The clean sweep by the Dixie Chicks as tops in all five categories in which they were nominated for Grammys—Best Country Album and Album of the Year for Taking the Long Way, and Song and Record of the Year plus Country/Group Duo for “Not Ready to Make Nice,” their defiant single release from that album, their first since they criticized George W. Bush in London in 2003, and were vilified and ostracized by the Country Music Establishment for it, is an important milestone for us of the left, and a cause for celebration that we, just like the Dixie Chicks, will eventually be vindicated for our open resistance and refusal to back down.
It’s all nice, so nice.
The group performed “Not Ready to Make Nice” at the Grammy presentation, and was introduced by Joan Baez, who compared them to Woodie Guthrie. The album’s producer, Rick Rubin, who’s engineered comebacks for many musical notables, also won a Grammy. With even the Country Music Establishment coming around by nominating the Dixie Chicks for Country Album and Group/Duo. Because the Dixie Chicks’ sweep went far beyond an aesthetic acknowledgement, no matter how much deserved (and it is very much deserved all around): it was also a vindication of First Amendment freedoms, and a defiant, in-your-face refusal by the group to withdraw and be penitent for criticizing our illustrious President of the United States, especially from the stage of a foreign shore, and relegate themselves to the quiet, uncontroversial “freedom” to just “shut up and sing.” And in this late-capitalist cultural age of overweening controversy avoidance and mediocrity, to have the Pop and Country Music Establishments honor music that is not only artistically compelling, but also politically defiant, “with an attitude,” against the very norms of those Establishments, is indeed heartening and exciting. That something so unknown since the felicitous days of the late 1960s, when music of protest and dissent could also be recognized as artistically compelling, and also gain commercial success, should give all of us of the left renewed hope in our perseverance.
And if you’re like me, while you may have vaguely heard of the Dixie Chicks before their “notorious” remarks in 2003, you probably weren’t familiar at all with their songs, then relegated almost exclusively to the traditional outlets and audiences for country music. Even though the Dixie Chicks were the best-selling female group ever, and won earlier Grammys for Best Country Album for all their albums before Taking the Long Way, they were unable to break out of the Country Music Ghetto, and if you weren’t familiar with country radio or TV videos, chances are you never heard any of their music. Not that it wasn’t without harbingers of what was to come. Their hit previous to “Not Ready to Make Nice” (which had more success on the pop charts than it did on the country, peaking there at 34th), “Travellin’ Soldier,” was a vaguely antiwar ballad of the travails of military life, and “Goodbye Earl,” picked up and sung by aware feminists, was an ironic story-song about the final, nasty comeuppance of a wife-beater.
But these were but intimations of what was to come when, literally, the floodgates broke and these three former darlings of the Country Establishment, sisters Natalie Maines, Emily Robinson and Martie Maguire, became awash in a sea of vilification unleashed by this very Establishment, now vigorously intent on drowning them. Country singer Toby Keith used his frontal attacks on the remarks of the Dixie Chicks to rise from obscurity to fame, and their demonization and ostracism made themselves a way of life now, even up to our illustrious President of the United States, George W. Bush, as he dismissed them with customary vulgarity, “They shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because people don’t want to buy their records.”
In face of this deluge, both against the group personally, and against Freedom of Speech when it offends the high and mighty as well as people’s prejudices, the group not only stood its ground, it even fought back directly. While Natalie Maines issued a mild apology a few days later saying she hadn’t meant to demean the office of the Presidency, pointedly omitting the name of its occupant, George W. Bush, when that showed itself not enough to mollify the howling yahoos, now publicly canceling concerts and destroying their records, the Dixie Chicks escalated the conflict by appearing nude covered with vilifying graffiti on the cover of Entertainment Weekly magazine, portraying themselves openly, defiantly and sardonically as the Naked Truth. They filled in the dearth of concerts in the Heartland with bookings overseas. And when they wished to record their fourth CD and break the musical silence that had ensued, they went to rock producer Rick Rubin, another breach of the wall erected by the Country Establishment. Further, as with the Entertainment Weekly cover, the three members of the Dixie Chicks, all of them married mothers with children, gave their defiance and resistance a feminist, as well as an antiwar, cast, so openly scornful especially as that cover was of Country Establishment mores, whose leading female singers are still overwhelmingly mired in the norms of 1950s “femininity.”
