Replies

rollingstone.com - 1/18/2010

Dixie Chicks Plan Album, Tour With Court Yard Hounds Side Project — Photo: Michelson/WireImage With Natalie Maines on an indefinite hiatus, the other two Dixie Chicks — guitarist-banjoist Emily Robison and her sister, fiddler Martie Maguire — have recorded an album on their own, as Court Yard Hounds (a reference to the best-selling novel City of Thieves ).

Word on the street is that the two Dixie Chick sisters, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, will call themselves the Courtyard Hounds now that they are Natalie-less. But does this mean the end of the Dixie Chicks? They say no. Martie says, “Emily and I had the itch, and every time we’d call Natalie and say ‘are you ready?’ she wasn’t ready. She wanted a clear-cut break.” Though the sisters are not sure about the Dixie Chicks’ future, they still hope to make music as a trio again someday.

“It was time,” says Robison in a press release. “We had been on hiatus from The Dixie Chicks for about a year, I was getting very restless and needed to be creative for my own sanity. And at the same time I was going through my divorce so it was very fertile ground for writing.”

“Emily was just writing and writing all of these deeply personal and truly beautiful songs,” Martie Maguire adds. ”She was initially going to pitch them to other artists and I kept telling her ‘No, no, you have to save that for you. It’s too good and too personal.’”