Country music’s great survivors are masters of post-heartbreak uplift

A pop sheen, righteous anger and Putin on an inflatable unicorn show how far The Chicks have grown away from Nashville.

By Ed Power, I news

Over the last 25 years The Chicks have survived everything life, love and the music industry have thrown at them. Those slings and arrows included their notorious “cancellation” by country music after they criticized George W Bush on stage in London in 2003.

The Texas trio have also dealt with the challenge posed by their original name, The Dixie Chicks, which winked to the Confederate American South. In 2020, as America reeled from the racist killing of George Floyd, they quietly became The Chicks. The rebranding confirmed the group to be a progressive voice in a business too often concerned with the bottom line rather than doing what’s right.

But the real story told by the triumphant and thrilling latest leg of their new tour was of how singer Natalie Maines had come through the heartbreaking implosion of her marriage in 2017, standing taller and refusing to be defined by wrongs done to her.

That emotional devastation and renewal chimed with the audience as The Chicks winningly blended glossy pop and raw emotion. They opened with “Gaslighter”, the title track of the 2020 album recorded as Maines reeled from her divorce from actor Adrian Pasdar. Flanked by Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire, the siblings who started the band in Dallas in 1989, Maines didn’t hold back.

“Gaslighting, you’re a liar”, she snarled, her hair arranged into a Mad Max-style spiked mullet, not so much singing as leading the room through a live therapy session. Gaslighter was produced by Taylor Swift collaborator Jack Antonoff and songs from the record have a pop zing while brimming with vulnerability. On “Texas Man”, Maines felt the weight of the years in her bones (“I’m a little bit unraveled”) while Maguire played violin and Strayer strummed a banjo. 

There was a lot of politics, too. At one point, the video screen listed the death tolls of school shootings worldwide. Another background visual, accompanying “Tights on my Boat”, portrayed Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on an inflatable unicorn. Back and forth they bobbed, like larger-than-life   Spitting Image puppets locked in a pathetic bromantic embrace as everyone laughed and pointed. “You’re gonna to get what’s coming to ya,” crooned Maines, this kiss-off to her ex repurposed as a playful diatribe against the destructive male egotism embodied by Trump and Putin.

The Chicks had been country heroes until their criticisms of George Bush. Remove the cowboy hats they would wear in their early photoshoots, though, and they were never a good fit for Nashville. Country music celebrates the comforts of home, but Chicks classics “The Long Way Around” and “Wide Open Spaces”, both featured in their latest set, were all about escaping patriarchal small-town life.

It’s little wonder a younger generation of female artists has celebrated them. Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy, and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield are among the indie singers who have covered their music, while a young Taylor Swift followed their lead in blending country and pop. “Early in my life, these three women showed me that female artists can play their own instruments while also putting on a flamboyant spectacle of a live show”, she told Billboard in 2020.

Maguire and Strayer were quietly charismatic and sparklingly talented, but the true force was Maines. She delivered a blistering cover of Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” and honored Pride Month with the Miley Cyrus-Dolly Parton duet “Rainbowland”.

Maguire was joined by her violin-playing daughter, Eva, and Maines welcomed her son Slade on guitar. Heaven knows what he made of all the songs dissing his dad, but he seemed mortified to be in the spotlight. He’s 21, yet glowered like an embarrassed teenager as his mother invited the crowd to give him a round of applause.

The night concluded deliciously with “Goodbye Earl”, a road movie in musical form about two friends who plan to bump off an abusive husband. The tune unfolded like a cross between Thelma and Louise and Bruce Springsteen (with whom The Chicks share the bill at London’s Hyde Park on 6 and 8 July). It was one final moment of excitement and catharsis before the close of a concert which shone with infectious defiance.