Thoughts on “Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing,” Chris Rice
David Fillingim writes in his book Redneck Liberation that the Dixie Chicks are “the female act that best embodies the new ideal of Country Womanhood.” This involves a new look–(wardrobe, makeup, hair) which is control of their image, control of their sexuality, and I’ll say a new attitude. That new attitude involves a woman’s desire and ability to speak her mind whereever she wants. This, and the community-bond between band members are essentially the heart of the movie Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing.
Let me preface my thoughts by admitting that I’m not yet a true Dixie Chicks fan. I don’t yet own one of their albums. I have heard singles here and there and seen music videos. Watching the trailer for this movie on Youtube made me want to own it, you see, I am probably more fascinated with Natalie Mains attitude than her songs. I think any Texas girl willing to stick her neck out in England and say what she really thinks about the President has the sort of sass that can draw my attention.
As David’s book was published in 2003, I assume the whole controversy depicted in Shut Up & Sing had only just begun to surface. The movie takes us on the road, in their homes, backstage and in the birthing room for a biopic full of lusty anger, fear, protest, rage, that balances family and road life, and image/brand management. First Amendment rights are thrown up against market appeal and the question lays naked on the table: “How much attitude will music buyers stomach from the world’s first female superstar band?”
The Chicks clearly don’t want record sales and concert tickets to slip at any cost. Emily Robison says at one point that with seven children there is no way they’re going back to the pink RV. So the whole thing seems like some sort of heroic experiment. (That word heroic is so en vogue now isn’t it?) The Dixie Chicks are braving new ground for the rest of the music industry, testing the limits of their brand appeal and showing the world that a new Country Woman need never apologize for her beliefs.
The battle between Natalie Mains and Toby Keith is particularly enjoyable to watch, albeit in an annoying sort of way. Its clear that Keith and Mains both represent decidedly different political attitudes. Neither are lacking in motzy and not since the Outlaw movement have fans been treated to such salacious image rivalry.
A deeper question than that of freedom of speech and image control seems to be “What do the Dixie Chicks reveal about who is or is not in the Country Music Scene?” This question seems to have a simple answer at first. One could argue that Country Music has always been about a certain acceptable image dictated by the buying public tastes at a given point in history. But more important than what listeners want to buy is what listeners relate to.
David writes:
Country music, then covers a multitude of sins—or at least encompasses a multitude of musical styles, themes, and backgrounds. Part of my challenge in this book will be to argue convincingly that country music really is the music of a marginalized people, when, at the time of this writing, country enjoys the widest popularity of all American radio formats and appeals to the wealthiest and best-educated of radio audiences. (p. 13)
In Shut Up & Sing we encounter Natalie Mains arguing to the Dixie Chicks manager that if Country music is finished with the Dixie Chicks than the Dixie Chicks will just be finished with Country music. They admit that what they are playing could be considered country music, but that if the people buying their albums aren’t country, than neither will their music be. The connection between the Chicks and their fans is a question mark in the movie. The bond between the band members is stronger than ever, but the political backlash for Natalie’s statement seems to drive a wedge of fear between the band and their audience. Maybe this is not true. Maybe its just the movie emphasis. Either way, in this instance the very genre of music in question is up for grabs because of the tension.
I’d like to point out here that this image tension is nothing new to Country music audiences. Its interesting that Rick Rubin produced the latest Dixie Chicks album. Rubin is the man behind the successful reworking of another controversial Country cross-over stylist, Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash made several careers out of controversy, with some folks believing perhaps up unto the day he died that he’d actually done time at San Quentin prison for the murders he sang about in his songs.
I really don’t know what to do with the image tension involved in Country music. If Country music is for poor white rural southerners, if it is supposed to tell their story, than someone should let radio stations know! Let’s face it. Since the late 1990s the demographic audience has shifted in radio. The internet and the IPod have made previously hard to find music much more readily available. So Country music need no longer be dictated by over the counter sales and radio polls. I would venture to say that many folks are like me in that they don’t even listen to the radio anymore. They have an IPod playlist. What constitutes Country is up for grabs like never before.
Maybe image tension reflects something deeper about human need and belonging. A singer relates to the songs as a part of herself on an intimate level and the listener is drawn to that. The listener is drawn into the bond between the singer and the song and feels a part of it. With enough of these songs an image develops and the singer is indebted both to the image and to the audience. Now, throw in enough money to set the singer’s lifestyle comfortably and an awful lot is at stake! Any number of things can get between the singer, the image, and the audience to hurt the expected bond. Maybe this whole tension, when it happens as often as it does in Country music, reveals a profound theological truth: We humans are never the sum of our creative expressions. While song has powerful spiritual effectiveness it is always limited to being symbolic. It points to ultimates but always falls victim to offering more than can be delivered.
How I Came to Love Country Music, David Fillingim
How I came to love country music is summed up in the opening couplet of a song I wrote recently:
Well, no I did not grow up poor and hungry, but I do come from the South; And I’ve had years and years of education, but I still live hand to mouth.
