On Essentials Radio on Apple Music Country, The Chicks chat to Kelleigh Bannen about influences, hits and reinvention. The band reflect on their name change, forming in Texas and performing with Beyonce.
Every other weekend on Essentials Radio, a rotating cast of hosts explores the legendary hits that turned some of their favourite artists into superstars and household names.
Martie and Natalie Tell Apple Music About The Band’s Name Change…
MARTIE: That needed to happen, and we knew that needed to happen for quite some time. We were feeling uneasy about it probably after the Bush stuff and not knowing how to do that, and just trying to kind of mature with that name is really hard because you just feel like it has so many connotations that make people think they know who you are based on your name, and it just kind of felt icky.
So we would try to move to DCX. So if you look back, a lot of our tour, our merch has DCX or The Chicks and just that subtlety was not catching on. So definitely, with George Floyd’s murder and everything that started happening with Black Lives Matter, we were like, “Oh my God. We got to do this and do this as soon as possible.” But it took some time to just dot the I’s, cross the T’s, make sure it was legally, what were we going to change it to? We had a really funny management Zoom call where we were throwing out ridiculous names and it just came back to, we had to go through that to come back to, “Okay, the most obvious thing is The Chicks.” Now, we got to get lawyers involved and figure out how to make that our name.
NATALIE: And it’s not like we were walking around feeling burdened by this name, it was more like when something changes or whatever. It’s like once it happens, then you realize the weight that was lift … You didn’t even know you were carrying that weight until it was gone. And then it’s like, “Oh yeah, we’re The Chicks? What were we thinking? That’s a way cooler name. What are we so scared of? We’re The Chicks.”
Natalie Tells Apple Music About Writing “Young Man” for The Chicks’ Most Recent Album ‘Gaslighter’…
It’s just the overall sentiment of that song is that you can form your own path, especially to all sort of divorced kids with divorced parents. I think it’s important when your parents are divorcing to know that you don’t have to carry their burdens and that you are their DNA, but that doesn’t automatically make them a slave to your problems or those aspects of your personality or whatever it is that they don’t like. They don’t have to repeat that. They don’t have to take that on. They can leave what they don’t like about you and take what they do like about you and form their own path.
The Chicks Tell Apple Music How “Daddy Lessons” Duet with Beyonce Came to Be…
EMILY: Well, first, we played it. [Daddy Lessons] was played over, and over, and over again in the dressing room. And so that song just definitely rose to the top.
NATALIE: We were doing it live in our show, and then that’s why she called us because she saw it posted on social media and she reposted it… Well, she’s the biggest supporter of women, and then Texans. So I mean, we’ve always felt the kinship with her, for sure.
EMILY: But guys, don’t you remember this? Even back when she was in Destiny’s Child, and we knew they were from Houston and we were from Texas as well. And we saw them in the airport one time and it was just that weird like, “Hey.”
The Chicks Tell Apple Music That Songwriting for ‘Taking the Long Way’ was Cathartic After Controversy…
NATALIE: It was cathartic. It was awesome. And you know, for a producer like Rick Rubin to come to us, we never would’ve had the whatever to ask Rick Rubin if he would produce our record. So when he sort of came to us and said, “I would love to produce your next album; I’ve always admired your talent, but I feel like for the first time ever, you actually have something to say.” I think a lot of times songwriting sometimes felt like such homework on other albums, because it was kind of creating stories a lot of times, or writing about fake situations or made-up people in our heads. And he was absolutely right that we finally had something to write about. We didn’t think anybody’s going to play ‘Home.’ We definitely didn’t think anything was going to happen with that album. So yeah, I mean pressure is off, and you just make what you want to make.
The Chicks Tell Apple Music Why They Secretly Recorded ‘Home’…
MARTIE: That whole album was so freeing to make because we had just gone through a lawsuit with our record label for non-payment. And we’ve just felt free. We felt like we wanted to turn in anything but a top 40 hit record. We wanted to just go down a rabbit hole, got Natalie’s dad to produce, got all our favourite bluegrass musicians. There were no rules.
EMILY: And I remember it was kind of a secret. We were doing it all on our own dime. We weren’t asking Sony for anything because we were in this lawsuit with them. So we just did it under the radar and with our own money and picking everybody ourselves and not involving national producers. And that was one of the reasons we kept it really close to home.
The Chicks Tell Apple Music About Getting in Trouble With Their Label for Drinking On Stage…
MARTIE: We did a promo concert at a smoky bar one night and it was a bunch of radio people. I remember we got in a s*** ton of trouble because we ordered beers up to the stage.
NATALIE: No, shots. We did shots.
MARTIE: Oh, shots. Okay. Whatever. Alcohol. Alcohol. We got in so much trouble and were called into the Sony office the next day about the fact that we drank. Isn’t that crazy? This wasn’t the 50’s. This was the 90’s. Because we drank onstage.
NATALIE: Nashville has kind of … I don’t know. Back then. I don’t know what it’s like now. But they did have a reputation for having this shwarmy formulaic way of breaking artists. I think most artists did that. Like I say, I think it’s easier to stay strong, be yourself, speak up, I don’t know, when there’s three. Because really also, I just don’t think they gave us much flack because we were sort of an army.
