Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines began the band's U.S. tour with an open invitation to heckle her. "If you're here to boo, we welcome that because we welcome freedom of speech," she said from the stage of Greenville, South Carolina's Bi-Lo Center Thursday night. "So we're going to give you fifteen seconds to get whatever you have out."
Instead, the 15,000-strong crowd erupted in cheers. And from the moment the band launched into "Goodbye Earl" to kick off their twenty-two-song set, fans showed their support by standing up and stomping along.
"They said you might not come but we knew you'd come," Maines said, "because we have the greatest fans in the whole world."
It was the Dixie Chicks' first U.S. concert since Maines told a London audience on March 10th that they were ashamed the president is from their home state of Texas. The comments ignited a firestorm of controversy across the country: The Dixies became a punching bag for conservative pundits, their CDs were crushed beneath a tractor in Louisiana, some radio stations pulled their music from the airwaves and a nationally syndicated radio host organized an "anti-Dixie Chicks" concert to take place at the same time as the Chicks' tour kickoff. Outside the Bi-Lo Center, arena officials had designated an area for protests. Among the approximately twenty who showed was Nancy Capps. "I'm a chick from Dixie and she doesn't speak for me," Capps said of Maines. Capps was joined by her nine-year-old son, Steven, and twelve-year-old daughter, Becky, who both held up signs outside the arena: "They're being raised to be patriots, and they're being raised to understand that the First Amendment does not excuse a person from facing the consequences."
Don Wilson of Taylors, S.C., held up a large poster with an altered photograph showing the Dixie Chicks with their arms around Saddam Hussein while burning the flag. Wilson didn't have tickets to the concert, but showed up to make his opinion known. "They have the world stage to speak," he said. "I have Greenville."
The Chicks didn't shy away from making their own statements last night. As they sang "Truth No. 2," large television screens showed images of civil rights marches and woman's suffrage protests, as well as pictures of Beatles and, of course, Dixies albums being crushed.
Later, when Maines emerged for the encore, she mentioned George W. Bush for the first and only time. "They just told me that the president has announced that the war is over," she said. "It seems a little strange to keep playing songs, but I guess we'll celebrate and keep going."
ANDY PARAS
(May 2, 2003)
