The Chicks | The Chicks announce first tour since 2017

The Chicks have announced their first tour since dropping Dixie from their band name.

The country trio – comprising Natalie Maines and siblings Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer – shortened the moniker in response to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in 2020.

And they are poised to make their live comeback with ‘The Chicks Tour’ in North America this summer.

Patty Griffin and Jenny Lewis will open for the trio.

The group intended to tour their 2020 LP, ‘Gaslighter’, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shows were unable to take place.

The run kicks off on June 14 in St. Louis and concludes on August 13 in Washington state.

‘Gaslighter’ marked the ‘Wide Open Spaces’ hitmakers’ first album in 14 years, while their last tour was in 2017.

The band previously insisted they had wanted to drop Dixie from their name for several years.

They weren’t all thrilled by their name at the start of their career and they more seriously considered a change following the backlash they experienced over their comments about then-US President George W. Bush in 2003.

Natalie said: “The other girls never liked the name. When I joined, we discussed changing it but I thought it was the best thing about them . . .  ‘Nooo, Dixie Chicks is great!’ I said.

“But after the Bush controversy, I wanted to change it too because I felt people had misunderstood who we were as people.

“Once this racist connotation dawned on me, it felt icky and I didn’t like it. I mean, none of us did!”

The “point of no return” for the trio came when NASCAR banned the Confederate flag – which represented the Southern states below the Mason-Dixon Line during the American Civil War – from their events following the wave of Black Lives Matter protests sparked by George’s death.

Natalie added: “We tried calling ourselves DCX and we always referred to ourselves as the Chicks but for me the point of no return, ‘Oh my gosh we’re doing this’, came when NASCAR banned the Dixie flag.

“Could we really defend the word Dixie? No, we had to lose it.

“Though there wasn’t any racist intention behind our name, it came from a historically hateful and negative place.”

Tickets go on sale on Friday (04.03.22) via LiveNation.com, head to thechicks.com/tour for the full tour dates.