Dixie Chicks rock in fashionably country way

by Amy Amatangelo　

With her electric blue sequined dress and matching platform boots, Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines looked more ``Sex and the City'' than Nashville on Saturday night. But anyone who attended their sold-out concert at the Worcester Centrum knows that Maines and her fellow Chicks, sisters Martie Seidel and Emily Robison, are all country.

They are, in fact, the new faces of country -- hip to fashion and hairstyles, but playing the fiddle and the banjo with a deft vengeance. The Chicks looked great and sounded even better as they sang 20 songs from their albums Wide Open Spaces' and Fly.

Maines' amazingly powerful voice was defiant when ordering a boyfriend to break the bad news in "Let 'Er Rip,"' plaintive when singing "You Were Mine,'' the song Seidel and Robison wrote about their parents' divorce, and joyful in the ode "Some Days You Gotta Dance.''

Maines was a commanding stage presence. She thrashed around like a rock star, teased the audience (``Just so y'all are sure you're at the right show, we are the Dixie Chicks.''), and flirted with a man in the front row (``Are you trying to look up my dress? There's nothing up there for you, but you are cute.'')

The Chicks were clearly conscious of making sure all of their devoted fans got attention. They traded places, walked around the stage, and in their first encore, the tongue-in-cheek ``Goodbye Earl,'' they split up and went into the crowd. Those wondering what was taking them so long to return weredelighted to find Maines in the middle of the first floor, Seidel on the second balcony, and Robison all the way up on the third.

The set, which was designed by Luc Lafortune of Cirque de Soleil, perfectly captured the Chicks' fanciful nature. Particularly impressive was the giant motorized fly balloon that buzzed around the Centrum before the trio took the stage. The special effects were limited but dramatically appropriate, especially the snow that fell over the audience in the mournful  "Cold Day in July.''

The high energy show closed with the song that "got this whole crazy thing started,'' their hit "Wide Open Spaces''. Maines told the audience that if they would sing along with her, it would make her night. But it was clear as the audience belted out the lyrics, that it was the audiences' night that had been made.

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