lifeblood: songs: backgrounds: come a long way

2015-06-04: indigo girls bring tour to ann arbor, the monroe evening news:

a mix of folk, rock and pop, the 13-track disc released tuesday includes "come a long way," which has ms. saliers singing, "i've come a long way just to begin."

"that's kind of how i'm feeling in life right now. i'm middle-aged; i'm feeling energized; i'm married (to tristin chipman); i have a 2-year-old daughter. i was able to get married legally, which i never thought would happen in my lifetime. and i feel i'm in a very good and grateful place," the singer-songwriter said during a call from her atlanta home. "and so through all the drama of upheavals and great losses in my own family and in life, i have come to start again at this place.

"i call (the song) my second coming out because it is my saying thank you, great spirit. i call this spirit god. it's a benevolent spirit for my life; it's been a guiding force and has provided me all this help and grace. so this is my song to not be afraid to acknowledge god in my life because i've always been trepidatious about talking about it because of the negative reaction that so many people have when they hear the word god or religion."

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2015-06-18: indigo girls' emily saliers talks about motherhood, her solo record and more, the ann arbor news:

q. among the songs you contributed to the new album, which has the most personal meaning for you?

a. that's hard to say. ... the one that took the most courage to write was "come a long way," which was a song affirming my belief in god. ... i'm a believer in a great benevolent force in my life - that's my reason for being, and it feels really good for me to say that. but i love them all. they're new, so we're not tired of anything yet. time will tell what goes by the wayside.

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2018-04-18: indigo girls' emily saliers talks empathy, creativity and new projects, pride source:

"one lost day" is your newest release, but it's a few years old now. have you found that some of the songs on that record have changed their meaning?

you're exactly right that over time, songs do change what they mean to you or you can experience them differently emotionally even though you wrote them a long, long time ago. for instance, the song on "one lost day" called "come a long way" that's a song about a spiritual journey of mine and it's still very fresh to me ... that happens for a lot of the older songs, but for the songs for the newest album they still feel new.

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2020-05-19: southern women spotlight: the indigo girls, garden and gun:

how important is spirituality to both of you and your work?

es: at this point, there's no life for me without my faith. i have a song called "come a long way" that is a thank-you for the spiritual help that's gotten me through the worst of my struggles. i grew up methodist, my mom was presbyterian, my dad is a theologian. we'd go to church, then come home and eat something special, like a roast chicken, and sit around and talk about what we'd absorbed that day. we were allowed to ask questions, so i was able to see the beauty in spiritual life and faith. but then in the same breath, i know so many people who were wounded by organized religion. both those things play in my mind when i write songs and think about the human struggle.

ar: faith is one of the things that link me and emily. my granddad had been a methodist preacher in florida. he raised money to build churches in the south. i went to friday night youth group, sunday bible school, sunday service, wednesday choir practice, from six years old on. our church was conservative. and i had to find my way through that. i had one youth minister who i could talk to about any questions i had. he saw me struggle with my sexuality. he saw me struggle with alcohol and drugs. i could go to him and it was a safe place for me. so even though church could be oppressive and taught me self-hate, it also set me free in a lot of ways.

that's a very southern experience-the contradictions knotted together in our institutions.

ar: yes. it's still my construct in that joseph campbell way, the way i make sense of the world even though i know it's myth, you know? jesus is still the thing i can relate to. i write a gospel song and jesus is in the middle of it. i wouldn't be anything without my spirituality, but at the same time i know there are a lot of things that are problematic about my attachment to it. the church we grew up in, the methodist church, it's still homophobic. it's a slow-to-change thing.