Natalie Maines: ‘Dixie Chicks haven’t split’

Singer Natalie Maines refuses to accept the Dixie Chicks have split even though she has launched a solo career seven years after the country trio last recorded together. Maines and her bandmates, sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, announced a hiatus in 2006 so they could concentrate on family matters and being mums to their kids.
Robison and Maguire have since formed the band Courtyard Hounds, while Maines has just released her solo album Mother – but there are still no official break-up press releases and Maines insists there never will be.
She says, “The Dixie Chicks still exist. The music still exists. I am open to playing live shows. It’s fun… I always thought people broke up so they could make money on their comeback tour. That just always seemed like kind of a shady showbiz move to me. So unless they want to get a new lead singer or there’s some big change, I don’t see any purpose in that. To me, we’re the Dixie Chicks. We’ll always be the Dixie Chicks.
“I did get used to just being the boss and not having to have group decisions all the time: ‘What do you want to name the album?’ It was nice to just get to say what I want to name the album. But I can also see making another Chicks album.”
And she admits she has been given some sound advice about band break-ups from Eagles star Glenn Frey.
Maines tells The Hollywood Reporter, “(He) told me once that he wished the Eagles had never officially broken up. He looks back at that as kind of a silly thing to do.”