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Dixie sings truth dc { June 27 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38065-2003Jun26.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38065-2003Jun26.html
Dixie Chicks Find They Can Come 'Home' Again
By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 27, 2003; Page C01
Let's end the suspense right here: The Dixie Chicks didn't back down at their concert Wednesday night at MCI Center, nor did they repent, hem, haw or try to change the subject. About an hour into the evening, singer Natalie Maines sat in a chair in the middle of the trio's Vegas-worthy stage set and finally addressed what the band referred to as "the incident." Namely, the fallout from Maines's comment, a few months ago during a London concert, that she's embarrassed that President Bush is from her home state of Texas.
You'd have thought Maines had urged kids to love Satan and sniff glue. The Chicks were denounced as traitors in some quarters, and as their records were pulled from radio play lists, sales of their latest album, "Home," took a brief though steep dive.
"Well, what do you know, Washington, D.C.," Maines said on Wednesday night, a line that drew a standing ovation from this crowd, clearly waiting for the chance to demonstrate that Natalie's Dubya-knocking hadn't dimmed its enthusiasm. "If I'm not mistaken, the president of the United States lives here," she added, to even greater cheers. She then introduced "Truth No. 2," a song from "Home" that Maines said the group didn't fully grasp, lyrically speaking, until the furor and its fallout.
"Now we understand every word," she said.
"Truth," it turns out, is a slightly elliptical tune about having the nerve to speak up in the face of outrage and injustice. ("You don't like the sound of the truth / Coming from my mouth.") As a kick at critics, most of the boot came not from the words but from the images on a video screen, which flashed photo montages from the long and unfortunate history of censorship and oppression. If the Chicks' idea was to put their travails in historical context, they overreached at moments: The ladies had it rough, but invoking their troubles in the same tune as the civil rights movement (there was vintage footage of black Americans marching and being violently assaulted) and the Holocaust (book-burning Nazis cropped up briefly) inflated the scale of their difficulties.
What worked better were snippets of adults stoking a bonfire of Beatles albums -- probably soon after Lennon said the band was "bigger than Jesus" -- and the bulldozing of some Sinead O'Connor vinyl, a response to her swipes at the pope. That footage, interspersed with the flashing of phrases such as "Speak Up" and "Seek the Truth," felt like a tastefully restrained and eloquent retort, one that shamed rather than inflamed, focusing on core American values instead of the merits of war.
"Truth," and the rest of this two-hour show, proved that the Chicks are alive and harmonizing. At ease with breakneck bluegrass, teary ballads and state-of-the-art pop country, the ladies demonstrated a song range that encompasses everyone from Patsy to Shania. And if anything, fans seem to love the gals more than ever, perhaps because they had to endure such cruel ordeals, not least of which was an interview in the moist and penetrating gaze of Diane Sawyer. At this rate, judging from the performance on Wednesday night, the only thing that could possibly hold the band back is Natalie Maines's haircut.
All right, that overstates the problem, but when you weren't marveling at the band's instrumental gifts you had to wonder who thought it was a good idea for Ms. Maines to wear a Mohawk. Or at least sweep the sides down and pouf up the top so it looked like a Mohawk. And was that the same person who outfitted the Chicks in '80s-era punk-hooker garb? Maines wore a pink jacket, a black leather miniskirt decked out with chains and black leather boots. And she was only slightly more trashed-up than sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, the band's fiddle player and banjo plucker, respectively. The music said "soulful country," the outfits said "you need a date?"
While the Chicks were giving hoedown a whole new meaning, they whisked through a couple dozen tunes, switching the mood from intimate and sentimental ("Godspeed") to rowdy and vengeful ("Goodbye Earl," which opened the show). They put a lump in every other throat on "Travelin' Soldier," and revived the bygone country stomp of singers like Loretta Lynn with "Hello Mr. Heartache."
Their glowing stage, set in the middle of the arena and ringed with what looked like a racetrack for fashion models, spun and lit up on cue, as the Chicks raced around and danced in circles, playing to every side of this crowd. Not enough liberties were taken with the music; like a lot of groups that achieve highly coveted arena status, the band isn't experimenting with its music much these days. But maybe the Chicks figure they've taken enough risks for one year. They crossed some imaginary line in March, then bravely refused the invitation to cross back -- and lived to sing about it.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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