Fly Tour - The Show

The Show

The shows themselves attracted both parents and their children. In particular, young girls could be seen dressing as their favorite member of the trio. Slogans such as "Chicks Rule!" and "Chicks Kick Ass!" were prevalent during the tour.

Production values were emphasized for the show, with eight trucks required to haul it. A six-man band backed the three Chicks. Stage and show design involved members of the Cirque Du Soleil team, including lighting designer Luc Lafortune. The stage was surrounded by a curtain that resembled a pair of jeans, complete with a working zipper. Various interactive pre-show activities kept the audience busy, as a huge remote-controlled mechanical fly circled over the audience. Then the show began, by the zipper dropping and the curtain falling away.

The Dixie Chicks' generally performed for about an hour and a half. The themes of the show veered between love songs and declarations of female independence, with the opener "Ready to Run" and the climactic "Goodbye Earl" both exemplifying the latter. Video screens would sometimes show the music videos that went with a song, and other times would show humorous interludes, such as the trio's own fashion disasters from the past. Other stage effects included a night full of stars with a setting moon for "Cowboy Take Me Away", and bubbles representing snow falling from the rafters for "Cold Day in July". The main set generally finished with what would become a furious concert staple of theirs, "Sin Wagon"; for the encores, "Goodbye Earl" – the song of the moment for Chicks fans – was often performed with the three Chicks spread out among the audience in different corners of the venue, while "Wide Open Spaces" was the occasion for a mass sing-along.

By the later stages of the tour, lead singer Natalie Maines was visibly pregnant with her first child, and was able to rest during the middle section of the show, which featured the trio performing numbers such as Sheryl Crow's "Strong Enough" while sitting on a couch.

Critical reaction to the Fly Tour shows was generally positive. The New York Times called it a "a slick, good-natured show that seesawed between clinging love songs and declarations of female independence." Rolling Stone said that while the group "can pop and rock with conviction", at other times the show represented "stone-cold, hard-core honky tonk at its best", and that the youthful audience's roars of approval for the sisters' instrumental virtuosity – which it compared to those Eddie Van Halen got for guitar solos – was "damn near revolutionary". Rolling Stone did criticize the "overly ambitious stage and lighting design" for detracting from the on-stage intimacy between the three group members and their backing band, while The University News praised it, saying the show "appealed to the eyes with its unique stage and interesting special effects." The Daily Universe's reviewer called the group "the most exciting country-and-western group I have ever seen," while KAOS2000 magazine said "this trio of hotties know how to put on a show and definitely had control of the big arena stage." A Citysearch.com writer said that Maines' voice was not the strongest in performance, but benefited from the joint strength when combined with the sisters'.