The Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks) are an American country 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 band in 1989, with bassist Laura Lynch and vocalist and guitarist Robin Lynn Macy. They performed bluegrass and country music, busking and touring the bluegrass festival circuits and small venues for six years without attracting a major label. In 1992, Lynch replaced Macy as the lead vocalist.
After three independent albums, the band was signed by Monument Records Nashville in 1995, and Natalie Maines replaced Lynch on lead vocals three years before their first Monument album and fourth overall 1998's Wide Open Spaces. The band recorded a total of two albums for Monument and one album for Columbia Records before taking a brief hiatus in response to their comments on then-US President George W. Bush shortly before the invasion of Iraq. They reunited one year later for another Columbia album before they took a second hiatus in 2008; Martie and Emily recorded as a duo called Court Yard Hounds. The band reunited a second time in 2016 for a series of tours. In 2020, they removed "Dixie" from their name due to negative connotations, and released their first Columbia album in 14 years, Gaslighter.
The Chicks have charted 22 times on the American Billboard Hot Country Songs charts; their highest-peaking singles there are "There's Your Trouble", "Wide Open Spaces", "You Were Mine", "Cowboy Take Me Away", "Without You", and "Travelin' Soldier", which all reached number one. In addition, the band has 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[2] and sales of 27.9 million albums in the US, the Chicks had become the best-selling all-woman band and best-selling country group since Nielsen SoundScan began recording sales in 1991.[3][4][5]
