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Concert review: The Dixie Chicks
BY Jay Lustig, The Record
"We hope you don’t wait another 10 years until you invite us back," said Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines
late in the group’s Wednesday night concert at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel. She was joking: The group’s
decision not to tour in the U.S. for that long was, of course, their own.
The show went so well, though — with the band’s
country-rock sound coming through as boldly and bracingly as ever on old favorites such as "The Long Way Around," "Wide Open
Spaces" and "Sin Wagon" — that it was hard to imagine they will ever want to take such a long break from the U.S. concert
trail again.
Though the trio hasn’t released a new album since 2006, Maines put one
out in 2013, and fiddler Martie Maguire and multi-instrumentalist Emily Robison Strayer, who are sisters, recorded two, as
Court Yard Hounds, in 2010 and 2013. They didn’t perform any tracks from those non-band albums at Wednesday’s
show — part of a tour that also comes to Madison Square Garden on Monday and the BB&T Pavilion in Camden
next Saturday — though they did manage to add some surprises, in the form of well-chosen covers.
Perhaps this is an indication of what the future holds for them, since recording
new music doesn’t seem to be a priority: Occasional reunion tours at which they play their old hits along with a few
other songs, drawn from other sources. Certainly, that’s not the worst way in the world to go.
The best cover was Prince’s "Nothing Compares 2 U," the intense ballad
popularized by Sinead O’Connor in 1990. Whereas O’Connor kept a tight lid on her emotions, Maines let it all hang
out — an equally valid approach — and Maguire and Strayer added fiddle and pedal steel guitar solos. (The show
also included a second Prince tribute, by the way, with his "Let’s Go Crazy" being played in its entirety, over the
amphitheater’s sound system, after the house lights were turned off to start the show.)
The Chicks also covered Beyoncé’s down-home "Daddy Lessons" (from her
recent album, "Lemonade") and, as the show-closer, Ben Harper’s "Better Way," an inspirational anthem that proclaims,
"You have a right to your dreams/And don’t be denied/I believe in a better way.
Throughout the show, Maines, Maguire and Strayer created a unified look by
dressing in black and white outfits and playing white instruments. A mid-show unplugged segment featured "Daddy Lessons" as
well as the tear-jerking "Travelin’ Soldier," the bluesy "Please Don’t Let Me Die in Florida," the rollicking
bluegrass song "White Trash Wedding" and an instrumental that featured no backing musicians, just Maguire on fiddle, Strayer
on banjo, and Maines on a big bass drum.
Speaking of those backing musicians … they were introduced during the
unplugged segment, with thunderous applause for the "two boys from Jersey" (as Maines put it), keyboardist John Ginty of Morrison
and drummer Jimmy Paxson of Ocean City.
After all the controversy of 2003 — when Maines spoke out against the
invasion of Iraq and then-President Bush, and the group was then shunned by portions of the country music community —
they kept the politics to a minimum this time around. While they did include a defaced photo of Donald Trump in a video montage
that accompanied their song "Goodbye Earl" (about taking revenge on an abusive husband), it was onscreen for just a second.
And, for "Ready to Run," they prepared a video that poked fun at all of this year’s candidates — Trump, but also
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and former contenders such as Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Chris Christie — by making them
look ridiculous,
Perhaps more significantly, they gave "Not Ready to Make Nice," their statement
of defiance in the wake of the anti-Dixie Chicks backlash, a prominent place in the show: the first encore, right before "Better
Way."
But mostly, they seem to have moved on, and the tension of the mid-’00s
seems to have dissipated. The Dixie Chicks are … well, not just an ordinary band, but a band without an agenda beyond
revisiting songs from their rich back catalog, trying out a few new ones, and letting the music do the talking.
Dixie Chicks (mostly) steer clear of anti-Trump, Christie rhetoric
at N.J. concert
By Bobby Oliver, NJ Advance Media For NJ.Com
Holmdel —
Nearly a decade after the Dixie Chicks recognized freedom of speech — amid five Grammy Award acceptances for an album steeped in "Not Ready To Make Nice"
defiance — the country stars continue to prod.
