The Chicks Relive Their 2003 Backlash in Chicago With a 20th Anniversary ‘Taking the Long Way’ Tour Show Built Around Every Album Track
CHICAGO, IL — The Chicks turned a concert into a reckoning Saturday night at the Auditorium Theatre, using their 20th anniversary Taking the Long Way tour stop to revisit the backlash that altered their career. Natalie Maines kept referring to 2003 as “the incident,” a shorthand for the London comments that triggered years of public blowback.
The Chicago show leaned into that history instead of avoiding it. Video clips rolled behind the band as Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer sat center stage and played every song from Taking the Long Way for the first time. The result was part concert, part retrospective, with the trio looking back at the upheaval that followed their defiant stance.
How one London comment in 2003 changed everything for the band
The story the group revisited began in 2003, when Maines spoke in London about the looming Iraq war and then-President George W. Bush, who was from Texas, the same state as the band. Her remark that the group was ashamed the president was from Texas became one of the defining flash points in modern country music.
The fallout was immediate and severe. The Chicks were boycotted on radio, their CDs and merchandise were burned in public, and the trio was attacked with insults that ranged from “ignorant” to “bimbos.” Some critics said the women should “shut up and sing,” a phrase the band later turned into the title of its 2006 documentary about the episode.
That reaction reshaped the group’s public identity. What had been a band on top of the country world suddenly became a target, and the Chicago performance made clear that the memory of that backlash still sits at the center of how The Chicks tell their own story.
‘Taking the Long Way’ became a comeback album and a Grammy winner
The 2006 album Taking the Long Way arrived as the trio’s first release after the uproar and became a major comeback. It won five Grammy Awards and marked a shift in how the band approached its material, with the members fully co-writing the record for the first time.
On Saturday, the group treated the album as more than a milestone. They performed its entire track list, a first for the band, and framed the songs as proof of what survived after the public storm. The crowd responded as if the room itself understood the arc: punishment, persistence and finally vindication.
Fans packed the nearly sold-out theater and reacted loudly throughout the night, especially when Maines and the others revisited the album’s most pointed moments. The set list made the comeback feel less like nostalgia and more like a statement about endurance.
Rick Rubin, new collaborators and a harder-edged sound
The Chicago performance also highlighted how the album was built. Maines recalled that mega-producer Rick Rubin reached out in 2005 after the industry had largely shunned the group, offering to produce them and connect them with songwriters. She said he believed they had something to say, and she told the audience he was right.
The record’s songs pulled in outside collaborators who gave The Chicks a sharper, heavier approach than the group’s earlier bluegrass-country-pop blend. Mike Campbell of The Heartbreakers worked with them on “Lubbock or Leave It,” while Robert Randolph and Keb’ Mo’ contributed to “I Hope,” the album’s closing track.
Maines and her bandmates used the stage to explain how those collaborations widened their sound without softening their point of view. The material felt more muscular and direct, matching the band’s decision to answer controversy with songwriting instead of retreat.
The crowd roared for ‘Not Ready to Make Nice’ and its refusal to apologize
If one song summed up the evening, it was “Not Ready to Make Nice.” The track drew the loudest reaction of the night, and Maines retold how songwriter Dan Wilson asked whether they wanted to write an apology song or simply say they were sorry.
Her answer was blunt. The band said no to apology-by-ballad, and the finished song became a fierce clapback that remains one of the group’s signature statements. In Chicago, it landed with extra force because the performance itself had spent so much time revisiting the cost of refusing to back down.
Video footage of women who broke barriers, including Gloria Steinem, Dolly Parton and Rosa Parks, played alongside “I Hope,” tying the song to a broader tradition of defiance. The staging underscored how The Chicks now present their music as part of a larger cultural conversation, not just a personal story.
A second set of hits, covers and a name change that signaled more change
After the first album-focused set, The Chicks returned with a second half built from the songs that made them stars. They played “Wide Open Spaces,” “Goodbye Earl,” “Cowboy Take Me Away,” “Gaslighter” and “Travelin’ Soldier,” while also offering a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.”
They also performed Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons,” a choice that fit the night’s themes of Texas identity and pushback from country gatekeepers. The group had already shown in 2020 that it was still willing to challenge the system when it dropped “Dixie” from its name because of the word’s links to the Confederacy and slavery.
The tour comes after a 14-year gap between albums, with 2020’s Gaslighter proving the trio had not lost its edge. Saturday’s show suggested that the long road back was never about returning to where they started, but about proving they could keep speaking plainly on their own terms.
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