An open letter to the Dixie Chicks

Here are eight things you might consider if you want '07 to be better than your last coupla years

Hello, girls. How are y'all? Well, never mind. We all know how you're doing. Pretty lousy, huh?

We know the last few years have been tough for ya, that it's been heartbreaking to see a lot of your fans turn their backs, burn your records, toss you aside like you're Billy Gilman.

Nat, we know you didn't really mean that you hate the U.S. or our troops when you said what you said about the president in 2003.

We thought this mess would blow over, that y'all would be back on top of the world and the charts in no time. We're pretty shocked that the country music community is still holding a grudge, still not playing your music on the radio, still not buying your concert tickets, still grinding axes.

That's why we'd like to offer you, a few days before your tour-closing show in Dallas, a handful of advice for getting your career back on track. Maybe if you listen to us, 2K7 will bring you better days, not more hate mail.

1. Play a show for U.S. troops. This may be more dangerous for y'all than driving through certain parts of Iraq in a convertible, but you could play face to face to what might possibly be your toughest audience -- and you could clear the air, let them know that you're thinking about them, that the last thing you wanted to do was minimize what they're doing for us. This would be your opportunity to prove to everyone -- the U.S., the world, yourselves -- that you care, which we believe y'all do. The White House awaits.

2. Do a truck commercial. You can't really get any more American than doing a Like a Rock-like commercial for Ford, Chevy or Dodge. Just don't do it for Honda. Their new trucks are u-g-l-y. And, to be honest, y'all would look pretty hot behind the wheel of a Dodge Ram. Vroom!

3. Three words: Get over it. Three more words: At least try. We're sure it's been hard to deal with the backlash -- the name-calling, the back-turning, the flaming copies of Home. But you know what? What happened, happened. There's no going back, no changing time, no changing people's minds. So quit going on talk shows and adding fuel to the flames by being angry and defensive and unforgiving; leave that to your critics.

4. Ditch Rick Rubin and the whole rock 'n' roll-is-our-new-home deal. You may think that the rock community is a better place for ya, with its more liberal-minded artists and open-minded attitudes. But you're not exactly burning up the rock charts, are ya? And having Rubin, best known for working with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys, doesn't seem to have bumped your sales up. We're all for trying on new hats and everything, but the mingling of the Dixie Chicks and rock 'n' roll, in our opinion at least, makes about as much sense as Toby Keith wearing a white suit. Oh, sorry -- didn't mean to mention Toby!

Not that we have anything against pop-rocker Pete Yorn, who's opening for ya here, but what an odd choice as a touring partner. What about your old pal country rocker Joe Ely? Remember when he opened for y'all at the Tarrant County Convention Center a few years ago and leveled the place? Having him on the bill, no doubt, sold a few tickets. Your old touring mate Willie Nelson would probably do it again -- he'll do just about anything. Aussie country singer Kasey Chambers would be fantastic, too, and not a bad draw. But Yorn? That just reeks of who-are-we-gonna-get-to-open-for-us? desperation.

6. Sing the national anthem at the next Super Bowl. Talk about an I-love-America statement. You did this once, at Super Bowl XXXVII in '03. And America loved you. Better hurry, before they hire Kid Rock to do this one. And if the Super Bowl is not available, there's always the Fort Worth Cats.

7. Do a club tour. Lots of onetime arena-headliners do this, to get them back in touch with their fans. At least that's what they say. Usually, it just means that they can't headline arenas anymore. But this would be a good time for y'all to hear what your fans have to say, to hear their thoughts, in person - not by e-mail or death threat.

8. Get back to being the Dixie Chicks. "Shut up and play." It's not the nicest way to say that you need to go back to focusing on your music, but you get the point. In kinder words, re-evaluate what's important to you - music or politics. What was important to us, the people who've stuck by your side from Day One, was that your music offered an escape from what you're now throwing in our faces. Your music was fun and meaningful and insightful and smart and sexy and clever and sad and emotionally intense and everything that music should be. You were the best at taking us away, to lands of new romance, busted hearts, rowdy barrooms, romantic bedrooms, the backs of cars, the fronts of churches. We sang along, and related so well, when you played your songs about running away or into someone's arms. We could listen to you when someone hurt or healed us, left us in the rain or discovered us in the summer. You touched more than nerves; you touched lives. Your music was us. And we really, really miss that.

You must rread this review of ther movie.. its scathing!!! I may post it on its own thread...but here ya go...

