The Chicks

The Chicks, formerly the Dixie Chicks, are an American country music band from Dallas, Texas. The band consists of Natalie Maines (lead vocals, guitar, bass guitar) and sisters Martie Maguire (vocals, fiddle, mandolin, guitar) and Emily Strayer (vocals, guitar, banjo, Dobro). Martie and Emily (both née Erwin) founded the Dixie Chicks in 1989 with bassist Laura Lynch and singer and guitarist Robin Lynn Macy. They performed bluegrass and country music, busking and touring the bluegrass festival circuits and small venues for six years. In 1992, Macy left the group with Lynch taking over vocals. After independently releasing three albums, in 1995, the Dixie Chicks were signed by Monument Records Nashville and Natalie Maines replaced Lynch. They released their first album with Monument, Wide Open Spaces, in 1998, followed by Fly in 1999. Both albums were certified diamond. In 2003, while on stage in London, the Dixie Chicks publicly criticized the US president George W. Bush and the imminent Iraq War, triggering a backlash and damaging sales of their 2002 album Home. They released Taking the Long Way in 2006 and entered hiatus in 2008; Martie and Emily recorded as a duo, Court Yard Hounds. The Dixie Chicks reunited in 2016 for a series of tours. In 2020, they removed "Dixie" from their name due to negative connotations, and released their first album in 14 years, Gaslighter. The Chicks have charted 22 times on the American Billboard Hot Country Songs charts; "There's Your Trouble", "Wide Open Spaces", "You Were Mine", "Cowboy Take Me Away", "Without You", and "Travelin' Soldier" all reached number one. The Chicks have received 13 Grammy Awards, ten Country Music Association awards and eight Academy of Country Music awards. By July 2020, with 33 million certified albums sold and sales of 27.9 million albums in the US, the...