Robin Lynn Macy

Robin Lynn Macy (born November 1958) is an American musician, teacher, and gardener, who is best known as a founding member of the female country group the Dixie Chicks.

While a mathematics schoolteacher at St. Mark's School of Texas, Macy was active in the Dallas bluegrass music scene of the 1980s, and was in a band called Danger in the Air. The band released two independent albums. With the Chicks she was the group's guitarist, co-lead singer, and occasional songwriter.

Macy left the Dixie Chicks in late 1992 in a dispute with the Erwin sisters about the group's musical direction. Macy advocated for a "purer" bluegrass approach. (She was not replaced; the foursome became a trio. It would be still several more years until the Dixie Chicks achieved their big commercial break-through, when Natalie Maines replaced Laura Lynch as lead singer.)

Macy then joined Sara Hickman and Patty Lege to form the group Domestic Science Club, which issued two albums before disbanding. While still in Dallas, Macy played with an informal group named Round Robin, but she eventually moved to southern Kansas. Macy hosted an evening music show on local NPR affiliate, KERA in Dallas, in the mid-1990s.

She then performed with Mark Bennett, Mike and Vicki Lynn Theobald in The Blue Plate Special.^[1] The band performed at the Walnut Valley Festival, in Winfield, Kansas in 1999.^[1]

Big Twang was Macy's next project. The bluegrass quintet was founded by Macy and won the 1999 RockyGrass Band Championship.^[2] The band recorded one CD - Pastures of Plenty. "Macy’s riveting, seductive voice infuses the band’s renditions of Sting’s 'Secret Journey' and Nanci Griffith’s 'Time of Inconvenience' with spellbinding power and soul," wrote reviewer David McCarty in Acoustic Guitar magazine; "Big Twang is one big talent."^[3] The band dissolved in 2003.^[4]

Macy remained active in the regional music scene, and also returned to teaching mathematics. In addition, she is owner and steward of Bartlett Arboretum, 20 miles south of Wichita in Belle Plaine, Kansas.^[5] She discovered the arboretum in 1997 when it was slated for sale; the owning Bartlett family viewed her arrival as a godsend.^[6] In April 2008, Macy's recording Songs from the Garden, original compositions inspired from living among the trees at the arboretum, was released. The arboretum, with application written by Macy, was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in April, 2010.^[7][8]

In October 2008, she formed another trio with Jennifer Pettersen and Monica Taylor called The Cherokee Maidens.^[9] She is currently a teacher of geometry at Wichita Collegiate School.

References

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