The Chicks
The Chicks are an American country music band from Dallas, Texas. The band consists of Natalie Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer.
Martie and Emily founded the Dixie Chicks in 1989 with bassist Laura Lynch and singer and guitarist Robin Lynn Macy. They performed bluegrass and country music, busking and touring the bluegrass festival circuits and small venues for six years. In 1992, Macy left the group with Lynch taking over vocals. After independently releasing three albums, in 1995, the Dixie Chicks were signed by Monument Records Nashville and Natalie Maines replaced Lynch. They released their first album with Monument, Wide Open Spaces, in 1998, followed by Fly in 1999. Both albums were certified diamond.
In 2003, the Dixie Chicks publicly criticized the US president George W. Bush and the imminent Iraq War, triggering a backlash and damaging sales of their 2002 album Home. They released Taking the Long Way in 2006 and entered hiatus in 2008; Martie and Emily recorded as a duo, Court Yard Hounds. The Dixie Chicks reunited in 2016 for a series of tours. In 2020, they removed "Dixie" from their name due to negative connotations, and released their first album in 14 years, Gaslighter.
The Chicks have charted 22 times on the American Billboard Hot Country Songs charts; "There's Your Trouble", "Wide Open Spaces", "You Were Mine", "Cowboy Take Me Away", "Without You", and "Travelin' Soldier" all reached number one. The Chicks have received 13 Grammy Awards, ten Country Music Association awards and eight Academy of Country Music awards. By July 2020, with 33 million certified albums sold and sales of 27.9 million albums in the US, the Chicks had become the best-selling all-woman band and best-selling country group since Nielsen SoundScan began recording sales in 1991.
History
1989–1995: Original bluegrass group
The Chicks were founded as the Dixie Chicks in 1989 in Dallas, Texas, an area with country music roots. The original lineup consisted of El Paso native Laura Lynch on upright bass, Californian Robin Lynn Macy on guitar, and the multi-instrumentalist sisters Martie and Emily Erwin, respectively born in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and raised in Addison. The Erwin sisters, who were later married and both changed their names twice, previously performed as members of the bluegrass group Blue Night Express along with country singer Sharon Gilchrist and her brother Troy. The band name was taken from the album Dixie Chicken by Lowell George of Little Feat. They initially played predominantly bluegrass and a mix of country standards. All four women played and sang, though Martie and Emily provided most of the instrumentation while Lynch and Macy shared lead vocal duties. Martie primarily played fiddle, mandolin, and viola, while Emily's specialties included five-stringed banjo and resonator guitar. In 1987, Martie had won second place, and in 1989, third place in the national fiddle championships held at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas.In 1990, Penny Cook, the daughter of then-Texas senator John Tower, gave the Dixie Chicks $10,000 to record an album. Later that year, the Dixie Chicks released their self-produced debut studio album Thank Heavens for Dale Evans on a local independent label called Crystal Clear Sound. The album was named after actress and singer-songwriter Dale Evans. The group paid $5,000 for the 14-track album. Half of this album's tracks consist of cover songs including Patsy Montana's "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart", Jon Ims' "West Texas Wind", and Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home to Me". Macy co-wrote two tracks, with Martie also serving as co-writer for the title track.
A Christmas single was released at the end of the year – a 45 RPM vinyl record titled Home on the Radar Range with "Christmas Swing" on one side and the song on the flip side named "The Flip Side". The record titles were significant; during that period of time, the bandmates dressed up as "cowgirls", and publicity photos reflected this image. They also appeared at the Grand Ole Opry and Garrison Keillor's radio show A Prairie Home Companion. The Dixie Chicks began building a fan base, winning the prize for "best band" at the 1990 Telluride Bluegrass Festival and opening for established country music artists, including Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, and George Strait.
In 1992, the Dixie Chicks' next Crystal Clear Sound release, Little Ol' Cowgirl, moved towards a more contemporary country sound, as the band used more session musicians, and developed a richer sound with larger and more modern arrangements. Macy and Martie each wrote two of the album's songs, with Lynch co-writing one song with Martie. The band co-produced it with guitarist Larry Seyer, who also played on the album. Displeased with the change in sound, Macy left in late 1992 to devote herself to a "purer" bluegrass sound, remaining active in the Dallas and Austin music scenes. Reviewing their performance at the Birchmere, Virginia in 1992, Eric Brace of The Washington Post wrote that "record label executives will be kicking themselves soon enough... These Chicks have what it takes to make the big time, yet no major label has taken the plunge to sign them."
Lynch became lead singer on the Dixie Chicks' third Crystal Clear Sound album, Shouldn't a Told You That. Lynch wrote two of the ten tracks on the album, which also included a collaboration with the Erwin sisters on "I'm Falling Again". By this point, the band was still unable to attract support from a major record label and struggled to expand their fan base beyond Texas and Nashville. Their then-manager, Simon Renshaw, approached executive Scott Siman, best known for his work with Tim McGraw, and he signed the band to Sony Music Nashville in November 1995. By the time of their signing, Lynch left the band and Natalie Maines was selected as their third lead singer and second guitarist on the recommendation of her multi-instrumentalist father Lloyd Maines, who contributed to the band's previous albums and has also played for The Maines Brothers Band, Jerry Jeff Walker and Joe Ely.
