Dixie Chicks turn back clock at Yum! Center

by Jeffrey Lee Puckett, Courier-Journal

The Dixie Chicks picked up in Louisville pretty much where the band left off 13 years ago: with a packed house singing along at the top of its collective lungs.

Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire were last here in 2003 for its Top of the World Tour, which was quite literally named; there were no bigger stars in country or pop music at the time.

As they return to the international concert stage with the DCX MMXVI World Tour, the band might not be ruling the charts as they once did but they still command a stage. The Chicks delivered a committed performance and Thursday night's KFC Yum! Center crowd, which was itself mostly chicks, hung on every word.

The band's setlist hasn't changed much, either. Fifteen of the 22 songs performed Thursday night were part of the band's 2003 Louisville show, including hits such as "Wide Open Spaces," "Goodbye Earl," "Cowboy Take Me Away," and "Not Ready to Make Nice." But the show didn't really come off as a nostalgia trip, mostly because the trio treated it all like fresh material, giving some songs a sharper edge while softening others.

Oddly, a lot of the material didn't hold up as well as one might have expected. Back in 1998, when the Dixie Chicks took off with the "Wide Open Spaces" album, it was a forward-looking country band. But country music has gone so over the top in recent years that the Dixie Chicks' music now sounds more routine than evolutionary.

Elle King opened with an entertaining, if uncertain, set. King, 27, seems to suffer from having too many options: She's a talented writer and has a powerhouse voice but her material was all over the place, mixing elements of pop, country, and mainstream rock without always looking for the common ground. You'd rather have too many options than not enough, however.