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Dixie Chicks: Natalie Maines
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The Dixie Chicks proved to be the big winners at the 49th annual Grammy awards in LA on Sunday night, despite their controversial anti-Bush political stance. The feisty Texan trio - Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines and Emily Robison - scooped five awards, including Best Record and Best Song for their defiant anthem Not Ready To Make Nice. The girls ... won Album Of The Year, Best Country Album and Best Country Performance for their album Taking The Long Way. Bandmate Emily thanked the group's fans for sticking with them, saying: "We wouldn't have done this album without everything we went through so we have no regrets."
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With so many Nashville acts playing mainstream pop, the Dixie Chicks' long-awaited sixth album is a refreshing breath of sweet country air. Even their gorgeous cover of Stevie Nicks' "Landslide" gets dressed up with all the rootsy frills that made albums like the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack a phenomenon.
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Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines made a surprise appearance at a benefit concert with Willie Nelson, Patty Griffin and other musicians for relief efforts to tsunami victims in countries around the Indian Ocean. The sold-out concert Sunday night at Austin Music Hall raised $67,000 in ticket sales. Maines sang the hit "Travelin' Soldier" with Bruce Robison, who wrote the tune, then performed a duet with Griffin and "Settle For Love" with Joe Ely. All acts donated their talents and most production workers didn't receive pay. A DVD of the concert will be available at Nelson's Texas Roadhouse restaurants and through Lost Highway Records, with sales to ... benefit relief efforts. Concert organizers said ticket proceeds were going to the Red Cross, UNICEF and CARE.
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The Dixie Chicks are ... famous for their opposition to U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. While on tour in London, England in March of that year, singer Maines told an audience, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." The comment irked Bush supporters in the U.S., many of whom formed the trio's traditional fan base. It also sparked a temporary feud with Toby Keith, whose hit song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" offered a different political viewpoint. Anti-Chicks sentiment drew plenty of media attention, but the Dixie Chicks released Taking the Long Way in 2006 and proved their careers hadn't suffered much. The album was a top-seller and earned the Chicks five Grammy awards, including the awards for best record, best album and best song ("Not Ready to Play Nice").
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Few of the millions and millions of people who bought the Dixie Chicks' major label debut, Wide Open Spaces, knew that the band had already been together for almost a decade, playing the folk and bluegrass circuit. The group was started by champion fiddle player Martie Seidel and her banjo-playing sister Emily Irwin. They went through a succession of lead singers before settling on Natalie Maines in the late-1990s. Maines' country pedigree is impressive, beginning with her father Lloyd Maines, a legendary pedal steel guitarist and studio luminary who has produced and played with Uncle Tupelo, Richard Buckner and Joe Ely, among others. With Maines in place, the Chicks dropped some of their bluegrass trappings in favor of a more conventional New Country sound. The fine-tuning paid off.
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Natalie Maines (Dixie Chicks) and George Strait team up with Rodeo luminaries Steven Bland, Roy Cooper, Tommy Guy, Tuff Hedeman and Larry Mahan in the new family film titled "GRAND CHAMPION." The film is set for an August 27 release in various cities around the U.S., including: Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, San Diego, Bakersfield, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Chicago, Denver and Seattle.
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Natalie Maines