Goodbye Chicks, Hello Flatts

In the twin cities this week, it is the changing of the country music guard.

Last Friday, country music's angry girls, the Dixie Chicks, took the stage to the stage of the Target Center to a down-home version of "Hails to the Chief" and extended yet again their multi-city musical critique of the President. Even the Star-Tribune's reviewer was nostalgic for earlier times.

This coming Friday, Rascall Flatts will play the grandstand at the Minnesota State Fair; and the three boy Flatts are about as far away from their country music sisters, the three Chicks, as one genre will permit.

As a counterpoint to Natalie Maines' recent protest ballads, consider the Flatts' single "He's not the leaving kind," which takes Chief Judge Roy Moore's side of the Ten Commandments controversy. The Flatts sing:

They tried their best to drag Him out
Of a courthouse down in Montgomery
Now they want to kick Him out of school
And take Him off our money
They can take those words off of paper and stone
But He aint gone, no

He ain't the leavin' kind
He'd never walk away
Even from those who don’t believe
And wanna leave Him behind
He ain't the leavin' kind

What a difference a week makes.