As the Dixie Chicks' new hit single says, they've been a long time gone. The Texas trio went on hiatus two years ago, at the end of a top-grossing arena tour that cemented their status as both country superstars and pop icons. Fiddler Martie Maguire got married, and lead singer Natalie Maines and banjoist Emily Robison both had babies on their minds: Maines had a son a year ago, Robison is due in a few months. The band produced their new album with Natalie's father, Lloyd Maines, in their current home base of Austin -- it's no wonder they decided to call it Home (Sony).

The Chicks may have spent the past two years taking it easy, but they've hardly been out of the headlines. Their first two major-label albums, Wide Open Spaces and Fly (both on Sony), have sold more than 10 million copies each, which means their songs will remain radio staples for years to come. But the band have also been in the spotlight for reasons less musical -- and less fortunate. Last year, they got in a fight over money with Sony that ended up with both parties filing lawsuits. The band tried to leave the label, the label sued for breach of contract, and the band sued the label back for withheld royalties. Fans began to wonder whether the next Dixie Chicks album would ever see the light of day.

But both parties seem to have realized how much they had to lose by waging a protracted legal battle, and before long the disputes were settled out of court. The Chicks got the money they wanted, Sony got to hold onto their cash cow, and the fans got Home, an alternately frisky and poignant work that trades pop crossover appeal for bluegrass authenticity. The legal skirmish between the band and their label has a lot to do with the album's dirt-road feel: for the first time since they got signed, the Chicks hit the studio on their own dime, working with minimal involvement from the Nashville establishment. As a result, the disc is far more mature-sounding than their previous efforts, and also the most impressive showcase to date of their considerable vocal and instrumental talents.

The first single, "Long Time Gone," is the perfect introduction to the new Dixie Chicks, and as such it's better defined by what's not there than by what is. No electric guitars, no drums, no keyboards -- i.e., none of the Nashville trappings that turned country music into arena rock way before Mutt Lange and Shania Twain got married. It's a chirpy folk romp about family, dreams, and the evils of mainstream country radio: "Now they sound tired but they don't sound haggard/They got money but they don't have cash." Natalie belts out the wistful tale of trying to make it off the farm with her usual gusto, and the big mountain harmonies Martie and Emily sing on the chorus are all the window dressing the song needs.

"Long Time Gone" is not enough of a stylistic departure to pose a significant commercial risk to the Chicks. But glossy production isn't the only thing they've left behind -- the Shania-derived girl-power overtones that ultimately propelled them from the country ghetto to the pop charts are also less prominent this time around. The band's biggest crossover hit to date is "Goodbye Earl," a hilarious tongue-in-cheek murder fantasy about an abusive husband on their '99 disc Fly. Along with Natalie's exaggerated twang and obscene yelps (I still laugh every time I hear her spit the line "We'll pack a lunch"), the song's triumphant female-buddy story made it as good a teenybopper novelty hit as anything the Spice Girls ever pulled off.

The Chicks have always been a lot more roots-minded than Shania, but there's no denying the influence of the latter on the slick, girl-friendly pop of Wide Open Spaces and Fly. Now the band have a new multi-platinum template for Home, one that's both more modest and closer to their hearts: the Grammy-winning O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack (Lost Highway), which brought old-time country and bluegrass out of the history books and into the pop charts. Unlike the average pop star's post-blockbuster bandwagon jump, the Chicks' bluegrass move makes plenty of artistic sense. For one thing, it harks back to their early days as an old-fashioned cowgirl band who made their name playing on the streets of Dallas in the early '90s. For them, it also seems like the ideal compromise between the dueling musical and commercial aspirations that all performers have to reconcile at some point.

Home finds the Chicks coming full circle by working with Lloyd Maines, a veteran Texas guitarist who was a long-time member of Joe Ely's band and played on albums by Uncle Tupelo and Wilco when they were still country. It was Lloyd who introduced his daughter Natalie to sisters Martie and Emily when that duo were between singers and still in search of a record deal; he played on the Chicks' two previous albums but had never produced them. The handful of guest stars on the disc also come with plenty of cred: youthful mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile (of the bluegrass crossover band Nickel Creek) plays on three tracks, and country-rock legend Emmylou Harris sings a tender backing vocal on the ballad "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)."

All of which suggests plenty of hot bluegrass picking and down-home country charm, without much room for the band's previous pop and rock leanings. The Chicks do make one key concession to the pop world on Home: a banjo-heavy cover of the classic Fleetwood Mac ballad "Landslide" featuring a pretty mandolin solo by Martie and one of the most plaintive vocal turns Natalie has taken. She's got plenty of competition, of course, in both Stevie Nicks's powerful original and Billy Corgan's ghostly performance on the popular Smashing Pumpkins version. But Natalie's serious side proves as compelling as her more celebrated funny side, and the band give the song a relatively straight treatment that makes it a foolproof choice.

Although Martie co-wrote a pair of hits on Fly, the Chicks have been a repertoire group at least since they used a song by Texas folkies the Groobees as the title track to Wide Open Spaces. Home boasts contributions from an impressive variety of contemporary roots songwriters. "Long Time Gone" and the melancholy ballad "More Love" originally appeared on the independent release Real Time (Howdy Skies) from respected bluegrass guys Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott, the latter of whom doubles as a hitmaking Nashville songwriter. As source material goes, it's more smart than sexy -- and proof that the Chicks are identifying with the country-folk tradition more than with the pop world these days.

The band's other favorite collaborator on Home is the equally unglamorous Patty Griffin, the Maine-bred singer-songwriter who snagged her first record deal while hanging around the Boston folk scene in the mid '90s. The Chicks have long been fans of Griffin: they've invited her to tour with them, and they covered her "Let Him Fly" on Fly. This time around, they got her to write two new songs for them, including the album's mesmerizing closer, "Top of the World." Everybody strums quietly behind Natalie's words of regret for most of the track's six minutes, until Martie sneaks up with a ghoulish string section in tow and Natalie brings the song to a close by ominously reciting the title until it fades. It's as despairing as the average commercial country ballad is sappy, and the band show a keen talent for understatement.

Bluegrass isn't all heartbreak and sorrow, though, and the Chicks get plenty of chances to cut loose on Home. Three of the four songs they had a hand in writing are high-octane hillbilly workouts in the mischievous vein of the Fly standout "Sin Wagon." "White Trash Wedding" sports the album's best song title and an equally zany catch phrase: "I shouldn't be wearing white and you can't afford no ring." The band's head-spinning instrumental work is no joke: the tune flies by at such a breakneck pace, it's hard to keep track of everything that's going on, but Martie, Emily, guitarist Bryan Sutton, and mandolinist Adam Steffey cut through the mix with their own fleet-fingered showcases. They all get to burn again on the joyous reel "Lil' Jack Slade," then Thile shows up halfway through and blows everyone away with an impossibly fast mandolin solo.

On uplifting moments like those, Home's communal vibe becomes most apparent: it's a loose, carefree album made by two sisters and a father-daughter team who've been honing their craft for years and just happened to become pop stars along the way. Indeed, the family theme runs through almost every track. "Travelin' Soldier," a standout narrative about a young girl who falls in love with a soldier during the Vietnam War, was written by Emily's brother-in-law, Austin singer-songwriter Bruce Robison. And Natalie pours all of a mother's love into Radney Foster's "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)," a sweet nursery rhyme that sounds like a lullaby for her newborn son. The Dixie Chicks scaled the heights of pop stardom before any of them reached 30. Now that they're all grown up, it seems they've got a long, fruitful career ahead of them.

Issue Date: September 13 - 19, 2002