"'Shut Up and Sing'
Dixie Chicks refuse to leave well enough alone in candid documentary
Friday, December 01, 2006

By John Hayes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Fans support Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks.
Click photo for larger image.

'Shut Up & Sing'

Rating: R for language.
Starring: The Dixie Chicks.
Director: Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Peck.
Web site: www.dixiechicks.com/06_dcmovie.asp

As the Post-Gazette's country music critic, I found it easy to support The Dixie Chicks' 2002 release of "Home," perhaps the best mainstream country album of the past decade. After singer Natalie Maines' notorious 2003 gaffe sparked an anti-Chicks backlash among the group's core audience, I took some heat from readers for continuing to support their music. During subsequent years, I continued to separate the art from the artists as the Chicks appeared to do the opposite of damage control, further alienating themselves from a country music community that had made them rich and famous.

Now, in a candid backstage documentary sarcastically titled "Shut Up & Sing," I find Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire conspiring with manager Simon Renshaw to intentionally deepen the rift separating the group from its fans. They're clearly shown planning ways to get the media to buy into the group's pleas of right-wing victimization, and trying to turn the anti-Chicks phenomenon into the band's defining element.

That's it. I'm appalled. I've had it with these Chicks.

The most remarkable thing about "Shut Up & Sing" is that although it's not a hostile documentary taking shots at the band, it reveals its members to be smug, arrogant and manipulative, intentionally growing the monster that cripples their career, then whining about it to the press.

Think I'm exaggerating? Not long after Maines tells a London crowd the group is "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck take us into a dressing room for a damage-control meeting. Quickly, it morphs into something far more nefarious when Renshaw suggests a counterintuitive tactic: instead of taking conciliatory steps to mend fences with fans, what if they could stoke anti-Chicks sentiment and instigate CD burnings and further rejection of the Chicks by the country music audience? It's not a quip -- Renshaw says it with relish, implying that the Chicks might then be seen as free-speech heroes by the much larger mainstream music audience. You can almost hear the "ca-ching" in his voice as he lays out plans for using the incident to move the group out of the country camp and into the mainstream.

Throughout the 93-minute film, Renshaw and the Chicks repeatedly conspire to provoke country music fans. On the set of an Entertainment Weekly photo shoot, a publicist stridently argues against allowing one of the world's top-selling bands to appear nude on the cover with self-deprecating insults like "Dixie Sluts" written across their bodies. She loses the debate. Renshaw later offers talking points for a nationally televised interview in which the group insults its former fans.

Renshaw is revealed as the Chicks' brain. In meetings, Maines blabbers and whines like the protagonist in a dumb blonde joke, while sisters Robison and Maguire are more guarded but seem willing to go along with just about anything.

"Shut Up & Sing" documents The Dixie Chicks belittling the conservative values of country fans and manipulating the media into reporting that the group is valiantly defending free speech. It's a ruse. From their pre-Maines cowgirl sweetheart origins through their successful mainstream country career, their songs have never been political. They voice no cohesive political doctrine in the film, other than to express a general opposition to the Iraq War and a pointed hatred of George W. Bush. Their claim of a conspiratorial radio "boycott" attempting to silence them is pure spin -- after years of playing to the values of country culture, they simply lost their audience when they abandoned those ideals. The filmmakers reveal the entire Chicks fiasco for what it is: a ploy to turn a minor gaffe into a major career move -- the intentional alienation of an artist's core audience in hopes of springboarding to a larger and more lucrative demographic. By their own admission, it hasn't worked.

As such, "Shut Up & Sing" is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of what may be one of the most blatant media scams in entertainment history. Kopple, who won Academy Awards for pro-labor films "Harlan County, U.S.A." and "American Dream," and Peck, who was among the producers of Kopple's HBO special "The Hamptons," take a nonlinear filmmaking approach, backtracking to the London gibe, hop-skipping to the band's reaction, jumping to planning sessions and concert footage, and flashing forward to meetings with producer Rick Rubin, who helps the Chicks to make their first non-country album. The digital cameras are rolling as the group discusses ways to spin the rerouting of a failing concert tour to make it seem like a win. They're witness to the creative process when songs are born and arrangements evolve, and they observe the human process when the artists collapse into the arms of loved ones.

Don't be surprised if movie critics and left-leaning documentary film audiences adore "Shut Up & Sing" and the right-leaning country crowd ignores it. As for me, my left-brain film critic knows a good movie when it sees one, and my right-brain music critic, which took heat for supporting the Chicks, knows when it's been snookered.

Frankly, I just wish they'd just shut up and sing."

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06335/742592-120.stm

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