Accidents & Accusations Tour

Accidents & Accusations Tour

Tour by Dixie Chicks
File:DCX2006TourShirtFront.jpg
Associated album	Taking the Long Way
Start date	June 15, 2006
End date	December 5, 2006
Legs	4
No. of shows	50 14 cancelled
Dixie Chicks concert chronology

The Accidents & Accusations Tour was a 2006 concert tour by the Dixie Chicks. It was their first tour where tickets were sold after "the incident" in 2003 when lead singer Natalie Maines publicly criticized President George W. Bush at Shepherds Bush Empire in London during the Top of the World Tour, leading to intense criticism of the group. Consequently, the level of commercial success for the tour attracted considerable media attention. The tour was named after the lyrics in the song "Easy Silence" from the album Taking the Long Way, released a few weeks earlier in 2006.

History

The North American leg of the tour was announced on May 18, 2006, for approximately 60 shows to run from late July through early November.

While the Chicks' 2003 Top of the World Tour also took place after the Bush controversy, most of the tickets had already been sold beforehand, and it was the top-grossing country tour of that year. Despite good sales figures for the new Taking the Long Way album, however, initial ticket sales for the Accidents & Accusations Tour were far below expectations. Four dates in Memphis, Oklahoma City, Fresno, and Indianapolis were dropped from the tour schedule. In Houston, tickets never went on sale, with the concert promoter noting that local radio stations "wouldn't even accept our advertising money."Arenas holding 15,000 capacity were only selling 5,000-6,000 seats, sometimes less.

Industry observers thought the tour might have to be postponed or at least downsized to smaller venues, as for example Mariah Carey did on her 2003 Charmbracelet Tour, but in the end the Chicks initially kept on schedule and stayed in arenas. Some Northeastern areas did better, and shows in Canada did best, with an Air Canada Centre show in Toronto selling out almost immediately, resulting in a second show being added and Calgary's Saddledome having two shows as well in Winnipeg at the MTS Centre.

Dixie Chicks performed at Frank Erwin Center on December 4, 2006 in Austin, Texas during the tour.

Meanwhile, the tour began. The Chicks first performed a quick mini-leg of two concerts in London as part of their promotional activities for the June 12 international release of Taking the Long Way. Indeed their first concert performance in almost two years (since October 2004's Vote for Change shows) was on June 15 at Shepherd's Bush Empire, the so-called “scene of the crime” of Maines' remark regarding President Bush. In a show that was broadcast live by MSN and called "Scene of the Crime", Maines said from the stage, "And all week, the only thing people keep asking is, 'What are you gonna say? Do you know what you're gonna say?' As usual I didn't plan anything, but I thought I'd say something brand new and just say, 'Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.'" This was met with thunderous applause and cheers.

The North American leg began as scheduled on July 21, 2006 at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. The tour itinerary continued to suffer cancellations in the United States, while adding shows in Canada, where the new album and its singles were getting better radio airplay. An early leg show such as the July 25 one in Philadelphia's Wachovia Center, where sales had been reported as strong, still featured ten upper level sections empty and covered with black tarps. However, a show of hands taken by Maines indicated that a third or more of the fans were attending their first Chicks concert, which boded well for the group building a new audience. Continuing the ups and downs of the tour, the August 2 show at Jones Beach Theatre in Wantagh, New York was postponed due to extreme heat and humidity from the 2006 North American heat wave.

On August 4, a revised tour schedule was finally announced. From the original May schedule, 14 shows had now been cancelled due to poor sales, including dates in Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Knoxville, Des Moines, Glendale, Arizona, and Sunrise, Florida in addition to those previously mentioned. Several other late summer/early fall dates had been pushed back into later in the fall, including ones in Nashville, Los Angeles, Denver, and Phoenix. Compared to the original schedule, the total number of North American shows was still roughly the same, due to the addition of a large number of shows in Canada (where Taking the Long Way had proved extremely popular, going five-times-platinum); 15 of the 41 North American shows were now scheduled for north of the border, a strikingly high proportion for an American act. (Mariah Carey's concurrent The Adventures of Mimi Tour had also increased its Canadian dates, although not to this extent; her management said the Canadian market was hot and favorable exchange rates made playing there attractive.) Dates were also announced for Australia, where Taking the Long Way had been number one on the country albums for the three months since its release. The rescheduling also supposedly helped make room for promotion of the September 2006 documentary film Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, which, when released, contained a few behind-the-scenes and on-stage scenes from the beginning of the tour.

