Going up against the country

Up until a few short months ago, The Dixie Chicks could do no wrong. Since they first burst onto a jaded country music scene in 1997 with their debut Wide Open Spaces, the Texan all-female trio (named after a Little Feat song) have continually broken sales records, sold out concerts and collected countless awards and accolades. The fact that they did so without compromising their rootsy, traditional style made their success all the more welcome in an industry dominated by the conservative values of Nashville’s Music Row.

Last February they carried away four Grammy Awards including one for Best Country Album for their third long-player Home and Best Country Performance for the single, ‘Long Time Gone’ (which, ironically took a side-swipe at the state of the country music industry: “They got money but they don’t have Cash, they have junior but they don’t have Hank”) Tickets for their 2003 US tour were snapped up within minutes of going on-sale and The Chicks – Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire – looked set to become the biggest superstar country act since the heady days of Garth Brooks.

Then all hell broke loose. Following mild criticism of George Bush by singer Natalie Maines at a concert in London in March of this year, the group were widely condemned for being “un-American and unpatriotic”. Right across the US country music stations declared themselves “Chicks Free Zones.” while rallies were organised with tractors being used to destroy Dixie Chicks CDs. Irate callers to talk radio shows called for a boycott of their concert tour and South Carolina legislators even passed a bill declaring Maines’ words to be “unpatriotic.”

“We couldn’t believe the reaction,” says Martie Maguire, the Chicks’ fiddle player. “Natalie’s words were said just a few days before the war – the concert was on the March 10 and we went to war on March 17. We were a little frustrated, as a lot of Americans were, that we weren’t finding a diplomatic solution to the war. I remember us going on stage that night and we just didn’t feel like entertaining. The whole world was feeling kinda of scared and sad. We have a song about war and it was the intro to that song. We also said some other things at that show, like the fact that we supported the troops. But because we were in a lot of countries where there was a lot of anti-American feeling we felt we needed to say something. It’s funny that the press picked up one just one part of the story and made such a big deal about it.”

Maines subsequently issued an apology, of sorts, declaring herself to be “a proud American” but she also re-iterated that all she had wanted was to see every possible alternative exhausted “before children and American soldiers’ lives are lost.”

Despite the furore the band received support from many quarters, the most prominent being a statement from Bruce Springsteen who called the treatment they had received “un-American” and condemned radio stations and networks for banning their records.

“We owe Bruce big time,” Maguire says. “His statement was the single most important rebuttal of what’s gone on over the last few months and the one that’s carried the most weight. We’re very grateful to him for that.”

Meanwhile, the controversy appears to have had little effect on the Dixie Chicks current tour, which has sold out sixty major arenas across the US. “The crowds are selling out more than ever, they’re bigger and louder and better,” Maguire reveals. “We’re really pleased and it gave us faith in our audience and the fact that they are really open-minded. There might be about one protestor at each show the most we’ve ever had was seven. They hold up these ridiculous signs that no-one understands. At this point we’ve even had our own fans protesting against the protesters.”

The controversy has, if anything, confirmed the group’s ability to consistently outwit the increasingly conservative country music industry.

“We’re three pretty hard-headed women anyway and we’ve never let the industry dictate to us,” Maguire says. “We were a working, touring band for so many years before we got a deal and we knew who we were from the start. We did our last record at home, not down the street from the record company where they can come in and say, ‘Hey, that doesn’t sound like a single’ or whatever they say. The last thing we wanted to make was a really commercial record; it was our way of rebelling against things and I think we’ve been vindicated.”