By Chris Gray, Wednesday, Mar. 10 2010 @ 3:30PM
Seven years ago this week, the Dixie Chicks had the No. 1 country single in the U.S. with Bruce Robison's lump-raising "Travelin' Soldier." Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the Bush Administration was putting the finishing touches on its Iraqi invasion strategy, which prompted Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines to tell a London audience the evening of March 10, 2003, that "we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."
Oops. Although lefties flocked to the Chicks' defense - some even admitting that hey, maybe their music wasn't so bad after all - several mainstream country stations, especially in the South, went from spinning "Soldier" once an hour to organizing anti-Chick rallies where DJs encouraged listeners to bring in CDs, posters and other paraphernalia to either be crushed by bulldozers or thrown on
Farenheit 451-like bonfires. In the Chicks' hometown of Dallas, they needed a police escort from the airport to American Airlines Center because someone called in a death threat against Maines.
The Chicks came back in 2006 with
Taking the Long Way, an album geared both in sound and marketing strategy toward NPR and adult-alternative listeners. Tickets never even went on sale for the planned Houston stop of the Chicks' subsequent Accidents & Accusations tour when no radio stations here would sell them advertising time. (Way to make us proud, assholes.)
Long Way won the 2007 Grammy for Album of the Year, with Maines' song about "The Incident" and its near-bloody aftermath, "Not Ready to Make Nice," taking both Record and Song of the Year.
Ever since, though, the Chicks have been in limbo. Sorry, "on hiatus."
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