During interviews for that film, Maines said in reference to the tour, "We’ve basically been playing to about half the audience as on the last tour, but it’s a different audience. They just look good ... In the past, I think we always thought, Oh, we have a purpose to entertain them and they were there to absorb that and soak it up and be entertaining. They bought their ticket. Now you feel like they feel they have a purpose, supporting free speech and supporting us."

The show

The Dixie Chicks at Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, July 25, 2006.

Unlike the Top of the World Tour, where the arena staging had been in the round with the use of an elaborate set and scrims, the Accidents & Accusations Tour featured a conventional arena layout and a bare stage. One video screen was above the stage; in addition, semi-abstract images were projected onto lighted bead curtains behind the stage (somewhat similar to those used on U2's Vertigo Tour but less effective here due to the lack of anything on the other side). Entrance music was subversively chosen to be the militaristic Presidential theme "Hail to the Chief".

Stage patter was kept at a minimum during the Accidents & Accusations Tour, with Chicks Martie Maguire and Emily Robison generally saying nothing at all. Explicit political comments were kept to a minimum; Maines typically alluded to "the incident" only before "Lullaby", where she wryly stressed that in addition to being "mad as hell", they were all loving, affectionate mothers. But the situation is still not far from her mind. At the July 22 show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Maines lost track of the lyrics to the entrance music, and quipped "I feel like the president. I can't think of what to say." More pointedly, during their first show in Canada, at the Halifax Metro Centre on August 8, Maines said "I gotta tell you, it is nice to be in a country where you're not worried about them spitting in your face."

Maines was a more prominent instrumentalist than before, playing electric guitar, acoustic guitar, Omnichord, and handling the bass guitar duties on "Goodbye Earl". Effective use was made of two-part harmonies, with either Maguire or Robison backing Maines, to give an edgier vocal sound, which would then sometimes be resolved into the expected three-part harmonies.

The set list consisted of mostly material from Taking the Long Way and the prior Home, with a scattering of big hits and concert favorites from before that.

The emotional (and actual) center of the show was clearly "Not Ready to Make Nice", the Chicks' defiant response to the controversy and the death threats they received and first single from Taking the Long Way. It came after two bluegrass rave-ups, the second with Maines offstage resting. The quiet, ominous first notes of the song brought a rush of applause from the audience, Maines delivered the vocals with a focused intensity, the crescendo after the lines about the crazed response to her words brought another visceral audience reaction. The animations that played behind the band recapitulated the black liquid splashes from the music video of Not Ready to Make Nice: the splashing black liquid looked like oil, explosions, and at times even perhaps blood. The song completed on a quiet note again the house lights went partly up as the crowd typically gave very prolonged applause. She then followed this with the respite of "Easy Silence", which precedes it on the album.

Other highlights included a crowd-rousing "Goodbye Earl", "Landslide" with harmonies rearranged into a higher register and giving an almost unworldly feel, a confident "The Long Way Around", a lyrical "Cowboy Take Me Away", and a stunning "Top of the World" with Maguire joining the band's cellist and second violinist to lead an extended string section coda. First encore "Travelin' Soldier" was the only number performed by just the three Chicks, with Maines having her most prominent guitar part.

The band

Maines during the December 4 Austin show

• Natalie Maines - lead vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, omnichord, tambourine
• Martie Maguire - fiddle , violin, mandolin, harmony vocals
• Emily Robison - banjo, dobro, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmony vocals

• David Grissom - electric guitar, backing vocals, band leader [1]
• Keith Sewell - acoustic guitar, backing vocals?
• Fred Eltringham - drums
• Audley Freed - electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin, backing vocals
• Larry Knechtel - keyboards
• Sebastian Steinberg - bass guitar, backing vocals
• Pete Finney - pedal steel guitar
• John Krovoza - cello
• Janna Jacoby - violin

Grissom and Sewell were holdovers from the Top of the World Tour; the others were new.

