{"id":29892,"date":"2019-11-07T16:30:23","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T21:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=29892"},"modified":"2019-11-07T17:53:25","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T22:53:25","slug":"only-noise-the-long-way-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/only-noise-the-long-way-around\/","title":{"rendered":"ONLY NOISE: The Long Way Around"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>ONLY NOISE explores music fandom with poignant personal essays that examine the ways we\u2019re shaped by our chosen soundtrack. This week, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/katiesays_?lang=en\">Katie Wojciechowski<\/a> finds footing in unfamiliar territory thanks to the late discovery of an infamous hometown favorite.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On March 10, 2003, Dixie Chicks\u2019 front woman Natalie Maines told a London audience she was sorry about what our president was doing to the world, and she was ashamed to share her home state Texas with him. What happened after was entirely outside the scope of my fifth-grade awareness\u2014but thankfully for my 2019 curiosity, Google\u2019s first answer box aggregates the question apparently still on the Internet&#8217;s mind: \u201cWhat did the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dixiechicks.com\/\">Dixie Chicks<\/a> say that got them in trouble?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a late-bloomer Dixie Chicks fan. It took much longer than it should have\u2014plucky woman-fronted country is right up my alley. When I dove right into Spotify\u2019s \u201cThis Is\u2026\u201d compilation a few months ago, it was love at first listen: friendship, fiddles, rebellion, and leaving home.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/37i9dQZF1DZ06evO1bzJ3q\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When I was 24, I became the first in four generations of my family to move out of Texas. There\u2019s a reason people stay in Texas, particularly in Austin, \u201cin the same ZIP codes where their parents live&#8221;: it\u2019s a great place. But there had always been something calling me to the West Coast, and after college, I left. As Maines and her gals sing, &#8220;Said she could hear me singin&#8217; in the choir \/ Me, I heard another song \/ I caught wind and hit the road runnin\u2019 \/ And Lord, I&#8217;ve been a long time gone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m sure my Portland pals think I came by my Dixie Chicks love naturally. But really, I\u2019ve taken the long way around. The Chicks were yet another casualty of my stubborn teenage refusal to listen to anything \u201cuncool,\u201d an affliction that lingered through my mid-twenties. Life is so much more melodic now that I\u2019ve embraced my love for pop, boy bands, and yes, even country.<\/p>\n<p>I wish I\u2019d had the Dixie Chicks when I drove to Portland three years ago. I felt so aimless; the adventure of a lifetime was sitting right on my Prius\u2019 dashboard, so why did I feel empty and scared? My new husband and I cycled through all our favorite playlists by about day two (Boulder, CO). What lay ahead of us? A Northwest city we\u2019d never been to. Perhaps an apartment, but who could say. Perhaps jobs, but nothing was guaranteed. I wish I\u2019d had &#8220;Wide Open Spaces&#8221; to pave my way Westward. I wish I\u2019d had \u201cThe Long Way Around\u201d to say what I couldn\u2019t: \u201cI could never follow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Moving got me in trouble in a million little ways. Finding a job was horrific. Portland? Not always what I thought it\u2019d be. Each soggy, rainy day had me questioning everything. I hit the road looking for belonging and, three years later, I\u2019ve never felt more adrift. As I began to devour the Dixie Chicks compilation a couple months ago, I quickly realized that they could relate.<\/p>\n<p>Natalie Maines\u2019 2003 comment at the London concert got them <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/udF-CKxzCF0\">blacklisted<\/a> from country radio for years. The Chicks certainly weren\u2019t the first women in country to dissent from conservative norms (see: Dolly, Emmylou, Shania, Reba, etc.), but in the Bush era, they became Undesirables #1-3. In a moment of staunch, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ruNrdmjcNTc\">gun-slinging patriotism<\/a>, for which country radio tended to be an echo chamber, Maines and company diverged. The adventure and the running wild and the Wide Open Spaces led them somewhere they, perhaps, never intended to go, but for them, remained the only way that felt true.<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cLong Time Gone,\u201d they sing, &#8220;Now they sound tired but they don&#8217;t sound Haggard, they&#8217;ve got money but they don&#8217;t have Cash\u201d and if there\u2019s anywhere that rings true, it\u2019s Portland. The lack of charm, of soul, of personality here is jarring to me. I guess it\u2019s something I always took for granted in Texas. As much as I wanted to get away from the Bible Belt, there are notes in Texas, in Austin, that simply ring clearer for me. I guess I had to leave to find that out.<\/p>\n<p>But what if I\u2019d stayed? It wouldn\u2019t have felt true. I\u2019ve always had a wild streak, a curiosity that tends to take the wheel. So I left in search of myself. Just like the Dixie Chicks, it&#8217;s the only road I know.<\/p>\n<p>I still don\u2019t really know I was looking for. But I did find this: there\u2019s no particular city or coast or even open road that\u2019s going to fill the home-shaped hole in your heart. Portland included. Texas included. Learning this doesn\u2019t make the world any softer. But I hear my rocky journey westward sung back to me by my three new friends:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Well, I never seem to do it like anybody else<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Maybe someday, someday I&#8217;m gonna settle down<\/em><br \/>\n<em>If you ever want to find me, I can still be found<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Taking the long way around<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UtqwL-ZPhAA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Maines has recently <a href=\"https:\/\/popcrush.com\/dixie-chicks-new-album-details\/\">hinted<\/a> that a new Dixie Chicks album (what would be their fifth studio release) is in the works. For now you can catch them live in New York on 12\/12 at <a href=\"http:\/\/thetownhall.org\/event\/ally-coalition-6th-annual-talent-show\">The Town Hall<\/a> to benefit queer and trans youth, and in Austin at <a href=\"https:\/\/acl-live.com\/calendar\/voices-for-justice\">The Moody Theater<\/a> with Gary Clark Jr. to benefit Voices for Justice.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ONLY NOISE explores music fandom with poignant personal essays that examine the ways we\u2019re shaped by our chosen soundtrack. This week, Katie Wojciechowski finds footing in unfamiliar territory thanks to the late discovery of an infamous hometown favorite. On March 10, 2003, Dixie Chicks\u2019 front woman Natalie Maines told a London audience she was sorry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":30083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6732,4416],"tags":[9249],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/DCX-e1573166834639.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29892"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30084,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29892\/revisions\/30084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}