes South, the seven-piece band took the stage with one of that LP’s standout songs, “Subway,” a high-energy ode to the New York radio deejay Rita Houston, who passed away from cancer in 2020, and about whom Ray has written, “I met Rita in the ’90s, and she was so dynamic — at a time when there was so much homophobia, she rooted for artists in the queer community and ended up driving a lot of people’s careers. I wrote ‘Subway’ thinking about Rita and New York City, and how liberated I always felt there as a young queer person just starting to get comfortable with myself.”

Another lesbian icon, Brandi Carlile, sings background vocals on the recording, but the masculine vocal sounds of Ray’s all-male band served the song nicely on stage in Santa Barbara.

The rousing grooves of “Joy Train,” another transportation title from the new album, was up next, this one dedicated to MLK and the civil rights leaders who still found ways to live with joyful intention and celebration in the face of sometimes overwhelming obstacles. Another highlight for me was the beautifully reflective “Oyster and Pearl,” from the band’s 2014 album Goodnight Tender. “My perspective is kind of a left-wing southern person,” said Ray in describing her eclectic style. (She spoke a little more about that in my pre-show interview with her here.)

“Eccentric eclectic” is how I would describe co-headliner Dar Williams’s set. Somehow, despite attending numerous Lilith Fairs in the late ’90s, where Williams and Ray apparently became friends, I had never seen her perform. Williams’s much more stripped-down, witty, folky, storytelling tunes took a little getting used to after Ray’s much more rollicking band and set. Accompanied by just her own guitar and pianist Bryn Roberts, she opened with “Mercy of the Fallen,” a fanciful reflection from 2003. That was followed by “Are You Out There,” a 1997 tune about listening to the radio.

My favorite song in her set was, by far and away, “The Babysitter’s Here,” a 1993 song written from a young girl’s perspective about her adoration of her teenage hippie babysitter with hair so long she could sit on it, and all of the joy she brought to their lives. “She’s the best fun that I’ve ever had,” sang Williams, with all the heart of an elementary-school crush.

Another Williams standout was, as she described it, “an older song about gender,” titled “When I Was a Boy.” Also from 1993, this deceptively clever song is another that looks back at childhood, describing a time when she could run around topless without self-consciousness or fear. (The lyrics are worth a read; click here to see them.)

“Like calling the woodland creatures on stage,” as she put it, Williams invited Ray and her band back up for a nice dual finale. They performed a beautiful rendition of “Chuck Will’s Widow,” a song on Ray’s new album with the fabulous chorus: “I get lost (I get lost) / Sad and lonely (Sad and lonely) / So I count the stars above me / And I sing (And I sing) / When I should be sleepin’ (When I should be sleepin’) / ‘Cause that’s when the world hears my weepin’.”