
Robin Lynn Macy

Robin Lynn Macy (born November 27, 1958) is an American musician, horticulturist, teacher, and community organizer who is best known as a founding member of the female country group the Dixie Chicks.
Career.
While a mathematics teacher 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, 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". 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. The band recorded one CD – "Pastures of Plenty". The band dissolved in 2003.
Bartlett Aboretum.
Macy is the steward of Bartlett Arboretum, a 501(c)3 non-profit she created. It was founded by Walter Bartlett, a physician and conservationist, and is located in the small farm community of Belle Plaine, Kansas (estimated population 1,500 in 2020), on a slough north of the Ninnescah River drainage, 20 miles south of Wichita. She discovered the arboretum by chance, in 1997, when it was slated for sale. The Bartlett family which owned the property for generations viewed her arrival and its preservation as a godsend. In a well-irrigated alluvial plain, it features groves including redbud, magnolia and Japanese maple which would otherwise be difficult to grow in Kansas. It incorporates a 135-year-old Santa Fe Railroad Depot, converted to a studio, at its edge, and an 8-hive apiary, plus a bandstand and limited lawn seating area. Macy says, "We had 14 different concerts in 2018, but it really is to promote the arboretum. The music is there to enhance the space."
Community Organizing.
The route of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad traverses Belle Plaine, which has a population that has diminished to about 1,500 by 2020. The Burlington Northern was merged with the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe (ATSF), which had owned the single tracks through the town. Parallel, double tracks were added a few years before Macy, friends, and local officials began their six-year effort to make the town a "quiet zone." The solution involved finding the funding for studies and the design and construction of alternative safety infrastructure at crossings. The more frequent traffic had found the residents inundated by deafening sounds of train whistles, forced by federal safety regulations to blow warnings, day and night, at a volume of close to 100 decibels, as they approached multiple local railroad crossings. Although the project will be deferred in a queue, until the completion of a few other similar efforts around the rail system, it will have eliminated the whistles that will not be engaged except in emergencies.
Personal.
Macy was a teacher of geometry at Wichita Collegiate School. Her husband, Ken White, is a fellow musician.
Discography.
solo
with the Cherokee Maidens