On Tuesday (August 1), the country music group – featuring members Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Strayer – announced that they were canceling one of the their The Chicks Tour stops and postponing another due to “ongoing illness.”
The Chicks kicked off their 2022 tour last week and though the trek was temporarily interrupted this past weekend, they’ll be on the road all summer long!
The Chicks have had to postpone a few more tour dates.
The trio – Natalie Maines and multi-instrumentalists/vocalists Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer – have released a new update about their current tour, which comes just after the group stopped their show in Indianapolis over the weekend after only a half hour.
The group was supposed to play the Ruoff Music Center in Indiana on Sunday (June 19) but left the stage after less than a half hour. They have since released a statement and fans are speculating about what may have happened.
Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines, and Emily Strayer have announced that they’re headed back out on the road after a lengthy break from touring. This will be their first outing since 2017.
“While we were recording the Gaslighter album, I was constantly picturing performing all of those songs on tour,” Martie shared in a statement about the tour. “The ultimate payoff is always the live show for us.”
This upcoming tour will take place this summer, starting in St. Louis on June 14, with stops in Chicago, Toronto, Boston, Charlotte, two nights in Los Angeles and the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver.
“What I have missed the most about touring is the first couple minutes of every show,” Emily added. “The house lights going dark, the roar of the crowd and the opening song pumping through the PA. I think we’ve all missed being connected through live music!”
The Chicks, the country music group formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, performed the National Anthem during the final day of the 2020 Democratic National Convention and it was definitely a significant moment.
You might remember that the group caused a ton of controversy back in 2003 when lead singer Natalie Maines told the audience at their London concert that they were “ashamed” that then President George W. Bush was from Texas.
The moment happened just days before the invasion of Iraq, which the band said they did not support. As a result of the comment, the band was blacklisted by thousands of country music stations and they received death threats. Natalie apologized for the remark and said it was disrespectful, but she rescinded the apology three years later and said Bush didn’t deserve respect.
The Chicks made a comeback in 2006 with their song “Not Ready to Make Nice” and they won five Grammys the next year, including Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year.
It’s significant to see the group performing the National Anthem at the DNC as they also performed the song at the Super Bowl in 2003, weeks before the controversy that sidelined their career.
Natalie has been vocal with her criticism of Donald Trump and his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. She said, “It is crazy that we have a leader that is — I mean, it’s murder… It’s second-degree murder.”
The “title track is a trademark Chicks kiss-off that could as easily be addressing a jealous ex as the current US president.”
“We were always thinking and writing about that stuff,” Strayer told Apple Music about the parallels between the music and various political issues, “but the news kind of caught up to what we were already talking about—whether it was the #MeToo movement or what’s happening right now with Black Lives Matter. So it was coincidental in a way, but I think those things are cyclical. They might be the newest news stories, but they’ve always been here.”
You can download the album now on iTunes or stream it below thanks to Spotify.