Dixie Chick goes solo at SXSW
Dixie Chick goes solo: Natalie Maines is a solo artist for the first time in her career. Will the Dixie Chicks ever reunite for a new album? This Dixie Chick says she's still waiting.
Natalie Maines performs during the SXSW Music Festival, in Austin, Texas. Maines doesn’t know if the Dixie Chicks will ever write new music again.
(Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP Images)
Austin, Texas
Natalie Maines is starting out nervous on stage, almost 10 years to the day that the Dixie Chicks spitfire slammed then-President George W. Bush and forever changed the fate and fortunes of the country superstars.
On this night she barely speaks between songs.
Her hair slicks up in a punkish pompadour. She looks slimmer than when the Dixie Chicks began a hiatus in 2007 that may never end. The crowd at the South by Southwest music festival to hear Maines perform her solo debut "Mother" for only the second time is a healthy size, but it is also far from a packed house.
"We missed you, Natalie!" one fan hollers.
Maines smiles but doesn't banter back.
"I ask myself, 'Why is that? What are you doing, girl?'" Maines told The Associated Press the next morning at a downtown Austin hotel. "I think right now I have so much to remember. This is the most guitar I've ever had to play."
Now 38 and a solo artist for the first time in her career, Maines is candid about the past and guarded about the future. Asked whether the Dixie Chicks will ever record new music again, she curls in her chair with tense energy and declines to predict.
