Chicks show city why they’re country's best

By L Kent Wolgamott, Lincoln Journal Star

There are plenty of reasons why the Dixie Chicks won the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year award last week.

They demonstrated nearly all of them Sunday night to a screaming audience in the sold-out Bob Devaney Sports Center.

To start with, the Chicks played every kind of music that comes out of contemporary Nashville in their 22-song, 105-minute show.

From the bluegrass hoedowns of their Dallas street music beginnings to Texas-style hardcore honky tonk to rock 'n' roll flavored with fiddle, banjo and pedal steel, the Chicks nailed every song just right.

It really helps that lead singer Natalie Maines has one of the best voices in music, equipped with the break and cry needed to sell a classic country number and the snap and growl to make the harder rocking tunes work.

That was most evident on the Chicks' show-stopping cover of Bonnie Raitt's "Give It Up or Let Me Go," a smoking blues rock song that featured multi-instrumentalist Emily Robison wailing away on a National steel guitar.

With their tight harmonies, Maines, Robison and fiddle player Martie Seidel are also very much of their time a necessity to generate millions of record sales and sold out arenas.

It's no coincidence that the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync have dominated the pop charts during the same period in which the Chicks have been the top country group.

The intertwined vocals sell to the largely female audience that fills halls for the boy bands and did the same Sunday night for the three women.

It also helps that the trio is terminally cute.

Every bit as irresistible as Japan's Shonen Knife, the pop leaders in that category, the Chicks' personalities were on display throughout the evening.

But they were most evident when they clowned around during a slide show of embarrassing photos from their childhoods and teen years.

While most of the stage patter undoubtedly was canned, mere was a freshness to the talk that made it seem as though it was the first time the slides had been shown -- the key to successful big-tour performing.

And the Chicks have learned how to put on a show, a factor made more impressive considering this is their first headlining tour.

The concert was elegantly staged with a large, round, purple-lit canopy above the stage, three video screens behind -- one to showcase each Chick -- and a well-used range of effects from wind to blow their hair (and accidentally lift Maines' skirt to artificial snow falling on the audience.

They also borrow from the likes of David Lee Roth by doing "Good bye Eari," the first song of their enr core, from three platforms in the back of the hall -- Maines on the floor and Robison and Seidel in the balconies.

Right now, the Chicks are as hot as any act in music, delivering the one-two punch of radio hits and live performance with the best of them.

As with every act, the peak won't last forever.

But for the 10,000 or so who packed the Devaney Center Sunday night, the memories of the Dixie Chicks at their best will linger for years.

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