Three chicks go into a bar. Seriously. "We go to trivia night," says Dixie Chick Natalie Maines, explaining why she and her fellow Chicks, sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, turn up most Tuesday nights at an Irish pub near their home base of Austin, Texas. "They call out questions, and every table is a team."

"Don't say our team name," blurts a mortified Maguire, sipping a glass of red wine in an Austin restaurant. "We're going to lose fans."

Maines is undaunted. "The name of our team is Kenny Chesney Stuffs His Pants with a Pimento Cheese Sandwich" -- a bawdy reference to the hard-bodied country star whose jeans appear not so much fitted as painted on. "Isn't that a great trivia name? They say it every single round! They'll go, 'Kenny Chesney Stuffs His Pants with a Pimento Cheese Sandwich, 23 points!' And everyone laughs."

No, the Chicks have never been the shy sort. (Chesney, for the record, takes the ribbing in stride. "They said what?" he asks, cracking up at his former tour mates' gag. "Least they're lookin'.") Gutsy and confrontational, the trio rocked Nashville off its formulaic hinges with their 1998 debut, Wide Open Spaces, and since then have sold 25 million CDs and racked up four Grammys and 10 Country Music Association awards. "The Chicks are my favorite singing group," says Stevie Nicks, whose 1975 Fleetwood Mac hit "Landslide" is covered on the trio's recent CD Home. "If I were younger, I would at this minute be convincing them that I should be the fourth Dixie Chick.'"

Careful what you wish for. Not only do the three women work and tour together, they shop together, work out together (yoga is a current passion) and even play bingo together. Their homes are within driving distance, and all three turned up in the delivery room when Robison gave birth in November to son Charles Augustus. "We're all sisters out here," says Maines. As with any siblings, sometimes tempers can flare. But if one acts up, adds Maines, "we're close enough to go, 'You're being a bitch, you need to stop.' Just like sisters would."

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