The annual Indigo Girls tour has become a common occurrence for me over the last few years, and a time I look forward to at the end of the summer heading into the early fall. I had never even heard an Indigo Girls song until my senior year of high school. Just over three years later, I leapt at the chance to go see them for a third time.

Whether it be their easy-listening music, the community they built, or even Amy and Emily’s southern charm with their “thanks y’all” after each song, there’s nothing quite as healing as an Indigo Girls show for me. And while this year’s show was no different from the others before in that regard, I was pleasantly surprised with a bit of a different set list than before.

The Indigo Girls opened with a few of the classics, with some more deep cuts stitched into the set. In the first few songs, they played the hits such as “Power of Two,” “Get Out the Map” and even “Least Complicated.”

However, they would divert slightly in the middle of the show to a slightly heavier sound in their performance of “Faye Tucker,” which was a new one for me. The song opens almost as a sort of saloon ballad with some strings in the background, and opens up into heavier distortion with some solos from Amy and the band.

This was the most I had ever seen Amy lean into a performance as she danced her way around the stage and even resorted to some headbanging in the middle of the solos. To follow up this switch-up from the Indigo Girls, the band played a cover of Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

It’s quite rare for me to leave a show, especially an Indigo Girls show, and say that my favorite song of the night was a cover. However, with some of the new members of the band on drums and some returners playing rhythm and strings, compiled with Amy’s energy and one of the best vocal performances I’ve personally heard from Emily, the performance of the song was nothing short of phenomenal. 

The third act of the show began with a wonderful solo performance from one of the backup singers before Amy and the band returned to perform one of her solo songs and a couple of others. What brought the audience alive in the final few songs was the intro to “Galileo,” which always brings some energy from the crowd. 

Soon after, in the middle of “Kid Fears,” the penultimate song of the set, Melissa Etheridge made her way out to the stage, bringing with her plenty of cheers, and a sign that her set was soon to come.

Perhaps the best part of the night wasn’t even the music, but simply Melissa Etheridge inserting stories before each song. She told a few stories about her early days touring on the road and the many people she met on the road. 

This isn’t to say her music wasn’t just as fantastic. To open her set, after her cameo in the first, Etheridge returned to the stage donning her signature cowboy hat and guitar and brought the crowd alive with her first song, “All American Girl.” 

Even when her music started much more lively than the Indigo Girls, Etheridge slowed it down early on in the set, telling a story of her first consistent gig she landed in California. 

She then continued to tell the story of a former “special friend” as she called them, and proceeded to play her top 50 charting hit “If I Wanted to”.

Of course, it would not be an Indigo Girls show without “Closer to Fine”, and Amy and Emily made sure not to disappoint. Hearing practically the whole crowd sing along in the open-air amphitheater, on what was a beautiful night in Bridgeport, could convince just about anyone that they were, in fact, getting closer to being fine.

In a world that’s constantly changing and is full of conflict, it’s nice to know there’s a place for people to go to listen to good music, share a moment together, and, most importantly, stand up for the lookout.