25 years later, The Chicks still aren't running from politics

A quarter-century has elapsed since the debut of Natalie Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer as country trio The Chicks. Their sold-out Saturday night Bridgestone Arena concert showed that since the release of their breakout album "Wide Open Spaces," they've excelled at soundtracking some of the best tools for sharing joy and surviving realities.

Yes, 1999's "Sin Wagon" still drops into itself as a stomping, banjo-led jig-dancing party beyond compare. However, the band also opened its set with "Gaslighter" while the Covenant Moms For a Brighter Tomorrow were seated in the front row.

A sample of "Gaslighter"'s lyrics?

"Gaslighter, denier / Doin' anything to get your a** farther / Gaslighter, big timer / Repeating all of the mistakes of your father."

Three weeks prior, a special session of Tennessee's state legislature saw no new restrictions on firearm access passed into law, not but six months after the death of three 9-year-old children during a school shooting at Nashville's Covenant School.

During the session, Republicans enacted a ban on signs — many of which were held by traumatized Covenant School mothers — that a Nashville court overturned.

Conservative Republicans' — including state legislature speaker Cameron Sexton — belief in not infringing upon the constitutional rights of gun owners remained as law until the regular session in January.

Politics (still) at the forefront

Though the group made no verbalized overtly political statements, a few moments highlighted what side of the aisle the threesome voted for and the type of morality the group advocated for at their core.

Famously, in 2003, the Texas-born group publicly criticized then-U.S. president George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq. The backlash that followed saw the group receive criticism and death threats, get blacklisted on country radio, have sales of their concert tickets and music decline, plus lose corporate sponsorships.

Two decades later, they haven't backed down.

A fanciful video played on a giant screen behind the trio and their six-piece band as they performed 2020's "Tights on My Boat."

Notably, the song's caustic lyrics include, "I hope you die peacefully in your sleep / Just kidding, I hope it hurts like you hurt me."

At various points in the video, paper cut-out style renderings of former American President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are shown riding an inflatable unicorn in a sea. Moreover, photos of the 19 defendants charged in Donald Trump's Georgia indictment over alleged attempts to overturn 2020 election results are all grouped in the image of a ship that eventually explodes.

The song about a cheating partner has evolved into a political metaphor.

Related to the group's show-opening moment, The Chicks accompanied the playing of their marching-style drum-aided 2020 song "March March," directly highlighting school shootings nationwide and flashing names onscreen of African-Americans — and others — impacted by police brutality.

Moreover, for the tour, Maines highlighted that the group had reworked Miley Cyrus and her godmother, Dolly Parton's 2017 track "Rainbowland."

"We like to celebrate Pride Month 365 days a year," screamed The Chicks' frontwoman Maines before stating that Parton's ad-libbing "that's disgusting" in allusion to what she refers to as "all the hurt and the hate going on" in the lyrics was her favorite part of the song.

Empathy, not a gimmick

There's a notion that in country music, the perception of female artists drawing from a perpetual, metaphorical and heart-borne genteel empathy — like rhinestoned suits on male singing cowboys — is a gimmick as old as time.

However, The Chicks are an act driven by three women bearing Barbara Mandrell-style multi-instrumentalism, a debut album name-dropping country icon (and Roy Rogers' third wife) Dale Evans, a history including covering Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, plus the ability to drop a note-perfect Patty Griffin cover well into a two-hour set ("Don't Let Me Die in Florida").

Country music is nearly a century old. At some point, someone had to start wanting to believe that a gimmick had been unopposed for so long that it became the truth.

Thus, the group's now legendary uncompromised liberal morality — buoyed by authentic empathy — stands as much as a sense of who they are as much as it is a standard in which country's expanded pop mainstream has existed since the release of "Wide Open Spaces."

In that vein, their performance of Beyoncé's "Daddy Lessons" stands alongside their cover of Fleetwood Mac's 1975 single "Landslide" as establishing the foundations of the "empathetic" side of the genre's 70s era meanderings into pop and rock-enabled sounds have evolved into over time.

