Natalie Maines' Dad: I Can See Where She Gets It
I had the good fortune to run into and spend a little time with Dixie Chicks' lead singer Natalie Maines father, Lloyd a week or so ago. I walked up to him and shook his hand, telling him I was a Maines Brothers fan. The familial group was Lubbock's best band for a dozen or more years and were regional legends.
But the reason I approached him was to lend a little fatherly support. The 2nd sentence out of my mouth was to say "Would you tell your daughter not to shut up?" He laughed and offered that no amount of telling was going to cause that anyway. He went on to say how frustrating it was when so few artists and musicians spoke out about the war and about Bush for fear of what happened to his daughter and her band. His politics are much the same as hers, and he worries at what the President and his party are doing to this nation. As such, he thinks people have to make a stand, the price be damned.
He wasn't too happy with Reba's comments ("At an Academy of Country Music awards ceremony in March, singer Reba McEntire read a scripted line about how she could host the event because, "[If] the Dixie Chicks can sing with their foot in their mouth, then I can do anything!")...nor Toby Keith's feud with his daughter.
Strange to think she'd throw gas on the anti-Dixie Chick fire, when they were getting death threats on their families. Reba's got a family too, and you'd think she'd know better. He took it all in stride though, and considers the price she and the Dixie Chicks have paid to be part-n-parcel to taking a courageous stand. Sounds like a bunch of solid Americans to me.
posted by VTexan at 3:16 AM
6 Comments:
Good for you, VTex. All the rest of us can do in support is buy their cds. To be able to add a personal 'attaboy' is just plain lucky!
Thanks for your kind words. Buying their CDs has two direct benefits to you:
1. Supports their views, and
2. Gives you an outstanding CD.
Added Tip: the song "Silent House" is about her grandmother's Alzheimer's Disease, and is transcendently poetic and musically sophisticated. I suspect if you've got a heartbeat, you'll be touched.
As the right wing raises a ruckus over "Not Ready to Make Nice," know that there's a lot more depth to be found there than just I HATE BUSH.
Buy more CD's!
Dude, Reba had every right to make that comment after the crap they said about her in People magazine. I was proud of her. She has way more talent than they do and has WAY more seniority and they should show her some respect. If it wasn't for people like Reba, Patsy and Loretta...the Dixie Chicks would not have a job nor this platform for stating their poltical beliefs.
I think Reba McEntire's outstandingly talented, and I thought she had a lot of class before now.
But all the Dixie Chicks said was, in essence, that Country Music was too limiting a genre for them. They'd rather have a smaller audience than to fit in peoples' CD changers between Reba and Toby.
Now really, is that so bad? Did they say Reba was a bad person or that she was an idiot? Reba found a mountain of insult when there was almost nothing there. In my opinion, she WANTED to find it there.
She wants to believe in Bush and the direction this country's headed...and that's fine. To each his or her own. But to then target the Dixie Chicks as she has shows a catty, superficial and frankly, non-classy side that I hadn't seen before.
This is a big ol' country though...big enough for us to agree to disagree.
There's a basic flaw to your logic. You said: "whether it's an artist whose politics I agree with or one I don't, just sing don't preach."
You're determining for an artist what their art will be about. That doesn't cut it. That's not art. If you want to listen to a juke box, go listen to a juke box.
I don't tell Charlie Daniels to shut up because I think he's wrong (and damned foolish to boot). I won't tell Reba she can't be catty to the Dixie Chicks. She's got that right. Your demanding the Chicks shut up and play what you want to hear and nothing else is silly.
As to NOT READY TO MAKE NICE being about George Bush--you're categorically wrong. Do yourself a favor and read the lyrics. It's about the hate and misunderstanding that some people generated out of the original incident, and what it cost the Chicks psychologically. Bush is not mentioned, and not alluded to.
You question Maines' courage: if she had no courage, she'd have issued a "what in the world was I thinkin'?" apology 3 years ago. She not only has said what she said in London back here in America, she's done so in far more specific terms. She's risked career, safety and everything she's built by having the courage of her convictions. Yet you manage to convince yourself she's a coward.
There's nothing you've said here that holds water. I count as some of my best friends conservatives who still believe GW Bush is a good President. I'm a liberal, and I've taught my daughter that ones' political beliefs are NOT the only measure of a person's quality.
Your logic simply has none.
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