When venerable folk-rockers the Indigo Girls found themselves with a wide-open calendar after tour dates to promote their upcoming 16th album, Look Long, were canceled due to coronavirus concerns, they decided to go back to their scrappy bar-band beginnings and stage their first-ever Facebook Live home concert for fans. What they didn’t expect was that this lo-fi, on-the-fly event would end up being one of their biggest shows ever, with more than 62,000 fans tuning in.

“We had some technical glitches, and that was kind of charming in a way, because it wasn't anything fancy,” the duo’s Emily Saliers tells Yahoo Entertainment/SiriusXM Volume. “Personally, I didn't have any idea that that many people were listening and watching, and I also didn't have any idea of how much it was bringing people together. I had friends who went out in their front yard and sat away from each other in a big circle and played it. … So, I felt the miraculous reality of being able to feel a sense of community, even though we were separate. I thought that was really powerful and cool.”

Community was definitely on the mind of Saliers's bandmate of 35 years, Amy Ray, when she seized the moment to address a sizable segment of the Indigos’ audience that may be especially struggling during the current pandemic. “I'm praying people find their chosen family, and find a safe place to be," she proclaimed.

“It immediately pierced me a lot,” Ray explains, expressing her fears for LBGTQ citizens in potentially dangerous family quarantine situations. “People that are homeless, gay, queer youth — I was thinking about that, because I can't imagine. I know some people through my niece who are still in families where it's very hard for them to be at home, and it’s not necessarily even safe all the time. So I just felt like, if you could find a safe space, that's where you should be. And if you can't, it was a heartbreaker to think about — even just emotionally feeling unsafe in that situation. Because I remember times when before I was out, when it was hard for me to be at home.”

The band’s concerns are understandable. With schools and LGTBQ community centers shuttered across the country and many young queer people already on their streets after being shunned by unsupportive parents, queer youth are uniquely vulnerable right now. LGBTQ people may only comprise 4.5 percent of America’s adult population, but up to 45 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, and queer teens are two times likely to become homeless than their heterosexual peers, according to the Williams Institute.

“Even prior to the pandemic, LGBTQ youth have been found to be at significant increased risk for depression, anxiety, substance use, and suicidality,” reads a statement on the Trevor Project’s website. “These risks are even more pronounced among youth who are transgender and/or nonbinary. Thus, LGBTQ youth may be particularly vulnerable to negative mental health impacts associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“There's a lot of people to think about during this time. There's LGBT youth, there's homeless people, there's people that are in prison, there’s older folks who are isolated. It’s all the people that were having hard times before this happened, and now it's even harder, you know?” laments Ray. “The people that are less fortunate are hit harder, and the people that are more fortunate have an easier time, and it's just the wrong balance in our country. And that needs to change. So, maybe some of us will wake up to that.”

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Saliers and Ray have been queer icons ever since they came out publicly in 1991, a couple years after their commercial breakthrough with the college-rock classic “Closer to Fine.” Saliers confesses that the process was harder for her than it was for Ray, who grew up with lesbian siblings. “I had to get through some fear, some self-homophobia. … I'd go through this fear that Amy didn't have,” Saliers says. “But early on, we discussed it. And then once I got over the fear, I was so grateful to be part of the movement for equality and for recognition.