The Chicks mark 20 years of Taking the Long Way with US tour

The Chicks are turning one of the most consequential albums in modern country music into a live anniversary statement. Emily Strayer, Martie Maguire and Natalie Maines will play Taking the Long Way in full for the first time on a 16-show fall tour of intimate U.S. theaters, opening Sept. 30 at Detroit’s Fox Theatre and closing Nov. 2 in Los Angeles.

The tour reaches beyond nostalgia. It revisits the album that helped redefine the group after the country industry turned on them in 2003, when Natalie Maines criticized then-President George W. Bush in London as the United States prepared to invade Iraq. That backlash damaged the Chicks’ relationship with country radio and much of the genre’s audience, but it also set the stage for Not Ready to Make Nice, the album’s signature song and the sharpest expression of the trio’s response to public condemnation.

Taking the Long Way arrived on May 23, 2006, and immediately became a commercial and cultural rebound. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, sold more than 2.5 million copies in the United States and was later certified 2x platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America on July 11, 2007. At the 49th Grammy Awards in February 2007, the album and Not Ready to Make Nice won five Grammys total, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

For the Chicks, the record also marked an ending. It was the group’s last release under the Dixie Chicks name, and the new tour places that identity shift back in public view. Maines has described the album as the most recognized era of the group’s career, and the decision to perform it front to back suggests the Chicks want audiences to experience the work as a complete artistic response, not just a set of isolated hits.

The stop in Detroit goes on sale June 4 at 10 a.m. local time, with additional dates reported in Chicago, New York City, Nashville, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco and Hollywood. By returning to Taking the Long Way in theaters rather than arenas, the Chicks are treating the album less like a museum piece than a live argument about how country music, pop culture and dissent have been absorbed, punished and reassessed over 20 years.