To wit, one of the evening's more telling moments was hearing Maines prefacing launching into the latter by saying "Here's Landslide" like the internet meme-worthy cliched nature of novice musicians stating that they were covering Oasis' 1995 Britpop classic "Wonderwall."

As well, when proudly queer superstar-level actress and comedian Fortune Feimster appeared onstage, it was clear that the 43-year-old woman was a 19-year-old fan of the group when "Goodbye Earl" was released. Thus, she definitely knew the words of the song by heart and gladly joined the crowd in screaming them at the top of her lungs.

Natalie Maines, frontwoman extraordinaire

The Chicks' Maines is four dozen years old.

She also still approaches the art of live performance as if she's a cat, claws showing, somehow encouraged by having a dozen lives to live.

The group's show two months prior was canceled because Maines contracted COVID-19.

Discussing what makes Maines great is akin to debating whether the Beatles are better than the Rolling Stones and then deciding that having the best of both worlds is possible — and more ideal.

As the fronting artist of a band, few people may approach Paul McCartney's excellence as an interpreter of a song. However, if you want to see how youthful social revolutions get started, it's by watching Mick Jagger allow a song's words to redefine his molecular structure every 3 minutes and 30 seconds.

Somewhere between the two is what Maines does onstage in her inimitable way.

1999's "Cowboy Take Me Away" sounds great in a car speaker on a Midwestern highway. It might sound even better onstage with Maines at the front, backed by eight players and backing vocalists. A believable sentience arrives via Maines' voice, creating earnest belief in her capability to break the earth beneath her in her hands to grow something unruly in the hard ground underneath an open sky.

It's not a far cry to note that the sustaining essence of country and pop music's liberal expression — containing everyone from Friday night's Bridgestone Arena performers P!nk and Brandi Carlile, Carlile's friends The Highwomen (including brazen "The Tree" burner Maren Morris and occasionally her upstart biggest fan Brittney Spencer) and so many more — is contained in the wild magic in which Maines' art operates.

The Chicks' songs: more honest and revealed than ever

The trio are over 30 million albums sold and 15 top-10 country singles into nearly three decades of playing together and their material sounds more honest and revealed than ever.

During their show, a palpable sense emerges that they're as comfortable with their music as they are with being the de facto fleet admirals of country music's desire to maintain keeping American society's feet in the fire of change.

Songs like "Not Here To Make Nice," "Traveling Soldier" and evening closer "Goodbye Earl" have aged incredibly well.

In 2023, at a Bridgestone Arena that sounded, at times, like a jet engine was being started inside of it, these songs exploded, instead of loomed, more significant than the original intention of their lyrics.

Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer are as peerless and steeped in the art of entertainment as Maines.

It's no understatement to say that if the going logic is that fiddles, steel guitars and banjos are the core elements of country music's past, present and future, then The Chicks played one of the most musically relevant sets in recent Nashville history.

The Chicks' likely response to such a statement?

Maines flashed a double middle-finger salute during "How do you Sleep At Night?"

The crowd roared in approval.

The Chicks' Setlist, Sept. 24, 2023 at Bridgestone Arena

• Gaslighter

• Sin Wagon

• Texas Man

• Julianna Calm Down

• The Long Way Around

• My Best Friend's Weddings

• Sleep at Night

• Ready to Run

• Travelin' Soldier (Bruce Robison cover)

• Wide Open Spaces

• Tights on My Boat

• Daddy Lessons/Long Time Gone

• Cowboy Take Me Away

• Landslide (Fleetwood Mac cover)

• Rainbowland (Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton cover)

• Don't Let Me Die in Florida (Patty Griffin cover)

• March March

• For Her

• White Trash Wedding

• Everybody Loves You

• Not Ready to Make Nice

• Goodbye Earl

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: The Chicks celebrate 25 survived, often joyous years at Bridgestone Arena