Free The Dixie Three?

Posted by on 8/21/2003

The following is an article presented by “The Guardian” featuring Nigel Williamson’s experience as he went on the road to watch a few of the DC’s shows and to see how things are for them now, if they have any regrets, how the US tour is going, among other things.

The article is long so I will share a short snippet of it here just to show how some things never change.

In Memphis, (8-2-2003) the audience is divided. The merchandising counter is selling Free Natalie T-shirts and doing a brisk trade. The road crew also sport them, after the phrase was coined by a DJ in Austin, Texas (where they live), who had bravely come out in support. But some fans are highly critical. “Natalie made those statements later on after we bought the tickets, otherwise we wouldn’t be here,” complained Rod Good, 44, from Alexandria, Ohio. Connie and Steve Vaughan, both 53, from Atoka, Tennessee, turned up in matching American flag shirts. “We want her to know we support the troops,” they said.

Yet the show – which is prefaced by Elvis Costello’s version of (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding – is well received, even when a song called Truth No 2 is accompanied by a video featuring Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Malcolm X and footage of civil-rights protests. The film also shows archive footage of Nazi book burning before it ends with shots of the destruction of Dixie Chicks records and the on-screen messages: “SEEK THE TRUTH” and “TOLERANCE”. Throughout the show, Maines sports a “Dare To Be Free” T-shirt, and it is lost on no one that we’re in the city where King was assassinated.

The following night we see the show again in Atlanta, Georgia, (8-3-2003) where neither of the city’s two country radio stations has played a Dixie Chicks song since March. But when there are a handful of cat-calls from the audience, Maines responds feistily. “If you’re booing that’s OK, because we love freedom of expression,” she tells them. “But just remember. We’ve got your 65 dollars.”

Doesn’t that just say it all?

–==Discuss This==–

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