If it hadn't been for one London critic -- from the left-leaning newspaper The Guardian -- approvingly quoting Maines' remark, the group might still have the No. 1 country single (''Travelin' Soldier'') and a top 10 pop hit (''Landslide''), instead of being all but banished from the nation's airwaves. Within a couple of days of the review showing up on American country websites, radio stations throughout middle America were setting out trash cans to collect disgruntled fans' CDs and, in one Louisiana case, running over them with a tractor.
Maines did apologize, admitting on March 14 that ''whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect.'' The angry masses were not mollified. Message boards were flooded with cries of ''Natalie Fonda'' and far worse. Sales of their current album, ''Home,'' plummeted from 124,000 the week the story broke to 33,000 a week -- the result, Renshaw says, of the group's near-complete absence from radio. The ongoing campaign against the trio (which also includes Martie's sister, banjo player and new mom Emily Robison, 30) has many Americans vowing that the Chicks should do better than just take a hiatus: They should simply end their careers.
Two months ago, imagining the Chicks playing a game of defense was inconceivable. They were uniters, not dividers, having proved that country music could cross all kinds of boundaries without ever getting watered down as ''crossover.'' Their major-label debut, ''Wide Open Spaces,'' was 11 times platinum; the follow-up, ''Fly,'' platinum 10 times over; despite its current woes, ''Home'' is a certified 6-million-seller after just nine months. On March 1, they set a one-day concert dollars record, selling $49 million in tickets for their upcoming U.S. tour. They are, quite simply, the most important act in the contemporary history of country. ''They singularly revived the music,'' says Brian Philips, general manager of cable channel CMT. ''The thought of country music ever carrying on without them is just unthinkable.''
In the face of all this, the Chicks are about to go barefoot -- but not, as some might hope, so that they can walk across broken glass in further search of penance and forgiveness. They're sitting down at a Japanese restaurant to break their Stateside silence for the first time. Groveling will not be on the menu.
