The Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, just released their latest album, Gaslighter. Released on Columbia Nashville, it’s a mix of the unique sounds and lyrics that have always made the trio stand out. Although the band had plenty of success in country radio, the three women — Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire — insist that was never their intent anyway.
“I never have identified as that,” Natalie told NPR. “I think we have acoustic sound and singer-songwriter [sound] but to me we’re more bluegrass, if we’re labeled in that arena. We’re always going to have that rootsy sound because we’re three-part harmony and fiddle/banjo/mandolin, but what we like to do is explore beyond maybe what that music would sound like naturally and try to broaden our sound. But The Chicks has always been different than country, for me.”
“As the banjo player, it was interesting when we did get our record deal on Sony and went to Nashville to record, how many people were telling me, ‘Well, you know we’re going to have to take the banjo off before we can put it on country radio,'” Emily recounted. “Isn’t that crazy? And so we really did come up more through the acoustic bluegrass channels. So country was actually like this other world to us, and once we got there, we kind of had to break down those walls so that we could get our instrumentation on the album.
“We’ve always had to buck the system a little bit to be who we were,” she added. “And then once we were successful in country, then they welcomed us in and that was great, then they kicked us out. [Laughs] So we don’t really know where we live anymore.”
The Chicks announced they were dropping their name in the light of the tragic killing of George Floyd, but they insist the name change was a long, long time coming.
“It feels good,” Martie maintained. “It feels liberating. To be completely honest, we’ve always hated our name. We always thought it was a silly name … . We’ve hated our name. It came about when Emily was 16, I was 19, and we went down to the street corner with two other female musicians and people were asking us what our band name was, and we didn’t have a band name. They were throwing us tips and we went home and said ‘Gosh, OK, if we go back tomorrow, we gotta have an answer for these people. What’s our band name?’
“We were driving down to the street corner and the Little Feat song ‘Dixie Chicken’ was on the radio and we thought ‘Oh, that’s cute! Love this song. Let’s be the Dixie Chickens,'” she recounted. “So we were the Dixie Chickens for about a week until I, with my super self-conscious self, didn’t want to be a chicken. I was so terrified that some boy I thought was cute was going to come walking by and there I am in my 10-gallon hat and fringe and I’m a Dixie Chicken.”
The Chicks for years had not been using the word “Dixie” when talking about themselves, but it wasn’t until recently that they decided to make the official change.
“I would say, with what’s going on right now, it was just kind of the last straw for what we were already feeling in our hearts, and I just have to say I am so happy about it,” Emily said. “When people say something I’ll be like ‘Well, you know, I’m just happy about it.'”
Gaslighter is out now. It’s available for purchase via Amazon