The impending release of their comeback album in the spring of 2006 brought copious crocodile concerns, from Time magazine to country music DJs, on whether the Dixie Chicks were now “washed up” as performers. The release of Taking the Long Way soon dispelled that notion. While the Chicks remain as unpopular with certain country DJs and audiences as they have since 2003, Taking the Long Way provided them with new, very receptive, crossover audiences. Indeed, the artwork throughout the CD emphasizes their breakaway from the confines of the country genre. The three are posed on the cover elegantly gowned in evening dress and high heels, and standing next to a sleek black car, and the backdrop against which they are photographed is that of a large city, distancing them visually from the traditional country world. Further, under the tutelage of Rick Rubin, all the songs on the album are the Dixie Chicks’ own compositions (all of their previous songs were written by others), and display a range of influences. But the most prominent is still contemporary country-rock, with the rock-style instrumentation ably abetted by the banjo and fiddle of Emily Robinson and Martie Maguire respectively (both are accomplished musicians on these instruments). Natalie Maines’s lead vocals not only display her excellent voice, but are directly emotive as well, her voice ranging from soft to defiantly loud, reminding this writer of the emotive range that characterized the vocals of one of the truly great country-pop crossover artists, Patsy Cline.
And while “Not Ready to Make Nice” is justly noted for its aesthetic achievement, it is by no means the only excellent song on the album, nor is it the only one to refer to those horrendous days that followed the 2003 remarks in London. Indeed, both the travail and the open defiance in face of it are themes that run through a majority of the songs on Taking the Long Way. The three unapologetically acknowledge that they did indeed “have their feelings hurt” by the onslaught of the directly personal demonization and vilification that followed, in songs such as “Easy Silence,” “Bitter End” and “So Hard.” And so they use their music to look back on it, and to look beyond it, accepting their “self-imposed” vilification with complete absence of remorse or regret, while angrily taking full note of its ugliness. There is another gem of open protest on the CD as well, “Lubbock or Leave It,” a rollicking, rocking look at hidebound redneck mores and values, and the opening cut, “The Long Way Around,” softly affirms the course the Dixie Chicks followed, even from its understated, quiet beginnings when they broke into Nashville as pretty ladies supposedly apolitical and without noticeable brains. Nor is defiance the only note played on the album. The softly crooning “Lullaby” is the loving affirmation of the children all three of them have; “Baby Hold On” directly and uniquely addresses the issue of infertility from a very personal standpoint, for both Robinson and Maguire gave birth through in vitro fertilization; and the ending cut, “I Hope,” gives a gospel-tinged lament over continuing war, hatred and abuse, and hope for a world without them. Taking the Long Way stands tall among contemporary music as both unyielding politically, and beautifully affirmative artistically.
And openly expressing resistance continued for the Dixie Chicks even at the Grammys, where they were officially “rehabilitated,” honored and blessed by the Music Establishments. Natalie Maines, in accepting the Album of the Year award, defiantly remarked, “quoting the great Simpsons, ‘Eh, eh!’”
It’s appropriate to end here by noting that what’s been displayed by the Dixie Chicks, while anathema politically and aesthetically to the Nashville Establishment (until the Chicks had considerable commercial success in their comeback, and definitely showed they weren’t “washed up”), is by no means the sole exception in country music, which has had earlier moments of cutting across the grain. Just think here that Woodie Guthrie, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson all had their beginnings in country music before they transcended the traditional confines of the genre. Then there’s the always-evident songwriting genius of country’s hallowed icon, Hank Williams, and of “Okie from Muskogee” Merle Haggard, who now expresses regret about his earlier support of the Vietnam War, which he admits, neither he nor his traditional audience understood, and whose latest album opens with a protest song against the Iraq War. The appreciation the urbane and bluesy Ray Charles had for the “stories” told through country music, and whose 1961 revamping of country songs into new formats “forever transformed its cow-dung-on-your-boots image among the musically sophisticated,” made Charles an actual, significant, contributor to the genre. And one of the greatest female pop vocalists of all time, Patsy Cline, originally came out of country music.
Also, country music influenced the seminal creators of rock ‘n’ roll and rockabilly, through such artists thoroughly familiar with the genre as Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, and was also an influence for many Southern Black blues artists, among them Little Milton and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.
Which is why Joan Baez linked the Dixie Chicks to Woodie Guthrie. And while the coverage of USA Today might note, with a tone of superciliousness, in its coverage of the 2007 Grammys that the Chicks “were [thus] tied to the ‘60s protest movement” and “Whatever your take on their First Amendment struggles (or how they’ve been milked)…” the Dixie Chicks ended up actually rewarded for their open, unapologetic defiance and resistance to the ugly campaigns of vilification they encountered, all the while never backing down one iota from their opposition to the War in Iraq. This should give all us antiwar activists and persons of the left ample cause for hope and celebration in these hard times.