At the time of Lynch's departure, the sisters attributed it to her weariness of touring and hope to spend more time with her daughter. Lynch offered to stay for the first recordings on the new album, but the sisters thought it would send the wrong message to Sony; they all agreed she would leave before the new album. In a 1996 interview, Lynch said, "It can't really be characterized as a resignation. There are three Dixie Chicks, and I'm only one." In 2003, Lynch said she had no regrets about leaving. Lynch's departure left the Erwin sisters as the two remaining original members.
1995–2000: Commercial success with ''Wide Open Spaces'' and ''Fly''
With the addition of Maines, the new lineup had a more contemporary sound, as well as a new look, leaving their cowgirl dresses with their past, giving the band a broader appeal. Renshaw sent staff producer Blake Chancey, best known for his work with Deryl Dodd, to Austin to work with the band.After Maines joined the band, the instrumental lineup was essentially the same, though Maines was not an acoustic bassist. Instead, she played acoustic and electric guitar, and occasionally electric bass guitar or Tacoma Papoose guitar in concert. She sang lead vocals, with Martie and Emily singing backing vocals. Emily was now contributing to the band's sound, adding guitar, accordion, sitar, and papoose to her mastery of the five-string banjo and dobro, while Martie began adding guitar, viola, and mandolin chops more frequently to her expert fiddle. The sisters welcomed the change; Martie said, "It's very rootsy, but then Natalie comes in with a rock and blues influence. That gave Emily and a chance to branch out, because we loved those kinds of music but felt limited by our instruments."
Within the next year, Sony came to Austin to see the revamped band and signed them as the first new artist on the newly revived Monument Records label. While the trio recorded their first Monument album, Wide Open Spaces, their debut single, "I Can Love You Better", was released in October 1997 and reached number seven on the Billboard Hot Country Songs. Monument released the album in January 1998 and charted four more singles: "There's Your Trouble", "Wide Open Spaces", "You Were Mine", and a cover of Joy Lynn White's "Tonight the Heartache's on Me". Of these singles, Martie and Emily co-wrote "You Were Mine". In addition to "Tonight the Heartache's on Me", half of the album's 12 tracks included cover songs such as Radney Foster's "Never Say Die" and Bonnie Raitt's "Give It Up or Let Me Go". "There's Your Trouble", "Wide Open Spaces" and "You Were Mine" became the most successful singles on the album with a number one peak on the country charts. All five singles made top 10 on RPM Country Tracks, then the main country music chart published in Canada, with "Wide Open Spaces" and "You Were Mine" peaking at number one. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic thought the album "appeal to many different audiences because it was eclectic without being elitist", also stating that "as debuts go, they rarely get better than this".
In March 2020, Wide Open Spaces was certified 13× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of 13 million copies. In Canada, the album was certified quadruple-platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association, a certification which at the time honored shipments of 400,000 copies in that country.
The commercial success of Wide Open Spaces led to the first of several industry award nominations for the band. The Country Music Association awarded them the Horizon Award for new artists in 1998, given to those who have "demonstrated the most significant creative growth and development in overall chart and sales activity, live performance professionalism and critical media recognition". At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards in 1998, the group was nominated for Grammy Award for Best New Artist, while Wide Open Spaces won Best Country Album and "There's Your Trouble" won Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. The Academy of Country Music also awarded the band as Top Vocal Group and Top New Vocal Duet or Group in 1999; they would win the former again in 2000 and 2001.
The Dixie Chicks' second Monument release was 1999's Fly, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts, selling over 10 million copies and making the Dixie Chicks the only country band and the only female band of any genre to hold the distinction of having two back-to-back RIAA certified diamond albums. Fly produced a total of nine singles, six of which made the top 10 on the Billboard country singles charts. It was led off by the single "Ready to Run", which appeared on the soundtrack to the 1999 Garry Marshall film Runaway Bride along with the band's cover of the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love".
Both Wide Open Spaces and Fly continued to place in the list of the 50 best-selling albums in American history over a half-decade after they were released. Fly again won Grammy awards and honors from the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music, and the Dixie Chicks received a number of honors from other sources for their accomplishments. The band headlined their first tour, the Fly Tour, with guest artists including Joe Ely and Ricky Skaggs appearing at each show, and also joined Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, and other female artists on the all-woman touring Lilith Fair.
The source of the Dixie Chicks' commercial success during this time came from various factors: they wrote or co-wrote about half of the songs on Wide Open Spaces and Fly; their mixture of bluegrass, mainstream country music, blues, and pop songs appealed to a wide spectrum of record buyers; and where the women had once dressed as "cowgirls" with Lynch, their dress was now more contemporary.
"Cowboy Take Me Away" from Fly became another signature song, written by Martie to celebrate Emily's marriage with country singer Charlie Robison, which took place three months before the album's release. However, a few of their songs brought controversy within their conservative country music fan base, and two songs caused some radio stations to remove the Dixie Chicks from their playlists: "Sin Wagon", from which the term "mattress dancing" takes on a new twist, and "Goodbye Earl", a song that uses black comedy in telling the story of the unabashed murderer of an abusive husband. In an interview, Maines commented about Sony worrying about the reference to "mattress dancing" in "Sin Wagon", refusing to discuss it in interviews. She said, "Our manager jokes, 'You can't say mattress dancing, but they love the song about premeditated first degree murder'!" She continues, "... so it's funny to us that 'mattress dancing' is out and murder is in!"