In 1986, while George W. Bush was busy finding Jesus and swearing off alcohol, a spunky little blond girl named Natalie Maines was finishing sixth grade in sleepy Lubbock, Texas. At a graduation ceremony, one of her favorite teachers offered a mock prediction: She would be elected president of the United States, then get "kicked out of office for excessive talking." For Maines, who instead grew up to be the Dixie Chicks' lead singer, then the most vilified woman in Dixie, and now, at age 38, a fledgling solo artist, the story proves one thing: "I was born outspoken. It followed me my whole life."
For nearly seven years, though, in the wake of the Chicks' last album, 2006's Taking the Long Way, she was uncharacteristically quiet. Instead of recording new music or touring (outside of scattered Chicks dates), Maines was at home: raising two kids while her husband, former Heroes star Adrian Pasdar, pursued his acting career; gardening in her lush Brentwood backyard; folding laundry while she listened to Howard Stern on the radio. "People have a very romantic idea of what they'd do if they could sing," she says, displaying no apparent exertion as she trots up a nearly vertical section of a hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains, a few minutes from home. "But I'm a mom, and it takes a lot of time." She claims, with a laugh, that she put out her rock-dominated solo debut, Mother, largely to get people to stop bugging her to make new music. "I didn't think I had time in my life for this," she says. "I sing all the time. But maybe nobody's hearing it, because I'm singing in my car or in my house or whatever. I don't need the roar of the crowd, and I don't need to hear cheers to feel validated."
Six mornings a week, Maines hikes this vertiginous five-mile-long path, which offers a brutal workout and a Lord of the Rings-worthy view that stretches for miles, even on today's cool and overcast spring morning. Maines is as fed up with country music as anyone still in a group called the Dixie Chicks could possibly be, but she still craves the wide-open spaces she used to sing about. Or else she just needs someplace big and quiet to process all that's happened to her. "It's probably good for her mentally, to kind of air her brain out," says her dad, Lloyd Maines, a famed steel guitarist and producer in his own right. "And she looks to me like she's in the best shape of her life." It's almost silent up here, except for the crunch of our feet on the dirt trail, the panting of her dogs, Mabel (a white Labrador) and Banjo (a friendly, dreadlocked puli, a breed introduced to her by Taking the Long Way producer Rick Rubin), and my own increasingly labored breathing. "I usually run the second part," Maines says. "But I won't make you do that!"
When fellow hikers pass by, they offer no more than friendly nods – no one recognizes her. Maines has a blunt-force haircut she compares to Rachel Maddow's, and is wearing a blue windbreaker over a sleeveless sweatshirt, a gray tee, running shorts and yellow-and-blue-neon running shoes. She looks, at the moment, more like an unusually attractive high school volleyball coach than anyone's idea of a star. "The short hair fits my personality more," she says. "I think maybe, with long hair, it was a role – I was playing dress-up a bit." (...)
For anyone who really knew her, it was no surprise when, on March 10th, 2003, Maines stood onstage in London, on the eve of the Iraq War, and made a casual comment, punctuated with a smile: "Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." For country-radio programmers, and at least a hysterical minority of fans, it was as if she'd French-kissed Saddam Hussein while setting fire to a puppy wrapped in the American flag. An unprecedented boycott and high-tech lynching followed – often overtly sexist, with drown-the-witch overtones: Bill O'Reilly calling them "callow, foolish women who deserve to be slapped around" wasn't even the worst of it. As chronicled in the superb 2006 documentary Shut Up and Sing, Maines and her bandmates handled it with strength and grace, touring in the face of death threats, playing with their young kids backstage while protesters screamed and smashed CDs outside the venues. Recorded with the controversy fresh in their minds, the barely-country Taking the Long Way turned out to be one of the Chicks' best albums, slapping down their critics while winning five Grammys and selling 2.5 million copies despite near-zero country-radio support.
But the backlash left inevitable scars. "I joke that I have PTSD, but there's probably truth in that joke," Maines says, blue eyes shining. "It all put an ugly light on people that I was kind of happily naive to. But when I was going through it, I really didn't feel like it was affecting me. I was in fight mode and battle mode, and I felt, you know, I was right, and free to say what I want to say." She went into therapy in the past few years. "Not just stuff with the controversy, but I think I've always been sort of a person that just pushes the feelings down, and then they do eventually come back up. So I didn't have tools to know how to deal with them or acknowledge them. I always like to pretend everything's OK. I'm a shyer person now, less trusting." (...)
Harper and Maines never discussed genre: "The words 'rock,' or 'country,' or 'soul' . . . none of that ever came up," says Harper. But as co-producer, Maines knew exactly what she wanted it all to sound like, even singing melodies for guitar solos and bass lines – and she was quite certain that she never wanted to make anything resembling a country album again. "I can't listen to our second album," she says, referring to the Chicks' 1999 breakthrough, Fly. "Because I was really, like, embracing country and really waving that country flag. My accent is so out of control on that album. I'm like, 'Who is that?'"
