Chicks Launch 'Taking the Long Way' 20th Anniversary
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- The Chicks played their first full U.S. headline show in close to three years at Yaamava' Theater in Highland, California, serving as a summer preview of their fall tour marking the 20th anniversary of 'Taking the Long Way' (officially launching Sept. 30 in Detroit).
- The fall tour runs through mid-sized theaters in Chicago, New York, Nashville, D.C., Austin, Seattle, San Antonio and closes with a two-night stand at Hollywood's Dolby Theatre in early November; the trio is also opening four stadium dates for Tim McGraw this summer.
- The Yaamava' set stacked six songs from 2020's 'Gaslighter' against four from 'Taking the Long Way,' with Natalie Maines delivering some of her fiercest singing on 'Tights on My Boat' and 'Not Ready to Make Nice,' which still lands its 'shut up and sing' bridge.
- The shift from arena-in-the-round to proscenium staging placed the trio in a visible left-to-right line augmented by a full backing band, restoring the sense of sisterhood that had been visually diluted in their arena productions.
- Maines opened the show with topical quips about a UFC fight in D.C. and a Spencer Pratt/Florida crack, while a Maya Angelou 'we are more alike' quote opened the night — the unity ticket of the encore-of-catharsis pairing of 'Not Ready to Make Nice' into 'Goodbye Earl.'
- Maines has grown her hair long again, which she dismissed on stage after it caught in her guitar strap; the reviewer argues the long locks may be the only remaining flashpoint for old critics.
Why it matters: The Chicks are pairing a 20th-anniversary victory lap of their most defiant mainstream-country-rejecting record with a deliberate visual reset — abandoning arena-in-the-round for proscenium staging that restores the group's physical unity at exactly the moment they're framing themselves around a Maya Angelou 'we are more alike' message, giving the fall tour both a musical and ideological centerpiece for roughly a dozen theater dates stretching into November.
