Dixie Chicks once again rule the roost

Natalie Maines, the Dixie Chicks’ often outspoken lead singer, paused near the end of the country music trio’s fast-paced, high-tech concert Saturday at Staples Center for a warm, personal aside.

Looking like a warrior in punkette attire more suitable for one of the Osbournes and with her hair shaped in a defiant Mohawk style, Maines recalled how the Chicks were riding high with a No. 1 album a few months ago when they came up with “Top of the World” as the name for their current tour.

But after the public outcry over her much publicized anti-Bush remark and country radio’s sudden cold shoulder, Maines said she wondered whether “farewell” wouldn’t have been a more accurate tour title.

It was a funny but also warm, convincing reflection -- a way of thanking the fans for their support without reopening old wounds, and the capacity crowd cheered mightily, just as attendees had done for most of the nearly two-hour concert.

The moment was all the more welcome because the Chicks hadn’t always responded to this pop culture flap with the same intelligence and confidence that established them in the late ‘90s as the most rewarding mainstream country arrival in years.

One of history’s lessons is that we aren’t often as much judged by perceived misstatements or misdeeds as by how we respond to them. In politics and the corporate world, it’s the attempted cover-up that often does you in. In show biz, the biggest danger can often be looking like you are trying to milk the situation.

The whole Chicks affair started in March when, on the eve of the war in Iraq, Texas native Maines outraged some fans by telling a London concert audience that she was “ashamed” to be from the same state as President Bush.

The comment might have been too much under any circumstance for some of the trio’s conservative fans, but it seemed particularly inflammatory at the time because radio stations were playing the Chicks’ recording of “Travelin’ Soldier” around the clock.

Written by Bruce Robison, it’s a deeply sentimental tale of a lonely young man who goes off to Vietnam and the young woman who waits in vain for his return.

So it’s not surprising that thousands of country fans phoned radio stations, demanding they stop playing the tune and, apparently, any other Chicks song.

Maines quickly apologized, saying her remarks were disrespectful. But when country radio dropped the song, the Chicks reacted like a deer in the headlights.

Maines and fellow Chicks Martie Maguire and Emily Robison came across as whiny and self-absorbed in a prime-time TV interview with Diane Sawyer, and they appeared gimmicky when they posed for a cheesecake cover photo for Entertainment Weekly.

With one exception, however, the Chicks were their old selves again Saturday -- frisky and challenging, certainly, but also gracious and warm-spirited.

The “Free Natalie” T-shirts at the souvenir stands were not only cute but also a bargain (just $17 versus the $25 to $30 for regular tour T-shirts).

During intermission, after young pop singer Michelle Branch’s mostly anonymous opening set, the Chicks showed some good-natured spunk by entertaining the crowd with recordings that offered wry observations on the post-Bush comments.

The tunes ranged from Elvis Costello’s rambunctious “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” and the Go-Go’s teasing “Our Lips Are Sealed” to Bruce Springsteen’s questioning “Born in the U.S.A.”

When the trio and their band finally took the stage, which was set up theater-in-the-round-style in the middle of the arena, they concentrated on music.

The Chicks have been interested in music that entertains as well as makes a point, a combination that has worked spectacularly well in their lively interpretations of such tunes as Dennis Linde’s “Goodbye Earl,” a revenge fantasy about an abuse victim who plots to kill her husband, and Darrell Scott’s “Long Time Gone,” which chides country music’s drift toward a soulless embrace with pop.

Eventually, however, everyone knew Maines had to address what she refers to as the “incident.”

It came about a dozen numbers into the set -- and it was the evening’s only false note.

Introducing Patty Griffin’s “Truth No. 2,” Maines said she didn’t fully understand the song, which is about standing up for yourself, until after the March uproar.

The lyrics, in part:

You don’t like the sound of the truth

Coming from my mouth

The rendition itself felt a bit pretentious under the circumstances, but the accompanying video made matters worse. It would have been OK to merely show the scenes of people destroying Beatles records and Sinead O’Connor records because you can see how the Chicks identified with that.

But things felt a bit ludicrous when words such as “tolerance, “ “speak the truth” and “censorship” flashed on the screen between scenes of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. Whatever their intent, the Chicks seemed to be putting their minor league pop struggle on a level with some of mankind’s great civil rights movements.

As the video kept rolling, you wondered who would be next: Mother Teresa? But the whole “Truth No. 2” segment took up only about three minutes. For most of the night, the Chicks showed they were back on course.

The enthusiasm of the audience at Staples Center (and reportedly all other stops on the tour) should give the Chicks the confidence to move on with their music. It’s much more attractive than martyrdom. That enthusiasm should also serve as a nightly reminder to country radio programmers that they overreacted when they stopped playing the Chicks.

Robert Hilburn, the Times pop music critic, can be reached by e-mail at robert.hilburn@ latimes.com