CMT News

Newly crowned Flameworthy Video Visionaries the Dixie Chicks debuted their latest video, "Long Time Gone," Wednesday night (June 12) following CMT's Flameworthy Video Music Awards.

Directed by Marcus Rayboy ("Smooth," Carlos Santana) in Reynosa, Mexico, the new clip captures the feel of bordertown culture in barbershops, pool halls, courtyards and taxis. Emily Robison plays with a mariachi band.

"We tried to pick the seediest place we could find," joked Martie Maguire during an interview on CMT Wrap Party.

"Of course, we had a treatment, a vision that we knew we wanted," singer Natalie Maines added. "He seemed to really get us, and we like for directors to be as excited about us as we are about them. It has to be a collaboration."

The song references Haggard, Cash and Hank. The last image in the clip shows three men wading into a river in a nighttime border crossing.

"It was fun, but it was an experience," Maines said of shooting the clip in Mexico.

Robison said playing with the mariachi singers was no simple task. "They were playing a completely different song than I was," she recalled. "I don't know how to play pushbutton accordion. It's a completely different kind of accordion, so I'm playing along with them, honking, sounding awful.

"They're singing 'La Bamba' because they know it's the only thing I'll recognize. I'm trying to sing 'La Bamba' and come in on my lyrics on the video at the right time, and it was just a mess. But they were hysterically funny."

Some friends, Robison says, have called the upcoming Chicks album -- Home, due Aug. 27 -- their "White Album," a reference to the famous Beatles double album issued in a white jacket.