“Travelin’ Soldier”
The Chicks
Written by Bruce Robison
Radio & Records
#1 (2 weeks)
March 7 – March 14, 2003
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
March 22, 2003
What a little miracle this record was.
A reverential ballad celebrating a fallen soldier, it was first recorded by its songwriter, Bruce Robison, brother-in-law at the time to the Chicks’ Emily Strayer.
Robison had been benefiting from the democratization of CMT, which played his “Angry All the Time” video as often as the latest Tim McGraw clip, leading to McGraw himself turning that song into a No. 1 hit.
The Chicks first performed it on the 2001 CMA Awards in the aftermath of 9/11. Following the end of their Fly tour and their first wave of children, the band was estranged from its label and feeling the creative urge, so they recorded Home with Lloyd Maines. The almost completely acoustic album wouldn’t have been radio friendly during any other window of time, but the band’s star power combined with the O Brother Where Art Thou phenomenon made their reverent cover sound much more connected to mainstream country music at the time.
The song deserved its moment in the sun, and I’ll always treasure my memories of listening to it with my father. He was a navy veteran, and whenever the video for “Travelin’ Soldier” came on, he fell quiet and all of us listened.
It’s as fine a tribute to the human cost of war as I’ve ever heard, recorded and arranged as a solemn prayer, and it somehow went to No. 1 on country radio.
Little miracles.
“Travelin’ Soldier” gets an A.
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I went back and listened as I felt I should give it an “A”. It’s a beautiful performance and sung perfectly. However, the song itself just doesn’t ring true to me. The first verse is absolutely not the way a man would talk. It’s more fantasy than reality but a very good sentiment. Maybe I should go back re-listen again. Anyways still very good. “B+”.
This song had already left my memory by the time 2003 was over.
Then I heard it one night in 2005 and just cried my eyes out. What a hauntingly beautiful song. Flawless production, sharp lyrics, and a story of someone who finds happiness just to have it yanked away at the worst time. This song still guts me every time I hear it. It is easily one of the best country songs of all time.
Just as an aside, Robison was actually married to Strayer at the time (making him Martie’s brother-in-law).
Great song, and definitely one of those that seemed almost inexplicable to get to the top. Shame it would soon go sideways for them.
I saw “Robison” and somehow read “Charlie” in front of it–you, of course, were correct. My bad!
Kevin,
Travelin’ Soldier only went to #1 on Radio & Records for one week on March 14, 2003, not two weeks from March 7-March 14, 2003. So please fix it ASAP. Thank You.
I loved the Bruce Robison version and I liked the Ty(ler) England version from his Garth-produced Capitol Nashville project quite a bit too. That being said, this definitely is the definitive version as you feel the ache in Natalie’s vocal on this one. It’s sad that the beef with Toby Keith would kill their career with radio right as this one was peaking. It should still be played every Memorial Day weekend.
I remember the very first time I heard this song one Sunday evening in April of 2000, I was absolutely bowled over. It was the Bruce Robison recording from his album Long Way Home From Anywhere on KILT in Houston, Texas. (This was about the time the Texas music scene really started to take off as all the guys on that scene — the Robison brothers, Jack Ingram, Pat Green, etc. — were starting to get a lot more recognition and airplay in that part of the country.) Suffice to say it was one of the most beautiful and haunting songs I had ever heard, to the point that I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard it.
And then I remember hearing the Chicks play it on the 2001 CMA Awards and being stunned all over again. ”I really, really hope they record this, and that it sounds just like this.” It was and is just absolutely gorgeous. Home would’ve been a day-one buy for me anyway, but that song made its release day that much more anticipated for me.
I still believe, and will to my dying day, that mainstream country music is much poorer without the Chicks’ presence in it through the years in so, so many ways.
Not knowing how all of their respective fortunes would play out, around the time of Home, I wanted nothing more than an “all in the family” supergroup recording by The Chicks, both Robison brothers, Kelly Willis, and produced by Lloyd Maines. Can y’all even imagine?
Would’ve been essential listening for sure!
Solid song although I agree that the first verse seems a little forced (or even perhaps ersatz) but the rest of the lyric makes up for that shortcoming. I love the more acoustic feel of the album itself and regard this as the best song that this version of the Dixie Chicks ever recorded. I’d give it an A and I’m tempted to give it an A+
The imagery of high school marching band piccolo player, with a bow in her hair, crying beneath the stands of a Friday night football game captures all the emotions, tragedy, and alienation of this couple’s war-time relationship. It is a miracle and a wonder of a composition, gorgeously and compassionately performed by the Chicks. This song affects everyone I have ever played it for.
I first heard the Bruce Robison version but prefer the Chicks interpretation.
This is an essential country music classic.
It is a monumental example of The Chicks. venturing into Emily’s and Martie’s roots in bluegrass and Natalie willing to make that leap. It’s unfortunate that, because of the combination of war fever and a zeal to stifle dissent in the media and our government, made worse by having what Natalie said in England taken out of context, that the trio got arguably the worst royal screw job handed to anyone in the history of the country music industry.
It has happened before and will happen again. It is what often happens when you ‘open mouth and insert foot’ – I could cite many examples.
It will always be a fascinating story. For me, I don’t think what Natalie said was bad at all and the community overreacted. That being said, The Chicks handled the aftermath in the WORST possible way making it impossible to come back in. They did not deserve the treatment but still should have used a “business” mind to handle it. Sad sad story.
