As the song goes, she's "not ready to make nice"! Three years after she spoke out against the war in Iraq and declared her disappointment in President Bush, Dixie Chick Natalie Maines talks to Gayle about the comments that rocked the world and the ensuing controversy.
During a Dixie Chicks concert in London in March 2003, Natalie said on stage, "We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas." Controversy quickly followed, with radio stations refusing to play their songs, people calling them unpatriotic and others sending the group death threats.
"It made me even more angry when people would say that I wasn't patriotic because to me, I was being the ultimate patriot by questioning my government and by using my free speech," Natalie tells Gayle. "It was just really disappointing in so many ways, the hatred that was brought out. You grow up taking American history and it's all about free speech…and then to see that that's not true…was really disappointing."
Natalie says she has thought about the incident many times, and the Dixie Chicks' newest album, Taking the Long Way, features "Not Ready to Make Nice," a song Natalie says was written in response to the backlash. In it, the Dixie Chicks sing that they aren't "ready to back down." "Every single word is true," Natalie says. "There's not one word wasted, there's not one word in there for a rhyme or for poetic measure."
