there to listen to your music.” At the
same time: “The politics of this band is
inseparable from the music.”
But it’s more than just the politics. In
fact, I would soon learn that it’s a shit
ton more than the politics. I am meet-
ing the Dixie Chicks to not discuss their
new album, Gaslighter. It is their first in
14 years, but due to ongoing legal dis-
putes, we cannot talk about it.
A few days after our lunch, though, I
can listen to it. I hear the devastation in
Maines’s vocals as she sings about pro-
foundly personal and deeply agonizing
pain. The album is partly the musical
autobiography of the dismantling of her
marriage. That alone is honest and raw.
But it’s so much more than that.
Maines can stretch the word
“decency” to five, maybe six, syllables
with a voice so resonant it fills your
lungs. In Strayer’s hands, the twang of
a banjo is the sound of support and
understanding, and Maguire’s fiddle
somehow has compassion and gravitas.
The instruments are so haunting and
beautiful, they feel more like compan-
ions on this devastating journey. You
can’t hear this album without crying, or
without thinking of the legions of young
men and women who will, through suf-
fering and unknown heartache, elevate
these songs to anthems.
The Dixie Chicks are not allowed to
talk about it, and I’m not allowed to ask.
But Strayer does say this: “I’m so proud
of this album. No matter what happens
with it. It might be a slow burn; it might
be a quick burn. I don’t know, but it will
To understand, you have to go back to
London.
You have to go back to 2003. To a
place called Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
As music venues go, it’s pretty small—
only holds about 2,000 people. It was
there, one night in March, that the Dixie
Chicks’ lead singer, Natalie Maines,
walked out and said to the crowd, “Just
so you know, we’re on the good side
with y’all. We do not want this war, this
violence. And we’re ashamed the presi-
dent of the United States is from Texas.”
That was nearly a week before the
American-led invasion of Iraq, and
those comments wreaked more con-
troversy than most bands know in a life-
time. Country music stations banned
them. Fans turned against them, burn-
ing their albums and, in some cases,
crushing them with bulldozers. There
were death threats.
“I wanted the audience to know who
we were and what we were about,” says
Maines.
We are having lunch—Maines
and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily
Strayer, the three members of the
band—in a private dining room in a
swanky West Hollywood hotel, with
waiters moving silently in and out, lis-
tening but not listening. (“Lunch” is
debatable: There were fries, maybe
a chicken salad, bottomless glasses
of prosecco. It was hard not to be
charmed by the cliché of it all.)
“I do not like when artists get on
their soapbox—it’s not what people are
there for,” Maines continues. “They’re
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