Dixie Chicks: Not Ready to Make Nice

Steve Kroft Profiles Controversial Country Band

(CBS) 
As artists, they wanted to respond with music and a video to drive home the point.

"It was hard to write it because it was … we each felt the same way," says Maquire. "But it, we didn't want to make too much light of it. We didn't want to it to be too preachy, or too heavier than it was. And after we wrote this song, we felt like it was exactly how we felt."

"Now it kind of seems like you're picking the scab again," Kroft remarked, laughing. "You're picking the scab here. Like you're pouring salt on the wound."

"We didn't write the songs thinking about what other people wanted us to say, or what would be a hit on radio. I needed to make this record to be able to get past it," one of the women explained.

It’s either a clever marketing ploy, or the Dixie Chicks have decided to commit career suicide. It’s too early to tell which. Billboard Magazine called the single "beautifully layered, melodically crafty and refreshingly impetuous." But you won’t hear it being played on a lot of country radio stations, because people call up and say they don’t want to hear it.

The song fizzled on the charts — yet it's one of most downloaded country songs on the Internet.

"Well, how do you explain the fact that it's No. 37 on the charts and No. 1 in downloads? on iTunes," Kroft asked Maines.

"I think … that when you're in the corporate world, and when that's your livelihood, and when 100 people e-mail you that they'll never listen to your station again, you get scared of losing your job. And why did they need to stand up for us? They're not our friend. They're not our family. And they cave," she explained.

It’s no surprise that the backlash is still there, given the demographics of country music — generally speaking, country's core audience resides in states where support for President Bush and the war is the strongest. So why risk insulting an audience that gave you fame and fortune in the first place?

"I think I know where your question's leading and it just goes back to the answer that we don't make decisions based on that. We don't go, 'OK, our fans are in the red states.' So I'm gonna play a red, white and blue guitar and put on my I Love Bush T-shirt and … we're not like that because we're not politicians. We're musicians," says Maines.

"Anybody ever tell you one of the big rules of the music business, or business in general, is never try to antagonize your customers?" Kroft asked, laughing.

"Well, that's what music is. That's what the music I always admired and liked was. I didn't like, I saw no honesty in people being safe or opinionless. Is that a word? I always loved the music that was about something," says Maines.

They have already paid a huge price for their outspokenness, and not just monetarily. A half-hearted apology for the London comments three years ago didn’t help much, and neither did posing for a magazine cover several weeks later. The worst part was the threats.

"There was one specific death threat on Natalie. [It] had a time, had a place, had a weapon. I mean, everything," banjo player Emily Robison recalls. "This was at our show in Dallas. 'You will be shot dead at your show in Dallas' on whatever the date was," she says.

"So this wasn't paranoia? This was well-founded concern?" Kroft asked.

"Yes. And you just — you don't know what people are capable of," Robinson says. "We had a radio station say they had our picture on the side of one of their vans. They were just driving down the highway. And a car pulled up with a shotgun and pointed at him out the window. Just because our picture was on their van. And it's just … it's very real. You know, it only takes one cuckoo person.