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At the nine-song mark of The Chicks’ concert at the Saddledome Thursday night, the Texas trio broke out one of their most poplar songs. The backup players stepped back into the darkness, and the flashy stage setup grew dark and spartan as vocalist Natalie Maines, violinist Martie Maguire and banjo player Emily Strayer offered their beautifully stripped-down cover of Bruce Robinson’s Travelin’ Soldier.
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The Chicks’ version of the song hit No. 1 more than 20 years ago but it was one of many early highlights of the Chicks highly anticipated return to Calgary Thursday night. It proved that the best moments of a successful stadium show can be quiet and without flash. In fact, the two-hour, 23-song set offered a master-class in finely-tuned stadium dynamics. There were a number of high-octane, technically dazzling moments, but the show just as often thrived on the steady power of the act’s songs and performance. In other words, it was exactly what a stadium show should be.
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Granted, The Chicks did offer a memorably flashy opening sequence. Prior to the band taking the stage, the audience was treated to videos featuring a wide-range of powerful female performers — from Tina Turner, to the Runaways, Stevie Nicks and Annie Lennox — before the stage grew dark to the strains of Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation. Maguire’s icy violin strains and Strayer’s banjo riffs led to an explosive version of Gaslighter, the angry title track of The Chicks 2020 eighth studio album. The song was backed by images of women dancing, marching and fighting as spears of neon-pink lights shot out into the audience. It was followed by 1999’s Sin Wagon, which mixed gospel exuberance with go-for-broke bluegrass prowess. From there, the band offered a nicely paced balance of new songs from Gaslighter and old favourites, veering from easy-grooved mid-tempo songs such as The Long Way Around and Wide Open Spaces to beautifully sung ballads such as My Best Friend’s Wedding and Julianne Calm Down.
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A medley of Daddy Lessons and Long Time Gone became a intimate, clap-a-long hootenanny that led to the band sitting down and playing stripped-back versions of favourites such as Cowboy Take Me Away, their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide and a rousing take on Lubbock of Leave It. It was during this segment that the Chicks also played what Maines said was the only new song they have learned for this tour: a cover of the Mylie Cyrus and Dolly Parton duet Rainbowland, which encourages LGBTQ+ acceptance. “We celebrate Pride month 365 days a year,” Maines told the audience, a statement that should barely qualify as political these days and would likely only seem objectionable to the irredeemably stupid.
But while Maines didn’t directly say much else that could be deemed political — a label that band earned when they were still called the Dixie Chicks and raised the ire of Nashville conservatives by criticizing George W. Bush in 2003 — there were some pointed messages on stage.
Tights on My Boat, a fun if slight kiss-off song from the new album, was backed by Monty Python-esque animation that featured, among other things, a naked Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin worriedly riding an inflatable unicorn and a ship-of-fools made of mugshots of those recently indicted alongside Trump sailing on a sea of red waves. At one somber point during a set change on stage, the screen filled the gap with what appeared to be a round-up of people killed in gun massacres in the U.S.
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But the most powerful moment on Thursday night came when the act performed March March, a tightly coiled anthem from the new album. It was backed by an evocative, expertly edited video that paid homage to activists fighting for gay and reproductive rights, to Black Lives Matters protestors, climate warriors and people murdered by police violence. It was easily one of the most moving experiences I’ve had at a concert in a very long time.
Thursday’s opening act was fellow Texan Maren Morris, a young Nashville-based starlet who had distinguished herself by promoting inclusivity in country music and standing up to powerful Music City elites for what she saw as transphobic attitudes. Her confident set suffered from some early sound problems that occasionally flattened or washed out her voice. But she hit a nice streak with a twangy run through I Wish I Was and soulfully sung ballads such as I Could Use a Love Song and Once.
The Chicks ended the festivities Thursday night with a three-song showcase of their versatility. It started with the goofy crowd-pleaser White Trash Wedding, followed by their hater-defying cross-over hit Not Ready to Make Nice and ending with Goodbye Earl, the murder ballad that helped turn them into household names more than 20 years ago.
By that point, the trio had offered the Calgary audience a pitch-perfect stadium show that was flashy and crowd-pleasing but also fearless, intimate and uncompromising. Mainstream country artists should be taking notes.
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