maz
Baby Chick
Time heals everything?
Posts: 128
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Post by maz on Jun 27, 2010 1:58:38 GMT -8
Death threats and birth pang changed our tune. This is an amazing interview with Emily and Martie where they discuss their families, each other and Martie talks about how the Dallas threat very openly and honestly. It really is heartbreaking to read but made me love the three of them even more for being so defiant and courageous. You need to register BUT it is free! www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/Magazine/Regulars/article320886.ece#prev
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Post by myfavoritegirls on Jun 27, 2010 7:37:01 GMT -8
Wow! What a great article. I love how Emily said they are more like twins than just sisters...
thanks for posting!
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Post by Kent67b on Jun 27, 2010 9:07:53 GMT -8
What a great interview with the two of them. Thanks for posting it.
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Post by oregonchickfan on Jun 27, 2010 9:28:18 GMT -8
It won't take my email addy...says the server is down. Guess I will try again later.
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Post by redheadedmomma on Jun 27, 2010 10:40:56 GMT -8
Got the server down thing too.
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Post by oregonchickfan on Jun 27, 2010 17:00:45 GMT -8
I am still getting the server down error. To sign up it's only good for a limited time, so, does someone still have access to this site? Could you please try to copy the article and paste it here?
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Post by Wild Turkey on Jun 27, 2010 19:39:09 GMT -8
Death threats and birth pangs changed our tune
The singer-songwriters Martie Maguire, 40, and Emily Robison, 37, of the Dixie Chicks, on sisterly bonds and their new musical venture
Interview by Danny Scott Published: 27 June 2010
Martie, 40, singer-songwriter Our family moved to Texas from upstate New York when I was six and Emily was three, and we all immediately fell in love with country music and bluegrass. Bluegrass was originally from places like Kentucky and the Blue Ridge Mountains, but Texas was a big bluegrass state and the whole family — Mom, Dad, our older sister, Julia, Emily and I — would travel to the bluegrass and country festivals.
I was already playing the fiddle by then, and watching these guys play live music was so much more exciting than going to my lessons. I realised you could actually go out into the big, wide world and play songs for people. Music became the glue that bonded Emily and I together. She had the banjo and I had the fiddle — I first picked it up at five, and it was my special instrument. If Emily wanted to tease me, she’d listen to what I was playing in my room and then pick up another fiddle and play the same song. I remember marching into her bedroom and hitting her over the head with my fiddle. “Mom, Emily’s playing the fiddle. Make her stop!”
I think that was the only fight we ever had. From a very early age we were used to playing in bands with other kids, and that gave us a tremendous sense of our normality. All the other kids seemed to be fighting for attention or arguing… some were racists and religious fanatics. Emily and I would look out at this crazy world and say: “We don’t want to be like that.” That was Emily. She gave me something to cling to in that upside-down world.
A lot of the time she seems like the older sister. She’s the one who’s looking out for me. In my late teens I became pretty wild. I would often steal our parents’ car. For a while I used to try and get Emily to be my partner in crime, but she wasn’t interested.
She’d say: “Why on Earth would you want to do that? What if you damage the car? What if you have an accident and end up in hospital? Do you know how much you will hurt Mom and Dad?”
Emily was the one who told me our parents were getting divorced. I was at college by then, and she was still at home: she had figured out what was happening by listening through the walls. As usual, she handled it very calmly, but I was pissed off. My dad cheated on my mom, and I was angry. “How dare you get divorced! Can’t you see that you’re ruining my whole life!”
The odd thing is, when Emily went through her own divorce a couple of years ago, she never even mentioned it to me. I saw her several times when all the heavy stuff was going down and she did not say a thing. Maybe she was protecting me from the hurt. I think I lean on her a lot. Sometimes it’s just everyday crap. Mommy-guilt! We both became parents at about the same time and I’m always saying to her: “Do you feel like a terrible mom? I do.”
I certainly leaned on Emily when the band started getting death threats. I think all three of us in the band started to lean on each other. We knew we couldn’t cope with something like that unless we all stood together. It happened after Natalie [Maines, Dixie Chicks’ lead singer] said a few things about George Bush and the Iraq war when we were on stage at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2003. [From the stage, Maines said: “We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.”] Everybody thought it would blow over in a few days, but it didn’t. Later that summer the madness started. People were threatening to kill us.
There was one show in Dallas when we were told somebody was going to shoot Natalie. Emily and I would have called the show off, but Natalie wanted to do it. She just kept saying: “You can’t let hate win.” We felt if Natalie was willing to make a stand, we wanted to be right with her. As we got ready, I hugged both of them so tight. Was this the last time I would see Natalie? What if they missed her but hit Emily or me? Would I die straight away or in the hospital? As all of this was going through my head, I thought: “We are musicians. That’s all. Why would people want to kill us? Just for having an opinion? We aren’t trying to change the world. We just want to play songs to make people happy.”
When we eventually walked out on stage I looked across at my friend Natalie and at Emily, the girl I’d grown up with. That made me think of my family — my own kids — and I thought: “Should I be risking my life for this? Playing music is so small. So insignificant. It doesn’t matter. But my friends matter. And my family matters.” Out there on the stage, I can honestly say I realised what was truly important in my life.
