"Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
Old quotes are not forgotten away down south of the Mason-Dixon line, as Natalie Maines knows. In 2003, she uttered the aforementioned quote at a concert in London. The Chicks were touring to promote their third major-label album Home, the most bluegrass and country-sounding album of theirs to date. The Texas ladies' (Maguire and Robinson are sisters, and Maines joined after her father--a Nashville session guitarist--gave the sisters a copy of Maines' audition tape for Berklee--where she was accepted, first by Berklee, then by the Dixie Chicks) commercial breakthrough came in 1998 with the release of their major-album debut Wide Open Spaces (and the terrific titular song), but they achieved stardom the next year with their second (and better) album Fly, which debuted atop the Billboard (pop!) album charts at #1, spawning eight hit singles, including "Goodbye Earl" and "Sin Wagon," the Chicks' first bouts with controversy.
"Goodbye Earl" caught criticism over it's gleeful (and at times downright giddy) portrayal of a pre-meditated murderer--a scorned woman delightfully does her away with her no-good old man. "Sin Wagon," however, got the girls (not just the song, not just the album, but the band's entire oeuvre) banned from several country radio stations because it included the euphemism "mattress dancing." Good thing Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton, (not to mention Conway Twitty and Willie Nelson and Bocephus) never included any sexual innuendo in their records.
A couple of months after Gaine made the comment criticizing the President, she received a death threat planning her murder in detail if she didn't just "shut up and sing." Dixie Chicks' records were burned by the thousands, and the group was completely dropped by all major (ComCast) country music radio stations in the South. Consequently, their touring audience was decimated, major television networks refused to air commercials advertising them, they were condemned by virtually ever contemporary major label country artist, their subsequent album received little to no airplay, and it went on to garner seven Grammys nominations--and won each one. Rejected by the industry and the people and the artists they loved and admired, they were accepted by the liberal Hollywood artists and bigwigs who otherwise despise country music and its fans.
Maines would go on to apologize to President Bush and then recant her apology three years later. She lambasted Toby Keith's song "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue," and later agreed to tour with him to promote environmental awareness. Later still, Maines would wonder aloud what was special about patriotism anyway, despite the fact that they were one of the groups that performed in that benefit telethon that followed the 9/11 attacks.
What does all this have to do with the "Travelin' Soldier" song though? Depends on your perspective. One could see it as a subtle anti-war song or as a true-blue patriotic song, or one could just appreciate the song on its own merits: Maines's powerful-yet-tender Loretta-Lynn-without-the-Kentucky-hiccup vocal delivery; Emily Maguire's playing that brings forth a glorious mournful (even bagpipe-like) bluegrass fugue from her fiddle; and the old-fashioned story that's fashioned out of old Dolly Parton and Carter Family ballads (in the denotative sense of that word), not afraid of using the sublime music and vocals to wreak pathos out of a well-worn story with cornpone lyrics--that ring as true now as they did back in 2001, 1990, 1968 (the song's set during the Vietnam War), 1954, and 1944 (& etc...) because war and death never go out of style. Like Maines, they refuse to shut up and sing.
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