The Chicks riding high with ‘Gaslighter’ in Camden, 20 years after getting canceled

It was the band's first Philadelphia-area appearance in six years in support of an album that marked their return to recording after a 14-year break.

Considering they were canceled 20 years ago, the Chicks are doing pretty well for themselves.

It’s been that long since the turning point in the career of the Texas trio of Natalie Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer, who played on Friday at the Camden amphitheater that, like the Chicks themselves, has recently been renamed.

(The Chicks dropped the "Dixie" in 2020 due to the word’s association with slavery and racism in the American South. The venue, which has been known by names including the Tweeter Center and the BB&T Pavilion, is now the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion.)

The incident that in many ways continues to define the band happened in 2002, when Maines had the temerity to speak out about the U.S. invasion of Iraq while in London. That led to the group’s being summarily dropped by country radio stations, though they were huge stars at the time.

What followed played out like a practice run for the cable news and social media culture-wars political gamesmanship that has increasingly divided America ever since. Mainstream country stars who dared speak their minds when the nation was gripped by patriotic fervor? How dare they!

The 2006 documentary about the group during that era is called Shut Up and Sing, and Taking the Long Way, their album released that year, included a song whose title expressed the trademark defiance that was a centerpiece of their two-hour-plus show Friday: "Not Ready To Make Nice."

On stage in Camden, singer-guitarist Maines, fiddle player Maguire, and multi-instrumentalist marvel Strayer (who played banjo, dobro, and piano, among other things) were backed by six able male musicians, including Maines’ son Jackson Slade Pasdar.

The show was opened by fellow Texan Patty Griffin (who would then join them for her dark-humored blues "Don’t Let Me Die in Florida."

After Griffin’s set, the largely female crowd was entertained by a well-chosen program of performance clips of standout women in music, from Lesley Gore to Tina Turner to a song the Chicks strongly identify with: Joan Jett’s "Bad Reputation."

The Chicks then began with the lusty bluegrass rave-up "Sin Wagon," reaching back to their 1999 album, Fly. From there, they kept the energy high with high-gloss songs from Gaslighter, the 2020 release recorded by New Jersey producer Jack Antonoff that was the band’s first album in 14 years.

The title song to Gaslighter has political implications: It was released during the 2020 presidential campaign and uses an epithet derived from a 1944 Ingrid Bergman-Charles Boyer film that was often used to describe Donald Trump by his opponents.

But it’s really about divorce, specifically about Maines’ split from actor Adrian Pasdar. The key rhyme, which was spelled out in splashy images: "Gaslighter / You liar."

Maines’ ex was also cut down in "Tights on My Boat," a stinging if playful-sounding song about spousal infidelity committed on an expensive vessel you paid for. The visual presentation was clever, with animated depictions of scallywags floating on life rafts, including Vladimir Putin and five Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

None of the Chicks said anything politically pointed, though the charismatic Maines chatted up the crowd with winning irreverence. On a balmy summer evening inside the Pavilion — which was packed under the roof, with the lawn about half-full — she asked: "Is anybody else in here sweating like a whore in church?"

Rather than speak out, the Chicks let their songs do the talking. Specifically, they spoke through "March March," a Gaslighter protest song that turns on the chant: "March, march to my own drum / I’m an army of one."

The song began with a moving visual commemoration shown on a screen of those killed in U.S. mass shootings — from schools in Newtown, Conn., and Uvalde, Texas, to paradegoers gunned down on Independence Day outside Chicago, as well as Black victims of police violence. Maines also sang out lyrics urging a fight for women’s reproductive rights. Save for the rousing finale of "Goodbye Earl," the song got the most raucous reception of the night.

Earlier on this tour, the group postponed shows and Maines was put on "vocal rest" after struggling with her voice at a show in Indianapolis. There were no signs of weakness Friday.

Maines is a powerhouse belter — whose delivery could sometimes benefit from more nuance — but she delivered country-pop songs like "Wide Open Spaces" and ballads such as "Set Me Free" (as well as Stevie Nicks’ "Landslide") with gusto.

The show was somewhat disjointed in structure, with a boisterous opening and an acoustic stretch with the full band followed by an uptick in energy and then another stripped-down segment, this time with only the Chicks on stage. Best was the first acoustic run, with Strayer and Maguire impressing with their musicianship and Maines shining on enduring hits like "Cowboy Take Me Away" and "Long Time Gone."

Griffin’s opening set was superb, with her steely, open-hearted songs coming across powerfully despite being accompanied by only one other guitar player in the vast space. I missed much of her set, though, for which I’m blaming confusing Camden traffic patterns involving streets blocked in surprising places that always seem to make getting to the venue a guessing game, though it’s been open for nearly 30 years.

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