There is the antipathy, a particularly virulent strain of hatred that Natalie
Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer have dealt with and continue to deal with.
Friday night at Gexa Energy Pavilion, for the band’s first appearance
on a North Texas stage in 10 years, the focus was put back where, arguably, it has always belonged: the music.
It was deeply moving to see Maines and the Erwin sisters (flanked by Maines’
ferociously talented father, Lloyd, on pedal steel — he’s a special guest during the group’s run of Texas
dates) standing again before a hometown audience, a sold-out sea of humanity that greeted the core trio with a roar you could
feel in the soles of your feet.
During the opening moments of The Long Way Around — with
its loaded lyric "It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself" — it seemed as if all three women were fighting their
emotions, tears brimming in their eyes. But, as the professionals they are and have always been, they channeled that feeling
into their music.
For two hours, the Chicks, backed by six additional musicians (including Lloyd
Maines), worked through their beloved back catalog and sprinkled a few superb covers through the set list.
You want range? Find another act that could credibly cover Patty Griffin’s
flinty Don’t Let Me Die in Florida, Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U, Beyonce’s Daddy
Lessons and Bob Dylan’sMississippi in the span of an evening.
Maines, Maguire and Strayer easily moved from tender ballads (Easy Silence; Travelin’
Soldier) to raucous rave-ups (Goodbye Earl; the main set-closing Sin Wagon), illustrating in the
process both how far ahead of the curve the band was as well as how much they were missed.
The airtight harmonies are intact — to hear those three voices blend,
with nothing else instantly behind them, as happened at the outset of White Trash Wedding, was to feel like
levitating — and the luscious sound was the anchor throughout the night.
Maines did most of the talking, but any feint at controversy was confined
to existing lyrics and the occasional visual backdrop on the enormous video screen dwarfing the otherwise minimally dressed
stage (swipes were taken at the 2016 election, as well as Robert Durst and Chris Brown).
Although the current tour is being billed as a comeback for the Chicks, it
doesn’t feel as if the band ever really left.
Sure, country radio has forsaken their music, but the fan base is so enthusiastic
— every word to nearly every song was sung with passion from the front rows to the lawn Friday — that it feels
as if their collective fervor has kept the group relevant, even if they pursued other modes of expression while apart.
To stand among those holding smartphones aloft on the lawn, as the Chicks
tore into the defiant anthem Not Ready to Make Nice, was to feel all of that weight — the accidents and
accusations, accumulated over years and left hanging in the space where the band should have been — lift.
There, under the sweltering night sky, voices belting in unison, there was
no other distraction, nothing left to do but love the music.
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