Set list

This was the typical set list for the shows:

(Entrance music) "Hail to the Chief"

1. "Lubbock or Leave It"
2. "Truth No. 2"
3. "Goodbye Earl"
4. "The Long Way Around"
5. "Landslide"
6. "Everybody Knows"
7. "I Like It" (replaced in 2nd & 3rd legs by "The Neighbor")
8. "Cowboy Take Me Away"
9. "Lullaby"
10. "White Trash Wedding"
11. "Lil' Jack Slade"
12. "Not Ready To Make Nice"
13. "Easy Silence"
14. "Long Time Gone"
15. "Some Days You Gotta Dance"
16. "So Hard" (replaced in 2nd & 3rd legs by "I Hope")
17. "Top of the World"
18. "Wide Open Spaces"
19. "Sin Wagon"

Encore:

1. "Travelin’ Soldier"
2. "Mississippi"
3. "Ready to Run"

Opening acts

Anna Nalick opened the first set of North American shows (July 21 through July 28).

Bob Schneider opened the second set of North American shows (July 29 through August 20).

Pete Yorn opened the shows during the second leg in Australia as well as the third leg in North America (October 6 on).

Blogger

The Dixie Chicks became the first major band to hire a designated blogger "all-access" to keep up with them in their promotional activities and tour. They partnered with Microsoft and hired Junichi P. Semitsu, a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, as the first designated blogger ever hired, to write first-hand accounts for their Accidents & Accusations Tour at their MSN website. Having to give Semitsu a title, the band finally decided on Management Assistant, to allow him all-access entry on tour and at home. Slowly, this was laughingly shortened to "Man. Ass.", with Semitsu finding at least as much humor as the Chicks.

Tour schedule

This is the actual schedule of concerts that occurred, and does not included cancellations and original postponements.

The tour T-shirt shows yet another idea of the itinerary, including never-announced European dates.

Date	City	Country	Venue
Europe
June 15, 2006	London	England	Shepherds Bush Empire
North America
July 21, 2006	Detroit	United States	Joe Louis Arena
July 22, 2006	Pittsburgh		Mellon Arena
July 23, 2006	Columbus		Value City Arena
July 25, 2006	Philadelphia		Wachovia Center
July 26, 2006	Uncasville		Mohegan Sun Arena
July 28, 2006	Albany		Pepsi Arena
July 29, 2006	Boston		TD Banknorth Garden
August 1, 2006	New York City		Madison Square Garden
August 4, 2006	Washington, DC		Verizon Center
August 5, 2006	Atlantic City		Borgata Event Center
August 8, 2006	Halifax	Canada	Halifax Metro Centre
August 9, 2006
August 12, 2006	Montreal		Bell Centre
August 13, 2006	London		John Labatt Centre
August 15, 2006	Chicago	United States	United Center
August 18, 2006	Minneapolis		Target Center
August 19, 2006	Winnipeg	Canada	MTS Centre
August 20, 2006
Australia
October 6, 2006	Brisbane	Australia	Brisbane Entertainment Centre
October 7, 2006
October 9, 2006	Sydney		Acer Arena
October 13, 2006	Perth		Burswood Dome
October 15, 2006	Adelaide		Adelaide Entertainment Centre
October 17, 2006	Melbourne		Rod Laver Arena
October 18, 2006
North America
October 27, 2006	Ottawa	Canada	Scotiabank Place
October 28, 2006	Toronto		Air Canada Centre
October 29, 2006
November 1, 2006	Regina		Brandt Centre
November 2, 2006	Saskatoon		Credit Union Centre
November 4, 2006	Edmonton		Rexall Place
November 5, 2006	Calgary		Pengrowth Saddledome
November 6, 2006
November 8, 2006	Vancouver		GM Place
November 9, 2006	Portland	United States	Rose Garden Arena
November 11, 2006	Tacoma		Tacoma Dome
November 14, 2006	Sacramento		Arco Arena
November 16, 2006	Fresno		Save Mart Center
November 17, 2006	Oakland		Oakland Arena
November 19, 2006	Glendale		Glendale Arena
November 24, 2006	Los Angeles		Staples Center
November 25, 2006	Las Vegas		MGM Grand Garden Arena
November 27, 2006	Denver		Pepsi Center
November 28, 2006	Omaha		Qwest Center
December 1, 2006	Nashville		Gaylord Entertainment Center
December 2, 2006	Atlanta		Philips Arena
December 4, 2006	Austin		Frank Erwin Center
December 5, 2006	Dallas		American Airlines Center

References

Newspaper reviews

• review of July 25 Philadelphia show
• review of July 29 Boston show
• review of August 1 New York show
• review of August 8 Halifax show

External links

• Official tour itinerary