I love the alternative timeline that has Patty Griffin enjoying a number one country single. But I love the albums that came after Home much more than the ones that came before it.
Their influence is all over country music now anyway. The circle is still unbroken. There are just people standing both inside and outside of it, with a few select artists being able to navigate in and out of it.
What do you think–The Dixie Chicks are destitute and lying in the gutter somewhere?
They handled it the way THEY wanted to handle it and stuck to their principles. Not a sad story at all. Maybe it would be a sad story if they caved in and handled it the way you think they should have handled it.
And they even had another multiplatinum album three years later.
Ok, I will stand corrected. If they went in the direction they wanted to and didn’t want to be within the country music community then I will agree with you. Not sad if that is the case. Most other country singers (even the ones that supported them (Vince Gill, Dolly, etc.) think of it is as sad and maybe they are looking at it like I am. That it separated them from that community. I certainly would not look at this as a positive moment, but you are correct. It depends on how they spin it and if it gave them more freedom outside the country genre that is good for them. Again, as I originally stated. I don’t think she did anything wrong at all in her original statement.
It was a bigger loss for country music than it was for the Chicks.
People forget that they got a $20 million advance right before the release of Home. They had a lot more freedom to stand on principle than most artists get the opportunity to do.
People also forget that country radio was poised to welcome them back, and they sent them “Not Ready to Make Nice” instead of something conciliatory. (Even though “Long Time Gone” was a much more direct broadside against radio, but they got that one through the gatekeepers with their star power.)
This album really worked as the perfect bridge between their mainstream country success and what would come after. I personally enjoyed the two albums after this one more than the two albums that came before, and if they ever release that album of Patty Griffin songs they’ve been threatening to do for years, I suspect that trend will continue for me.
With Home we got the first taste of the Chicks with complete creative control, and while I understand the appeal of what came before it, it isn’t until this junction where they become one of my favorite artists of all time.
This is a beautiful song that is beautifully sung and beautifully arranged.
One of the greatest songs of all
This one is a classic no matter who sings it, but the Chicks do it plenty of justice. One of the best songs of the 2000s, no doubt.
I could have sworn that both “long Time Gone” and “Landslide” had gotten to #1 on Radio and Records. A combination of adult responsibilities and the onset of R & R chart detachment likely led me to this false conclusion. As revered as the “Home” record was for The Chicks, often cited as the best country album of the decade, I’m glad they got at least one #1 hit from it.
I remembered that Bruce Robison wrote this but didn’t realize he recorded it too. Without having heard his version, I still think this song needed a feminine vocal touch. It certainly got it from Natalie Maines. In my review of “The Baby”, I said it was the journey that was more enriching than the destination. it seemed very likely from the opening verse that the “travelin’ soldier” was gonna die by the end, but the narrative trajectory avoided the usual circle-of-life formulas and made the story that much more compelling. That it was released at the onset of another war in the spring of 2003 really put things into perspective, although ironically, that perspective was wasted on the country music industry and many of its fans turned on The Chicks for insufficient commitment to the darkness of war despite the human toll evoked in “Travelin’ Soldier”.
As for “the incident” that played out at the very moment this song was hitting the top of the charts, I can’t help but feel that The Chicks were in a slow-motion divorce with the country community even before their comments about Bush in Britain. Their creative differences with the jingoism of the time, as evidenced by firing the opening salvo in the war with Toby Keith, and their participation in highly controversial causes with the country community (posing for PETA) suggested to me that a reckoning was inevitable and, even if they’d remained silent at the show overseas, would have manifested itself in one form or another in the months or years ahead. The genre was certainly worse off for it for a long list of reasons, as the next few years of wagon-circling would confirm.
Grade: A
Boiling over with fury about never being able to post a normal review on here again.
Grade: A
Mark,
There were 3 versions of an identical comment submitted from your email / IP address combination with timestamps within ^less than 1 minute^ of each other, which is why they all got flagged as spam.
The “Post Comment” button is very, very finicky.
Thanks again. That’s so strange. I don’t see where all these duplications are coming from. If I post something two or three sentences long, it goes through. Anything more than that doesn’t.
I just played around a bit more with the settings. Please let me know if it improves things. You may get a notice that a comment is held for moderation instead of it going directly to spam, so if you do, you don’t need to post the comment again.
I appreciate your contributions to these threads and want them to continue! We’re very lucky on the troll front – only one banned member in the last fifteen years or so! – but we get a LOT of spam and it seem like the spam has gotten more sophisticated than the measures used to block it, which are so brute force that they’re capturing legitimate posts. (This still happens with Peter’s posts a lot too, so it might have something to do with post length.)
If the problem continues, I’ll just make you a registered user so you can stay signed in and posting will be easy. I’ve been wanting to set that up for our longtime readers anyway!
Yeah I figured it might have something to do with post length. And that’s a problem for me as verbose as I often am. I’ve tinkered around with other potential spambait issues in recent days, cutting out paragraph breaks and stray punctuation marks. There’s been no consistency other than very short posts seem to always go through. Thanks for your efforts to fix it and I’ll cross my fingers that it works. The registered user option sounds like a good one and I’d be down for that if and when it becomes available.