When the Bush controversy hit, Maines was stunned. "I always thought they accepted us in spite of the fact that we were different," she says. "It shocked me and kind of grossed me out that people thought I would be a conservative right-winger, that I'd be a redneck. But at that time, people didn't ask us things like, 'What do you think of gay marriage?' If they had, they would have learned how liberal I was. But I was so confused by who people thought I was and what I had been putting out there."
Afterward, she started acting out. "There was a part of me that was like, 'Oh, this isn't OK? Fuck that.' I didn't know the cat was in the bag, but it felt so good that the cat was out of the bag. Then I definitely just went, 'Oh, really? You don't like that? Well, how about this? Not only do I not like this president, I love gay people! And I'm pro-legalization of marijuana and all drugs! Yeah, let me blow your mind.'"
For nearly seven years, though, in the wake of the Chicks' last album, 2006's Taking the Long Way, she was uncharacteristically quiet. Instead of recording new music or touring (outside of scattered Chicks dates), Maines was at home: raising two kids while her husband, former Heroes star Adrian Pasdar, pursued his acting career; gardening in her lush Brentwood backyard; folding laundry while she listened to Howard Stern on the radio. "People have a very romantic idea of what they'd do if they could sing," she says, displaying no apparent exertion as she trots up a nearly vertical section of a hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains, a few minutes from home. "But I'm a mom, and it takes a lot of time." She claims, with a laugh, that she put out her rock-dominated solo debut, Mother, largely to get people to stop bugging her to make new music. "I didn't think I had time in my life for this," she says. "I sing all the time. But maybe nobody's hearing it, because I'm singing in my car or in my house or whatever. I don't need the roar of the crowd, and I don't need to hear cheers to feel validated."Six mornings a week, Maines hikes this vertiginous five-mile-long path, which offers a brutal workout and a Lord of the Rings-worthy view that stretches for miles, even on today's cool and overcast spring morning. Maines is as fed up with country music as anyone still in a group called the Dixie Chicks could possibly be, but she still craves the wide-open spaces she used to sing about. Or else she just needs someplace big and quiet to process all that's happened to her. "It's probably good for her mentally, to kind of air her brain out," says her dad, Lloyd Maines, a famed steel guitarist and producer in his own right. "And she looks to me like she's in the best shape of her life." It's almost silent up here, except for the crunch of our feet on the dirt trail, the panting of her dogs, Mabel (a white Labrador) and Banjo (a friendly, dreadlocked puli, a breed introduced to her by Taking the Long Way producer Rick Rubin), and my own increasingly labored breathing. "I usually run the second part," Maines says. "But I won't make you do that!"
When fellow hikers pass by, they offer no more than friendly nods – no one recognizes her. Maines has a blunt-force haircut she compares to Rachel Maddow's, and is wearing a blue windbreaker over a sleeveless sweatshirt, a gray tee, running shorts and yellow-and-blue-neon running shoes. She looks, at the moment, more like an unusually attractive high school volleyball coach than anyone's idea of a star. "The short hair fits my personality more," she says. "I think maybe, with long hair, it was a role – I was playing dress-up a bit." (...)
But the backlash left inevitable scars. "I joke that I have PTSD, but there's probably truth in that joke," Maines says, blue eyes shining. "It all put an ugly light on people that I was kind of happily naive to. But when I was going through it, I really didn't feel like it was affecting me. I was in fight mode and battle mode, and I felt, you know, I was right, and free to say what I want to say." She went into therapy in the past few years. "Not just stuff with the controversy, but I think I've always been sort of a person that just pushes the feelings down, and then they do eventually come back up. So I didn't have tools to know how to deal with them or acknowledge them. I always like to pretend everything's OK. I'm a shyer person now, less trusting." (...)
When the Bush controversy hit, Maines was stunned. "I always thought they accepted us in spite of the fact that we were different," she says. "It shocked me and kind of grossed me out that people thought I would be a conservative right-winger, that I'd be a redneck. But at that time, people didn't ask us things like, 'What do you think of gay marriage?' If they had, they would have learned how liberal I was. But I was so confused by who people thought I was and what I had been putting out there."
Afterward, she started acting out. "There was a part of me that was like, 'Oh, this isn't OK? Fuck that.' I didn't know the cat was in the bag, but it felt so good that the cat was out of the bag. Then I definitely just went, 'Oh, really? You don't like that? Well, how about this? Not only do I not like this president, I love gay people! And I'm pro-legalization of marijuana and all drugs! Yeah, let me blow your mind.'"
by Brian Hyatt, Rolling Stone | Read more:
Photo: Mark Seliger
