In 2024 A Record Built On Fiddle And Banjo Entered Americas Recorded Cultural History
Wide Open Spaces was inducted into the National Recording Registry and joined recordings preserved because they had become part of the recorded cultural history of America
Millions of listeners who thought they were hearing the future were also being introduced to instruments and harmonies country music had been carrying for generations
For nearly a decade before that honor the group had been playing bluegrass far from the center of Nashville and then a new singer walked in and the sound toughened up
In 1998 three women with a fiddle and banjo sold more records than any other country group that year
The group had started in Dallas in 1989 long before Wide Open Spaces and Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer came from traditional country and bluegrass and built the early band around acoustic instruments and close harmonies and the kind of musicianship more likely to impress a festival crowd than a late 1990s radio programmer
The original lineup changed repeatedly and for years the group remained a regional act rather than a Nashville priority
Natalie Maines Changed The Temperature Without Erasing The Roots
Maines brought a different edge with a bigger and more aggressive voice with rock and blues in it
What emerged was not a rejection of the roots of the group because the fiddle and mandolin and banjo and harmony remained visible but they were now pushed against drums and electric guitars and the confidence of contemporary country production
Monument Records heard something that could reach beyond the bluegrass audience and signed the trio
Wide Open Spaces Landed At Exactly The Right Moment
The album arrived in 1998 and moved easily between old and new country language
Thereβs Your Trouble carried bright traditional instrumentation into modern radio and You Were Mine slowed everything down around family heartbreak
The title song was written by Susan Gibson and gave the group its defining image of a young woman leaving home because she needed room to find out who she was
The album produced three No. 1 country singles and became a massive commercial success and the Recording Academy notes that in 1998 the group sold more CDs than every other country group combined
They won Grammys for Best Country Album and Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group for Thereβs Your Trouble
But the importance of Wide Open Spaces goes deeper than sales because the Library of Congress later described the record as a blend of traditional instrumentation and strong harmony and a broader modern sound and as country music widening its borders without hiding where it came from
By the end of the decade country music was full of polished crossover production yet one of its biggest records still carried a fiddle prominently enough for a new generation to recognize the sound
Country music widened its borders without hiding where it came from
That quieter legacy still defines the album by The Chicks because the future arrived carrying old strings and close harmony in plain sight and Nashville could no longer pretend those sounds belonged only to the past