Confident, sexy Chicks fly high at SaskPlace

By Cam Fuller, Star Phoenix

Are they sexy because they’re successlul or are they successful because they’re sexy? A Chick-and-egg question if there ever was one.

Cracking the shell on their first headlining tour, the Dixie Chicks impressed with more than their looks Friday night at SaskPlace.

In only the second show in a 70-city North American romp, the threesome of Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Seidel simply wowed the crowd with their talent, confidence and looks.

To their credit, they’re not using the outlast of Western Canada to work the bugs out of their new show. Displaying mid-run polish, they were as hot as Texas asphalt. The $65 ticket price was still ridiculous, but at least it wasn’t a rip-off.

The show was cleverly designed to remind the audience of the many meanings of Fly -- the name of their latest album. Before they came out, Lenny Kravitz’s Fly Away blasted from the sound system.

The scent of pure rock in a country setting foreshadowed the groups musical range. Then a spotlight trained itself on a zipper holding the shrouded set together. Down it came, reminding one that Fly can also be a noun.

The Chicks emerged on a clean set that skillfully hid the six-piece backup band, diverting your attention to the trio up front.

Every note from Maines’ powerful, piercing voice, every stroke of Seidel’s fiddle bow and every lick of Robison’s dobro sent a thrill down the audiences spine.

It’s a brash band that casually jumps genres, but the Dixie Chicks did it time and again. They’d give you a peppy, new-country tune like If I Fall You’re Going Down with Me one minute and then switch to the shockingly traditional Hello Mr. Heartache, a twangy, truck stop juke box song if there ever was one.

From there it was a casual hop from kickin’ blues rock on I Can Love You Better to a blistering fiddle-banjo hoe-down by Robison and Seidel. It was shameless -- and convincing and refreshing,

Talk was minimal, though Maines acknowledged the audience by saying I said it last night and I’ll say it again -- holy crap!

She was speaking for everyone. The opener was Patty Griffin -- not a household name in these parts, but there’s a reason for that. The Austin-based musician writes songs that don’t sound like radio jingles for body shop franchises.

Instead, Griffin paints sometimes dark, sometimes dissonant pictures with a roots-rock sound that can kick or coo.

This isn’t stuff you necessarily love the first time you hear it but you won’t hate it after 10 spins, either. Backed by a four-piece band that made cool tom-tom sounds from the drums and nitty banjo from an instrument that wasn’t a banjo, Griffin proved she can sing it sweet or gut it out -- definitely a talent to watch.

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