Dixie Chicks: Back in the Saddle Again

Three years can be an eternity in pop music. Times and tastes change. Powerbrokers rise and fall. This maxim has proven doubly true for the Dixe Chicks. The last many of us had heard of them was after that sorry-assed flap over Natalie Maines’ “We’re ashamed we’re from the same state as George Bush” comment. Clear Channel (one of those powerbrokers who’s been somewhat humbled since then) served as the Fox News of the music world and let its dog-DJs loose on the Chicks. By the time they were done with them, sales of their number 1 selling (and extraordinary) Home were stalled (they eventually only sold slightly more than half the volume of their previous effort).

The Chicks went on Dianne Sawyer (if my memory serves) and apologized for showing Bush “disrespect:”

“I’m not truly embarrassed that, you know, President Bush is from my state, that’s not really what I care about,” Maines said…on ABC’s “Primetime Thursday.”

“It was the wrong wording with genuine emotion and questions and concern behind it. … Am I sorry that I asked questions and that I just don’t follow? No.”

It was an awkward, forced session in which they seemed to be tortuously taking back some or much of the truth they had spoken in that concert comment. Natalie cried during the interview. Certainly there was a great deal of emotion in the interview. But I half-wondered whether some of the tears might have to do with Natalie feeling forced to eat crow which she hardly found appetizing at all.

With their new Taking the Long Way, they’ve come out guns blazing. Their targets are of course the Clear Channel bullies of the world, George Bush, the war in Iraq (what got them into “trouble” in the first place). But they also take on some less likely forces like their former fans who turned on them and more broadly, country music in general which as a genre doesn’t seem to want to see itself as a “big tent” capable of including diverse musical, ethnic, cultural and political viewpoints.

The DC have always straddled a line somewhere between folk, country and pop music. And they continue that delicate and rewarding balancing act here. But one gets the feeling that they’ve said to themselves: “We’re never going to leave our fates in the hands of a single musical genre like country music again. We’re going to become bigger than that so we’ll never be vulnerable again.” And who can blame them after the horrid auto da fe that Clear Channel and their despicable fellow travelers treated them to?

To be candid, I’ve only listened to three tracks from the album so far and make my judgment solely based on that impression. But their last album, Home, was almost pure perfection for me. Taking the Long Way is an attempt to break away from the balance and charm of Home, while not diverging from it completely. That makes it raw, spare, angry, slightly off-kilter (along with powerful and beautiful). I love anger and righteous indignation. If you do too, you’ll like Not Ready to Make Nice (hear it). That’s why I find the current release very compelling. But it’s different than what’s come before. Don’t get me wrong–change can be good in a musical career. Questioning one’s artistic choices often leads to more thoughtful, artful music-making. That’s why I welcome this album. Jon Pareles has written a terrific profile of the album and the band in the NY Times.

While the album covers many bases, it does not wear its politics on its sleeve. But you leave with no doubt who the villains are. They’re still George Bush and the war-makers. But the Dixie Chicks politics and artistic presentation is no longer as off-hand as that London concert comment. In the past three years, Maines’ and her partners have thought long and hard about what makes a musical career and a life worthwhile. They want you to know that there’s nothing flippant anymore in what they do. As the Tom Petty song says: “They won’t back down” any longer. There’ll be no more apologies for their views on music or life. Their audience will take them or leave them on their terms.

It’s a harder, more studied approach. But after what they’ve been through they’d be fools not to make such calculations. After all, you’ve got to save yourself first. Your audience will follow. And not the other way around.

Here are the lyrics for Not Ready to Make Nice:

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting.

I’m through with doubt
There’s nothing left for me to figure out
I’ve paid a price
And I’ll keep paying.

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should.

I know you said
Can’t you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kind of like it.

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over…