The Chicks Kick Off Their 20th Anniversary Tour in Detroit: All the Best Bits

What happened on opening night in Detroit

Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Strayer are back on the road. The country trio kicked off their huge anniversary run in Detroit, celebrating two decades since their smash record Taking The Long Way changed everything for them.

Billboard caught all the action as the band took the stage to a packed arena. Right from the opening chords, they made it clear they came to put on a real show. The harmonies sounded razor sharp. The energy in the room was electric from the minute the lights went down.

Let's be honest, opening nights can sometimes feel a bit bumpy. Microphones act up. Cues get missed. But The Chicks ran through their set like they had never stepped off a tour bus. They traded smiles, ripped through their solos, and had thousands of fans singing every single word back at them.

The setlist and the biggest musical moments

The night was built around the songs that defined an era. When the band tore into "Not Ready to Make Nice", the crowd went wild. It remains one of the sharpest comeback songs in modern music history, and Maines delivered every line with the exact same fire she had twenty years ago.

They didn't just stick to the album tracks, either. The trio dug deep into their catalogue, bringing out massive crowd-pleasers like "Wide Open Spaces", "Cowboy Take Me Away", and the crowd favourite "Goodbye Earl". Every fiddle run from Martie and banjo riff from Emily landed cleanly across the arena.

The pacing kept the crowd on their feet. The band balanced heavy emotional tracks with fast, foot-stomping country jams that kept the momentum moving without any awkward lulls.

The background behind Taking The Long Way

To really get why this tour feels so special, you have to remember what 2006 was like for this group. Three years earlier, Maines made her famous remarks on a London stage about the Iraq War. Country radio dumped them overnight. Stations literally crushed their CDs with steamrollers in parking lots.

Instead of grovelling or disappearing, the trio went into the studio with producer Rick Rubin and made Taking The Long Way. It was defiant, personal, and full of rock edges.

The record went straight to number one. It swept the Grammy Awards in 2007, winning Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year. It proved you could stand your ground, lose your traditional radio backing, and still sell out arenas across the globe.

How the fans in Detroit reacted

The crowd inside the Detroit venue spanned multiple generations. You had fans who bought the original records on CD back in the nineties standing shoulder-to-shoulder with younger listeners who discovered them on streaming.

Signs dotted the floor, and fans screamed every lyric so loudly that at times Maines could just step back from the mic and let the arena do the heavy lifting. The band looked genuinely moved by the response, smiling wide between verses and soaking up the noise.

There was no stuffiness to the evening. It felt like a massive, joyful victory lap among friends who had weathered the storm together.

What happens next on the tour

Detroit was just the starting line. The band is taking this massive production to arenas and outdoor amphitheatres across North America in the coming months.

If the opening night is anything to go by, tickets are going to be tough to grab as word spreads. The Chicks have proved once again that great songs, ironclad harmonies, and unmatched stage presence never go out of style.