Dixie Chicks review: making nice with Prince and Beyonce
by Bernard Zuel
They sold this tour - pretty much sold out this tour actually - without a show here in a decade, without
any new songs, without any interviews or TV appearances.
The Dixie Chicks didn't have to make nice.
Which is as funny now as it was when that phrase was their defiant reaction to reactionary blowback to "the incident" (a
certain comment in 2003 about a fool of a president, who looks positively Roosevelt-like by comparison with the incumbent).
For whatever else you say about them, Emily Robison, Natalie Maines and Martie Maguire are darn nice. And darn good at
making pop country feel like something real and not cashed up faux.
And while we're there, darn clever to straddle - or is it subsume? - a couple of genres without feeling like an Urban box-ticking
exercise.
Played on by Prince's Let's Go Crazy, ending the show with a Ben Harper song and, alongside a minor Dylan (Mississippi),
their long-time favourite interpretation of Stevie Nicks' Landslide and performing another Prince number, Nothing
Compares 2 U, they brought their take on Beyonce's own cross-genre moment, Daddy Lessons.
Eccentric. Eclectic. Or maybe it's just that they're clever enough to figure that a good song is a good song (and a great
song, in the case of their three Patty Griffin covers, is a great song) whether it has a fiddle and pedal steel or a double-necked
guitar and string section.
Add a dash of score-settling feminism, via Goodbye Earl and Daddy Lessons, some brisk bluegrass comic affection
for the inner bogan inside every Texan (and Australian) sophisticate in White Trash Wedding and Sin Wagon, and
some straight country moments like Travelin' Soldier, written by Bruce Robison, and you've got yourself a show.
Not ultimately a great show, to be fair. There were too few moments when the sisters' voices joined in for harmonies; the
sisters were in fact a little disconnected - smiling and present, for sure but secondary - for the first half.
And it took the acoustic bracket, 10 songs in, to move the ambient feeling from semi-mechanical/friendly professional to
something nearer the warmly engaged we remember from 10-15 years ago. At least it took that long to reach the distant corners
of the room.
But you aren't going to go home without heart when there's Top Of The World and Landslide on the set
list are you?
And though they began the encore by declaring they were Not Ready To Make Nice, we knew otherwise.
After 25 tumultuous years, Dixie Chicks remain at the top of their game
by Jules LeFevre, Faster Louder
For a lot of bands, their story and personal mythology doesn’t have that much bearing on how they’re publicly
perceived. Or at least, it doesn’t often precede them. It might be funnelled into their music, of course, but it’s
rare that their narrative becomes as important – or as inextricably tied to – their musical output.
For the Dixie Chicks though, their personal journey has been so explosive that it’s impossible to hear them, or watch
them perform, without seeing and remembering all that came before.
Even the fact the trio is here is somewhat of a feat, for 14 years ago nearly to the day, they nearly blew apart their
career.
On March 10, 2003, the Dixie Chicks were on stage at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire. They were in the middle of their
set, taking a pause between songs to tune instruments, having just played their current chart topping single, ‘Travelin’
Solider’, when singer Natalie Maines spoke:
"Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re
ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."
What happened next is well-documented. They were boycotted and blacklisted all over the U.S., their music thrown in bins
and burned. They went from being one of the most successful country groups in history, to hated outcasts of the mighty country
music scene. If you haven’t seen the excellent 2006 documentary Shut Up And Sing about their ordeal, you
need to – it remains one of the best music documentaries ever made.
Their returned from years in exile to make Taking The Long Way, their stunning Grammy Award-winning
album which spawned the mega hit ‘Not Ready To Make Nice’. The record was massively successful, but soon after
its release the Chicks hung up their guitars, and wouldn’t tour again properly for ten years.
"Dixie Chicks’ personal journey has been so explosive that it’s impossible to hear them, or watch them
perform, without seeing and remembering all that came before."
Turns out, a decade hadn’t dulled their senses. The trio – made up of sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire,
along with vocalist Natalie Maines – are formidable musicians with an impressive stage presence, and after a
year of hard touring there’s nothing even close to a wrong note hit. They’re a finely tuned machine, evident
from the opening wide-armed strums of ‘The Long Way Round’ to the ball-busting grit of ‘Lubbock Or Leave
It’ and ‘Truth No. 2’.
Away from the beefy drums and vicious curls of slide guitar of the uptempo openers, their gentler tracks – like the
cresting ‘Easy Silence’ or heart-cracking ‘Travelin’ Solider’ – make space for Maines’
incredible vocal performance. After 25 years of performing you would easily forgive a little vocal tiredness, but it’s
not necessary – her ability to backflip along registers and change notes and dynamics with the speed of a whip crack
is as sharp as ever.
They still aren’t afraid to push buttons either. Crowd favourite ‘Goodbye Earl’ – a song
about a woman murdering her abusive husband – was delivered against a backdrop of famous criminal cases, such as news
clippings of the O.J Simpson trial, and Chris Brown’s mugshot next to Rihanna’s battered face.
They’re also not ones to stay solely in their country lane. Throwing in a cover of Prince’s ‘Nothing
Compares 2 U’, felt completely natural, as did their controversial Beyoncé cover "Daddy Lessons".
After all these years though, ‘Not Ready To Make Nice’ remains the biggest moment of their set.
"We don’t wanna leave you angry," Maines said after the last note rang out. So a cover of Ben Harper’s ‘Better
Way’, with a bulldozing drum interlude, closed out the night instead.
Let’s hope it’s not another ten years before we hear them again.
Return to Tour Dates/Reviews page