Let me elaborate. I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, the son of a physician. Basically, I was a pretty typical upper middle class suburban white kid—not the socioeconomic locus of country music’s core audience. Like suburban white kids in my generation (including Garth Brooks!), I grew up listening to arena rock bands. My favorites were KISS, Foghat, and Blue Oyster Cult. Around this time, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were having pop hits and Southern Rock was in its heyday. There was more “twang” in the top 40 than on country radio stations. So, along with classic rock, and in between incidents of the abomination called Disco, my radio brought me in touch with good country music.
When I was about fifteen, my church offered a free guitar class to try to train youth sing-along leaders to replace the ones who were soon to graduate and move off to college and careers. I signed up.
I was not very good at it. A few years later, when I took a battery of aptitude and interest tests to help me decide what I would be when I grew up, I learned that I am in the bottom five percent of the population in finger dexterity, which explains why, to this day, no matter how much I practice the guitar, I never get much better at it. But I learned to play well enough for church youth group sing-alongs (“It only takes a spark, to get a fire go-o-ing….”)—and well enough to entertain myself.
Wanting to use my newly acquired talents to impress others, I looked to perform. But performing rock music requires an entire band, of which some members must possess actual musical talent, not to mention expensive sound equipment. Performing country music requires only the ability to play three chords and carry a tune, because a country performance can be carried along by the power of the song. A mediocre performance of a great country song is still a good thing to hear.
As I moved toward young adulthood, I found myself unlucky at love. This deepened my identification with country music, because I found it much better to think of myself as the kind of tragic loner celebrated in country music than as simply a shy and socially awkward kid blundering his way through late adolescence.
Then life started happening. I married, finished school, became a pastor, started raising children. I listened to country music some, and to other types of music, and mostly to NPR news. Then, in my early thirties, I decided to go back to school to pursue a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics.
This move did several things:
1. It plunged my family into permanent semi-poverty. If you check out of the economy for five years in mid-career, and reenter at entry level, you will never recover financially. So, now, and for the rest of my life, I will identify with the economic situation of country music’s traditional core audience.
2. It committed me to spend the rest of my life studying stuff.
3. More specifically, it began the process that would lead me to study country music. I was talking with friends one day about various theological books we had read recently, and I said, “Someone ought to write a book about the music of poor white people the way James Cone did about The Spirituals and the Blues.” Suddenly, a research project was born!
I love good country music because of the way it expresses to ultimate concerns of ordinary working-class people, because of its humor and irony, because it’s fun to sing, and for whatever other reasons make up the intangible dimensions of individual aesthetic tastes.
songs about mother and dying
Chris’s post:
I’m sitting by my mother’s bedside in the hospital today. Mom is in the late stages of cancer and she’s not been responsive much the last few days. My wife sits here with me. So many of the old hard-living country songs about mother and death are close to me now. We just sang the song Far Side Banks of Jordan to mom. Johnny and June Carter Cash sung it as a duet for June’s final album:
Far Side Banks of Jordan
(Johnny)I believe my steps are growing wearier by day
Got another journey on my mind
Lures of this old world have ceased to make me wanna stay
And my one regret is leaving you behind
(June)But if it proves to be his will that I am first to cross
And somehow I’ve a feeling it will be
When it comes your time to travel likewise don’t feel lost
For I will be the first one that you’ll see
Chorus
And I’ll be waiting on the far side banks of Jordan
I’ll be sitting drawing pictures in the sand
And when I see you coming I will rise up with a shout
And come running through the shallow water
Reaching for your hand
(Johnny)Through this life we labor hard to earn our meager fair
Its brought us trembling hands and failing eyes
(June) So I’ll just rest here on this shore and turn my eyes away
Until you come and we’ll see paradise
Chorus
Two other songs that mean a lot right now are Roseanne Cash’s September When It Comes and Lucinda Williams song Fancy Funeral from her new album West. Roseanne’s album Black Cadillac and Lucinda’s West are played a lot right now. Both women worked out their feelings regarding a parent’s passing with these albums. Roseanne lost Johnny, June, and Vivian before Black Cadillac. There’s nothing like losing a loved one to make you feel like you’re in a country song. I think what helps the most is that Roseanne and Lucinda write in the first person in very spiritual ways. They’re both amazing songwriters.
Johnny’s last performance
I can’t verify it but this claims to be Johnny Cash’s final performance at the Carter family fold. Enjoy it.
Ten important theological country albums
Thanks to Dave Fillingim for his Ten Songs. Here’s my top list of albums that I feel perfectly illustrate theologia crucis and theologia relationis. Here’s a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that gets at what I see in these albums:
I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it
is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith . . . . By
this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world—watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia (repentance); and that is how one becomes a [human being] and a Christian.
1. Steve Earle, I Feel Alright
2. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Will the Circle Be Unbroken
3. Billy Joe Shaver, Victory
4. Uncle Tupelo, No Depression
5. Michelle Shocked, Arkansas Traveler
6. Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison
7. Johnny Cash, At San Quentin
8. Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
9. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose
10. Wanted: The Outlaws