While the once-divisive trio rocked their free-wheeling jam
"Ready To Run" Tuesday in Holmdel,
an animation depicted all former and current 2016 presidential candidates — including Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton,
Bernie Sanders and Gov. Chris Christie — as colorful clowns and boxers, yelling and bouncing about on a large
screen. Clinton and Sanders were seemingly sparring for the Democratic nomination — an update to the clip may be in
order.
It would soon become difficult to view the mocking cartoons,
as a blanket of red, white and blue, tongue-in-cheek confetti rained down. Band members Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and
Emily Robison said nothing of the scene, which unlike Maines' polarizing criticism of George W. Bush and the Iraq War in 2003, appeared to choose no sides — all
were teased equally.
The band's two-hour performance at PNC Bank Arts Center did
not feature the defaced poster of Trump — complete
with drawn-on devil horns — that made headlines last week in Cincinnati, as it was juxtaposed with "Goodbye Earl," a
song about murdering your husband.
Instead, the group's first New Jersey headlining gig in 10 years
focused mostly on the music, and through revisitations of crisp, genre-bending hits reminded why these Texas gals rose to
prominence in the first place.
THE BREAKDOWN
- The band entered Tuesday's concert at somewhat an odd point
in its career, 20 years since Maines joined in. With each member in her early to mid-40s, the band shouldn't be consigned
to greatest hits tours just yet, but they haven't released an album since 2006, nor had they headlined a U.S. tour in a decade
until this summer.
Also a bit perplexing was the pseudo-modern aesthetic of this
return, deemed the DCX MMXVI tour, where cold black and white visuals met a set list of generally warm tunes.
But revivals of the crossover throwbacks that earned the Texans
more than 30 million albums sold never felt unnecessary, and were often retooled at the hands of a skillful five-piece backing
band.
Sprightly tunes"Sin Wagon"and "White Trash Wedding" —
kudos to touring guitarist Keith Sewell's quick-fingered fretwork on the latter — kept folks moving on the unseasonably
chilly night, and the calmer notes of "Easy Silence" and Patty Griffin's "Top Of The World" rekindled Maines' clear, soaring
vocals and Maguire's tender fiddle draws.
- It would be easier to rip the Chicks' reliance on cover tunes
— they played 9 this night — if they weren't such deft emulators. Their long-employed renditions of Fleetwood
Mac's "Landslide" and Bruce Robison's "Travelin' Soldier" were expectedly strong, but the addition of Prince's
"Nothing Compares 2 U" was delivered effortlessly by Maines, and the bright fiddle and slide guitar breaks were wonderfully
sharp.
Plus an acoustic spin on Beyonce's new twanger "Daddy Lessons"
seemed tailor-made for the band.
"She wrote this song for us ... not really," joked Maines, who
was affable all night, as she laughed off a botched opening to "Landslide" and poked fun at the discovery of a hole in Maguire's
pants.
THE SET LIST
"The Long Way Around"
"Lubbock or Leave It"
"Truth #2" (Patty Griffin cover)
"Easy Silence"
"Everybody Knows"
"I Like It"
"Long Time Gone"
"Nothing Compares 2 U" (Prince cover)
"Top of the World" (Patty Griffin cover)
"Goodbye Earl"
Video Interlude: "Ace of Spades" (Motörhead cover)
"Travelin' Soldier" (Bruce Robison cover)
"Please Don't Let Me Die in Florida" (Patty Griffin cover)
"Daddy Lessons" (Beyoncé cover)
"White Trash Wedding"
"Ready to Run"
"Mississippi" (Bob Dylan cover)
"Landslide" (Fleetwood Mac cover)
"Silent House"
"Cowboy Take Me Away"
"Wide Open Spaces"
"Sin Wagon"
Encore:
"Not Ready to Make Nice"
"Better Way" (Ben Harper cover)
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