Two decades after winning Album of the Year for Taking the Long Way, the trio performed their defiant hit on late-night television and detailed a run of theater shows this fall.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Chicks returned to the song that once marked their exile from country radio. Dressed in red and backed by a string section, Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Strayer performed “Not Ready to Make Nice” as the opening salvo for the 20th anniversary of their Grammy-winning album Taking the Long Way. Maguire’s fiddle cut through the arrangement with the same clarity that made the original a reluctant anthem.
The 2006 song was written after the trio—then the Dixie Chicks—faced a blacklist for Maines’ onstage criticism of President George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. The album swept five Grammys, including Album, Record, and Song of the Year, and the track has since been cited among the defining singles of that decade.
The anniversary will be marked with a fall tour that opens in Detroit and runs for 16 dates, hitting Chicago, New York, San Antonio, and two nights in Hollywood. The venues are notably smaller than the arenas the band once commanded: a deliberate shift toward theaters. It arrives five years after their last album, Gaslighter, which ended a 14-year hiatus and followed the group’s name change.
The Chicks have not softened. Maines recently called Donald Trump a “fugly slut” over a fund established with U.S. tax dollars for supporters and allies—a reminder that the impulse behind “Not Ready to Make Nice” remains operational.
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ROMBO Editorial Staff
The collective voice behind ROMBO Magazine’s news, reviews, features, and cultural coverage.
