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 Entertainment | June 2006 
Dixie Chicks See Slow Ticket Sales in Some Cities
 Steve Gorman - Reuters
| | The Dixie Chicks are still taking heat for criticizing President Bush, are weathering sluggish ticket sales in several cities for their upcoming U.S. tour, industry watchers reported. |
Country music trio the Dixie Chicks, still taking heat for criticizing President Bush, are weathering sluggish ticket sales in several cities for their upcoming U.S. tour, industry watchers reported.
While early ticket purchases for their first major tour in three years are generally robust in Northeastern cities, initial sales have fallen short of expectations in numerous markets, especially in the Midwest and South, forcing some dates to be scrubbed.
By contrast, the group's latest album, "Taking the Long Way," opened atop the U.S. pop charts last week, selling 526,000 copies during its first seven days and remaining No. 1 in its second week to notch one of the year's strongest debuts.
But with many country music stations denying the Chicks airplay, box office business is off to a slow start in places where the group has sold out in the past, said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of concert industry magazine Pollstar.
According to Pollstar, dates in Memphis, Tennessee, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, and Fresno, California, have been dropped from the tour schedule for now, while box-office sales also were canceled for Houston.
Billboard magazine reported that ticket counts for shows that went on sale last weekend were averaging 5,000 to 6,000 seats per date in major markets, and less in secondary locales. Arena capacities on the tour generally top 15,000.
"Basically, they're having to rethink the entire tour at this point," Bongiovanni told Reuters. "Clearly their problems seem to be strongest in the red states," he said, referring to those areas carried by Bush in the 2004 presidential election.
BACKLASH FOR ANTI-BUSH REMARKS
A key factor in tepid sales was the continuing backlash against the Dixie Chicks by many country music stations over the anti-Bush remarks of lead singer Natalie Maines in 2003.
Publicists for the band declined to comment, as did officials for AEG, one of the companies promoting the tour.
Maines sparked an uproar when she declared during a London concert in March 2003 that the band was embarrassed to come from the same state - Texas - as the president. She fanned flames anew by retracting an earlier apology for "disrespecting the office of the president," telling Time magazine in a recent interview: "I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel he is owed any respect whatsoever."
"Country radio in many places has really closed the door on this group," Bongiovanni said, adding that some stations have not only refused to play the Chicks' music, they have refused advertisements for their tour as well.
Still, ticket sales were strong in cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Toronto, where a second October show was added to the schedule after the first concert quickly sold out, he said.
Further complicating the Chicks' commercial outlook has been their recent transformation as a band, Bongiovanni said.
"They've moved away from being a purely country group, so their audience is changing," he said.
Bongiovanni said it was not unusual for concert schedules to be altered after being booked, but he said the Dixie Chicks tour was drawing more attention than usual "because of the politics behind it." |
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