Feature: The Dixie Chicks at 'Home'

DETROIT, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- Thanks to pregnancy, birth and a nasty legal battle with its record company, the Dixie Chicks were able to spend the past year and a half hunkered down at "Home" -- and wound up sounding different than they ever have before.

"We feel like it's some of our more pop or crossover (music), in the broadest sense of the term," the group's Emily Robison says of the Grammy-winning trio's third release.

But the fact of the matter is it's a far cry from its polished, highly produced predecessors -- 1998's "Wide Open Spaces" and 1999's "Fly" -- which each sold more than 10 million copies.

On "Home," Robison and her bandmates -- sister Marti Maguire and Natalie Maines (who gave birth do a son during March 2001) -- lean back toward their acoustic roots, eschewing percussion on many tracks and maintaining a focus on melody and the trio's trademark vocal harmonies.

"It touches on so many different things," Robison says. "Even though it's a little bit of a departure, it really sounds like us."

The direction was brought about by the business hassles the Chicks experienced this year and last. Unhappy with its royalty rate and other conditions of its contract with Sony Music, the trio declared itself a free agent and even began talking to other labels. Lawsuits and counter suits flew, and the matter was eventually settled earlier this year, with the Chicks establishing their own Sony-distributed imprint, Wide Open Records.

So all's well that ends well, but Robison acknowledges that it was a "frustrating" time at best. And frightening. "It's a scary thing when you step out like that and go 'OK, with this record label we've sold 21 million albums, and here we are saying we're labelless,'" she explains.

"Who's gonna pick up the pieces and put this thing back together, y'know? Luckily we came to an agreement with Sony and they stepped up and did the right thing, and we are where we Are."

The Chicks started working on "Home" during its battle with Sony -- literally in their living rooms, where the trio sat around with acoustic instruments, writing new songs and working up arrangements of other writers' work. It brought the group back to the place where Robison and Maguire started the band during 1989 in Dallas, when they were more of a kitschy cowgirl bluegrass outfit.

"We come from bluegrass and acoustic music," says Robison. "In that setting, it was natural to play this way."

Enlisting Maines' father Lloyd -- a Nashville session veteran who had worked with the group before his daughter joined during 1996 -- they began making what they thought would be demo tapes for the new album. But before long they realized they were actually on a definite creative path.

"It was nice to be back in the studio where you knew your part wasn't necessarily going to be buried amongst drums and keyboards and all that sort of stuff, knowing it was gonna be fairly raw," Robison notes.

"Once we started playing it for our management and people whose opinions we really value, they were like 'Y'all would be crazy not to have this be the third album.'"

"Home" features four tracks by the Chicks themselves; two were co-written with country veteran Marty Stuart, while the spirited "White Trash Wedding" was inspired by Maguire's own nuptials. They also covered Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" and songs by Darrell Scott, Robison's brother-in-law Bruce Robison and Radney Foster, and two of the songs were rescued from an album recorded but not released by good friend Patty Griffin.

Because of Robison's pregnancy -- her son with singer-songwriter Charlie Robison is due in November -- the Chicks will not tour to support "Home" until 2003. They'll play an Oct. 19 show at the State Fair of Texas and will otherwise be represented by an October episode of CMT's "Crossroads" with pop singer-songwriter James Taylor and by a prime-time NBC concert special in December that was recorded during August in Los Angeles.

Robison says the group knows there's a risk in changing what had been a successful sound. But she's confident fans of the first two albums will find plenty to enjoy on "Home" as well.

"It sounds like us; it's not like we've added something that changes the essence of who we are," she says. "We've just stripped it down a little bit. So I feel like people who are fans of our sound will just be getting a purer form of it, and hopefully they'll go along with us for the ride.

"And I hope to bring some new fans along with this sound, too."