Dixie Chicks Return to Stage in Fine Fettle

It’s not unusual for enthusiastic fans to sing along, but it did catch your ear Thursday at the Kodak Theatre when fans cheerfully sang every word of the Dixie Chicks’s 2000 hit “Goodbye Earl.”

Earl, you see, isn’t going away in the conventional pop sense. He’s not leaving on a jet plane or leaving Las Vegas.

The guy’s an abusive husband who has pushed his wife, Wanda, too far. When he ignores a court order to keep away and beats her so severely that she requires intensive care, Wanda and her friend, Mary Anne, serve Earl a plateful of black-eyed peas laced with poison.

The key to the song, written by Dennis Linde (best known for Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love”), isn’t that it is a stark, somber exercise. It’s an upbeat celebration, powered by guitars, banjos and fiddles.

“Earl had to die!” screamed the Chicks’ Natalie Maines, and the fans screamed it back. The women in the audience, it might be noted, did so with far more gusto.

There are no figures on the song’s effect on black-eyed pea sales, but “Goodbye Earl” certainly made a lot of people, including country radio programmers, nervous.

But the tune underscored the Chicks’ edgy independence, which has created a bond with its audience during a period of disheartening conservativeness in mainstream country music.

Here, in fact, are three words to employ the next time some country purist grumbles about how they just don’t make stars the way they used to: the Dixie Chicks.

In their tours and first two albums, the Texas-based female trio--which also features Martie Maguire on fiddle and backing vocals and Emily Robison on banjo and backing vocals--reflected the character-rich vocals and common folk sensibilities that have been at the soulful center of country music since Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell. Their first two albums have sold more than 17 million copies in the United States.

Because Nashville is counting on the first Chicks album in three years to help add momentum to country music’s rebounding commercial fortunes, there were lots of eyes and ears directed on the Chicks’ concert Thursday.

In an acoustic performance taped for a December special on NBC, the Chicks played all 12 songs from the new album--and the results were encouraging indeed.

The Chicks are returning to action after a high-profile contract dispute with their label, Sony Music Entertainment. Their new album, titled “Home” and due in stores Aug. 27, is filled with tunes that reflect the complexities of relationships in ways that maintain country’s traditional roots while adding modern thematic sensibilities.

It’s a challenge playing so much new material, because fans are often impatient for the familiar hits, but the response throughout the hourlong sequence was strong.

The tunes ranged from upbeat novelties, such as the bluegrass-spiked “White Trash Wedding,” or tender ones, including “I Believe in Love.” The latter, a poignant statement of social optimism, was performed by the Chicks on the nationally televised all-star telethon to raise money for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the song likely to attract the most attention is “Long Time Gone,” which the trio used to open Thursday’s concert. The song may ruffle a lot more feathers with radio programmers because it attacks the generally soulless nature of country radio. A key line, saluting country music great Johnny Cash, notes that Nashville today may have “money, but they don’t have Cash.”

Ever since the success of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” country programmers have said they are open to more traditional country music offerings. With “Long Time Gone,” the Chicks call their bluff.

Because Robison is pregnant, the Chicks won’t tour until the spring. By then, their fans will be familiar enough with the music from “Home” that they’ll be singing along with “Long Time Gone” just as resoundingly as they do now with “Goodbye Earl.”