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Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls will be performing this week in the Salt Lake City area.

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One person who already has tickets for Amy Ray's show Friday is Troy
Williams, producer of local radio station KRCL's RadioActive show.
"Imagine your favorite band writing a song about [KRCL's] work,"
Williams said.

That's exactly what Ray, one-half of the influential folk duo
Indigo Girls, did on her fourth solo album, "Didn't It Feel Kinder,"
released last August. In "SLC Radio," Ray sings, "I'm pulling in to the
LDS nation looking for a community station / 'Cause I've heard about
the kids in Salt Lake City / And how they fight to be set free and how
they fight / For you and me radio community."

"[KRCL is] the epitome of what community radio is and should be," Ray said in a Tribune interview. She wrote the song

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after a visit to the KRCL studios in May 2005, saying she was inspired by the station's activism, independence and enthusiasm.

The inspiration, apparently, was reciprocal. Ray and the Indigo
Girls were a ray of light for Williams in the 1980s, he said. "The
Indigo Girls were one of the pivotal acts that made me not feel like a
freak," said Williams, who formerly hosted KRCL's "Now Queer This"
program. Once he became involved in radio, one of his goals — now
accomplished — was to cultivate a relationship with Ray.

"[Salt Lake City] does have a progressive community," said Ray, 44,
a Georgia native. "We should use the Mormons as a way of understanding
each other. There are good things that come out of [the Mormon faith],
if it wasn't for the prejudices."

Prejudice, to Ray, was symbolized by The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints' support of Prop. 8 in California, the successful
state initiative that banned legal status for same-sex marriages. "It's
just wrong," she said of the church's actions. "The LDS shouldn't be
involved in that. I thought it was a stupid way to spend your money."

Ray hasn't come to Utah to preach, but instead will be playing
harder-edged rock songs from her solo work. She doesn't see her new
songs as Indigo Girls songs, determined sometimes by subject matter,
and sometimes when she doesn't hear her bandmate Emily Saliers'
"voice."

Ray is especially excited about her opening act, an experimental
rock band called Arizona, which caught her attention when one of the
band members was an intern at her record label. She invited the band to
play on Ray's album, and said she'll join them onstage.

"There is cross-pollination between the sets," said Ben Wigler,
Arizona's lead singer. He said he owes much of his career to Ray,
because the band's first out-of-state gigs were opening for the Indigo
Girls in 2006. "She's angelic," Wigler said.

Some in Salt Lake City might disagree with him. But that's OK with Ray.