Robin Lynn Macy
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Robin Lynn Macy (born c. 1958) is an American musician, 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. [1] She became a founding member of the Dixie Chicks in 1989, when she was 33-years-old, while still performing and recording with Danger in the Air. 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.
She then performed with Mark Bennett, Mike and Vicki Lynn Theobald in The Blue Plate Special [2]. The band performed at the Walnut Valley Festival, in Winfield, Kansas in 1999.
Big Twang was Macy's next project. The bluegrass quintet was founded by Macy and won the 1999 RockyGrass Band Championship. [3] 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." [4] The band dissolved in 2003. [5]
Macy remains active in the regional music scene, and has also returned to teaching mathematics, but Macy’s "calling" is as the current steward of Bartlett Arboretum, 20 miles south of Wichita. Born perhaps 50 years too late, Macy is known for her distinctive, other-era voice and love of all things old, including Ferguson tractors, Martin guitars and vintage gardens. She’s still true to her bluegrass roots and performs regularly around Wichita and Kansas. A math teacher by day and a gardening enthusiast by night (and most every other minute she can spare), Macy is dedicated to restoring, preserving and renewing the Kansas jewel that is Bartlett Arboretum. Macy, along with a small crew of volunteers (Soil Sisters), attend to behind the scene details of including grounds upkeep, building development on the grounds, mapping, finance, and performance house and stage assistants.
In 1910, Dr. Walter E. Bartlett—a physician, naturalist and civic leader in the south-central Kansas town of Belle Plaine—had a vision and acquired 15 acres on the edge of town. He liked the terrain and thought its soil and water flow would be ideal for growing trees. In this part of the country early in the century, tree-lined parks were a rarity. Most people regarded trees as simply places to seek shade, but they became Dr. Bartlett's absorbing interest. He lined walkways and drives and stream banks with all kinds of indigenous trees. Though Dr. Bartlett continued to develop the park until his death in 1937, the project never was more than an avocation for the busy doctor. For his son, Glenn, however, it became a way of life. Glenn eventually became a professional landscape architect and horticulturist. Eventually, the Bartletts came to have the only mature arboretum between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. The Bartlett Arboretum name was established as were celebrated community traditions such as Tulip Time, when they showed off 40,000 bulbs. The Bartletts opened the grounds for everyone from school groups to brides who made memories and came to regard the Arboretum as their own. The Bartlett daughters, Glenna and Mary, along with Mary's husband, Bob Gourlay, continued operating the Arboretum until 1995. Finally, in 1997, they decided to sell it. "Fortunately," says Mary Gourlay, "this cute little blonde elf, Robin Macy, came knocking at the door. We didn't lose an arboretum, we gained another daughter." http://www.bartlettarboretum.com/
On April 19 and 20th, 2008 Macy's long-awaited bucolic recording Songs from the Garden ~ original compositions inspired from living among the trees at the historic Bartlett Arboretum will debut.
Macy hosted an evening music show on local NPR affiliate, KERA in Dallas in the mid-1990s.
((Danger in the Air}}: Drew Garrett, Bass; Robin Lynn Macy, Guitar, Vocals; Andy Owens, Mandolin, Vocals; James McKinney, Banjo; and Stephan Dudash, Fiddle, Vocals
Discography Danger in the Air (1988) and Airtight (1990).
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