Dixie Chicks Celebrate The Joy of Revenge

Payback For Doing A Woman Wrong Is Their Tune

By Craig Marine, The Examiner

There are a lot of people who dismiss the Dixie Chicks as a trio of bubble-headed bleached blondes who have been riding a wave of good looks and hoedown music to a truckload of music awards, destined to soon fade into oblivion.

And a lot of people are wrong.

For one thing, they're not all blondes anymore, with banjo and dobro player Emily Robison revenge showing off a more natural brunette hairstyle Thursday night at the Arco Arena, before they play again Friday night at the San Jose Arena. But hair color doesn't really get to the heart of the Chicks' appeal. Sure, they're all babes, more power to them.

But there is nothing shallow about a group of women willing to risk the massive popularity gained by selling nearly 10 million copies of their debut release, "Wide Open Spaces," by including a song on their second record about murdering someone.

This isn't even a hard-ass, Johnny Cash, "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die," kind of thing. It's actually better -- at　least as far as having a legitimate justification for taking a life.

In "Goodbye, Earl," from "Fly," the Chicks get you tapping your feet to a story about a real loser -- that would be Earl, as you likely gathered -- who spends a lot of time whupping on his wife, Wanda.

Wanda gets tired of being a punching bag and enlists her best 1 A .1 friend, Marianne, to launch Earl into the afterlife, should wife-beaters have anything to look forward to other than being worm food. They poison the loser (absolutely a womanly preference, check the stats) and have a little song:

You want to hear some cheering going on for a song, just listen to the crowd eating up every juicy second of Wanda's payback. As for Marianne -- well, hey, what are friends for? Sisterhood is powerful, damn straight.

But trust me, these aren't a bunch of humorless feminists who would slap a guy silly if he opened a door for them. Or maybe they would -- slap, that is -- but they are certainly not humorless.

Part of their show includes a self-deprecating slide show of what they called "ugly" pictures from their younger days (none of which was ugly, save for maybe one picture of a mother's special home permanent).

Mostly, their brand of music includes a lot of up-tempo, foot-tapping tunes, featuring not only Robison's excellent dobro work, but fiddler Martie Seidel's seemingly effortless playing and the powerful lead singing of Natalie Maines. When the trio lends its-voices to harmony, it is pure country heaven.

The women are backed by a six-piece band that includes, as it should, a pedal steel guitar player as well as a second guitarist and the usual array of bass, drums, keyboards and percussion. But one of the great things about the Dixie Chicks is that, having sold a gazillion records and now capable of hiring the best back-up players money can buy, none of them needs to hide behind a semi-anonymous male when it comes time to cut loose. The guys have their moments to shine, but it's the Chicks who carry the tunes.

They opened with "Ready to Run," closed with "Wide Open Spaces" and, seeing as how they only have two albums, played just about everything else they knew. One highlight was a rollicking version of Bonnie Raitt's "Give It Up Or Let Me Go," which sounded like a little bit Jerry Lee Lewis, a bit Scotty Moore, some Bonnie, of course, and, like every song that features a fiddle, even if it was the national anthem, a bit of "Turkey in the Straw."

The Chicks themselves may say they didn't deserve to be named the Country Music Association's Group of the Year last year -- and they're probably right -- but they certainly deserved their nomination. Boy, howdy.

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