Emily, 37, singer-songwriter As a kid I loved country music, but I was also aware that it wasn’t cool. It was almost as if I had two separate lives: with my friends I loved Madonna and watched Beverly Hills 90210, but with Martie I loved bluegrass. I looked up to Martie. If she liked country music, hell, it must be okay.
Being in a band with a member of your family isn’t always easy. We had the occasional fight, but it was never over obvious things like boys, or who got to stand at the front of the stage. We’d fight over silly things like underwear. “Hey, you stole my good bra. Give it back!” If anything, the band brought us much closer, because we learnt how to compromise, which is very important for a kid — I sang the last song, so Martie sings this one… Mom and Dad had a lot to do with that. They never set Julia or Martie or me against each other. We were made to feel secure in who we were.
In a strange way I think that really helped when Mom and Dad eventually split up. Yes, of course it was terribly painful for all of us, but for me it never felt traumatic. I was secure enough as part of that family. The only change was that Mom and Dad wouldn’t be together. I was still living at home when all this was happening, and I remember talking to Martie about it but sparing her some of the gory details. I think I wanted to protect her. I didn’t even talk to her about my own divorce. She’s my sister, but I don’t want to dump all my problems on her.
There have been times when I’ve had to share the burden with Martie, like when we went through the whole George Bush/Iraq thing. How could we not talk about that? It took over our lives for so long.
People burning our CDs, people saying they were going to kill us. You can’t just keep that to yourself and pretend nothing’s wrong. And it was also very difficult to hide the fact that I was going through IVF treatment. Maybe I would have hidden it if I could, but we were on tour at the time and I was seeing lots of different doctors in different states. I think almost one doctor in every big city in the US has had a good look at my, shall we say, “internals”!
I remember saying to Martie: “I’ve taken my clothes off for so many people that I don’t care who sees me naked any more. Bring ’em on!” But that’s what you can go through to have kids. You spend so much of your life trying not to get pregnant that you think it will just happen overnight. Sometimes it doesn’t. My mom had no problems, my older sister had no problems, but it just wasn’t happening for me.
Luckily, I was in a position financially where I could opt for treatment, but I don’t think I was fully prepared for the emotional and physical rollercoaster. A few months later, when Martie started trying for kids, we found out she was having problems, too. We started to wonder if it was to do with our lifestyles. I’m not talking about the rock’n’roll lifestyle. We weren’t heavy drinkers and we certainly hadn’t bothered with drugs, but we’d lived almost the same lives and been to the same places. Was it to do with that environment?
There was a tremendous sense of relief, for both of us, when I had my first child. Having a child is such a huge part of being a woman. I wanted to be a mother and I think seeing me give birth gave Martie so much hope when she was having the treatment. All the IVF drugs and the getting naked was worth it.
Spending so much time with Martie has taken us beyond being sisters: we’re more like twins. Though we’re still with the Chicks, Martie and I just launched ourselves as the Court Yard Hounds, and when I was writing music for our album, she was there in my head. I could hear the parts that she’d play and the parts that she’d sing. I guess that, musically and emotionally, she has been a constant in my life. She is there, unchanging. She’s my rock. And I hope that I’m her rock, too.
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Post by natkins on Jun 27, 2010 19:58:48 GMT -8
Here's a PDF version if anyone is interested. Attachments:
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Post by alikat on Jun 27, 2010 23:13:15 GMT -8
Cheers to maz and WT (as I was also unable to register in order to see the article). A nice article indeed and, as you say, maz, some of Martie's comments about the Dallas threat are very open and honest. I also liked the fact that she tried to get Emily to be a partner-in-crime with their parents' car and was wholeheartedly rebuffed by her sister!
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Post by emiiadcx on Jun 28, 2010 4:57:25 GMT -8
Thank you so much for posting this, great article!
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Post by starcarbon on Jun 28, 2010 6:21:12 GMT -8
Thanks
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Post by oregonchickfan on Jun 28, 2010 17:00:50 GMT -8
Thank you Judy and Nancy for posting the article! And thanks maz for the link! That was a great article, it's nice to read about a different side of M&E that we as fans aren't prived to.
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Post by eaglemaster on Jun 29, 2010 7:17:24 GMT -8
Thank you for posting this article, Wild Turkey.
This was a very good read and I can almost feel how close the two sisters are to each other.
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Post by redbarron on Jun 29, 2010 14:41:39 GMT -8
Great interview. Thanks a lot for posting.
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Post by ozfannz on Jul 3, 2010 4:49:08 GMT -8
That was a fabulous read and the best article about the Chicks/Hounds I've read. Ever! Touching. Emily's last line brought a tear to my eye! You only then truly understand how close these two are. Love em!
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Post by citychick176 on Jul 4, 2010 15:07:05 GMT -8
That was so sweet! I loved hearing their takes on each other, and looking back on their lives. Awesome interview! (And don't worry Ozfannz, I teared up a bit too!)
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Post by shorty30586 on Jul 19, 2010 13:58:27 GMT -8
Thanks for sharing! This was really great
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Post by samfan6 on Aug 1, 2010 15:19:58 GMT -8
ditto thanks for sharing.... it brings to mind the scene in SUAS when they were about to step on stage in Dallas... hearing their version of it and recalling the movie scenes, still tugs at my heart...
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Post by Kallie on Nov 9, 2010 19:33:08 GMT -8
I like how they talked about the same things in each paragraph...did they write that out or was it spoken?
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