Dixie Chicks show why they're red hot
By Miriam Longo, The Atlanta Constitution
It may be a first for Philips Arena: a sold-out crowd, a standing ovation and a dobro.
Nashville's hottest act, the Dixie Chicks, brought some down-home attitude, a chart-full of hit tunes and superb musicianship
to Atlanta on Sunday night for an evening that showed why these three women from Texas deserve to be put alongside Hank Williams
and Patsy Cline when it comes to unforgettable country music.
Dressed in black leather and red sequins, the Chicks had the look and staging of top pop acts: a set that opened with the
drop of a huge curtain painted with a blue-jean zipper (created by a Cirque du Soleil designer), an opening tune from a hit
movie ("Ready to Run"), three video screens flashing childhood photos of the Chicks, and even a hovering balloon of a black
fly that brushed over the heads of fans like a renegade from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Their latest album is titled
"Fly" - get it?)
But the music was pure country, from Emily Robison's hill-country banjo and dobro, her sister Martie Seidel's blazing fiddle
and sassy Natalie Maines' water-bucket vocals. It would have made both Rod Stewart and Roy Acuff proud.
Wearing her trademark blond locks in a long ponytail, Maines belted out tunes like a backwoods banshee, from the chirpy
"There's Your Trouble" to the Kleenex-soaking "You Were Mine," on which the highly emotional crowd sing-along was nearly as
powerful as her pipes. The lead vocalist's unbridled stage thrashing wasn't nearly as over-the-top as when the group opened
for Tim McGraw at Lake-wood Amphitheatre last year, BLJ The Dixie Chicks Sunday night at Philips Arena perhaps because Maines
announced just last week that she's pregnant. But her voice is still powerful enough to nearly knock down the letters of the
CNN sign.
Surprisingly strong were sisters Seidel and Robison, who have come alive with confidence since their days as second fiddles
to Maines. With no fill-ins from the six-piece backup band, they played their acoustic bluegrass instruments with not only
proficiency but a cocky flair.
The Dixie Chicks have done what few in today's Nashville have figured out how to do. They have taken the essential heart
and soul of country music -- traditional instruments and lyrics about the pain and joy of everyday life -- and blended them
with contemporary fashion, attitude and point of view. As a result, you have three polished and stylized women who entertain
like rock stars while singing songs that conjure up both emotion and nostalgia.
The encore, predictably, was "Goodbye Earl," a sardonic tale of knocking off a no-good spouse abuser with a bowl of poisoned
black-eyed peas. (Of course, the reference to Atlanta produced high-volume screams.)
But the highlight of the show was "Cowboy Take Me Away." As the three women poured their voices and instruments into a
sweetly innocent love song about being young and in love, the set dissolved into a black curtain of stars with a bright, full
moon rising in the background.
With talent like this, the world is truly at their feet.
