After graduating from high school, Strayer and his sister Martha continued to play music together. Initially, they were accompanied by guitarist Robin Lynn Macy and upright bassist Laura Lynch, but the latter two quit the band in 1995, and singer Natalie Maines replaced them. This group went on to have a lot of commercial success.
Both the 1998 “Wide Open Spaces” and 1999 “Fly” albums were huge hits, earning the band diamond status and making them the only female group in any genre of music to have back-to-back certified diamond records. Both albums have won a slew of prizes, including Grammys and Academy of Country Music nominations. “Wide Open Spaces,” “There’s Your Trouble,” “Cowboy Take Me Away,” and “Without You” are among the most popular singles from both albums. Because of Stayer’s and her sister’s virtuoso ability on various instruments, the band stood apart from other groups at the time.
The Dixie Chicks followed up their breakthrough with the release of “Home” in 2002, which featured a unique sound due to the band’s decision to release the album independently while in a legal battle with their record label, Sony. The album was still a hit, with the track “Long Time Gone” becoming the band’s first mainstream singles chart hit in the United States.
The band was embroiled in controversy the following year after lead vocalist Maines expressed her dissatisfaction of then-president George W. Bush and the US invasion of Iraq during a London concert. The comments sparked outrage in the country music world, but Strayer and her sister stood with their bandmate during this period, despite the fact that several music outlets predicted the Dixie Chicks’ demise.
However, such forecasts proved erroneous when the band released “Taking the Long Way” in 2006, which debuted at number one on the US mainstream and country music charts and went gold in its first week. The album was the Dixie Chicks’ third No. 1 album, making them the first female band in history to have three albums launch at the top of the charts. Despite low tour ticket sales across much of the United States as a result of the issue, the group swept the 49th Grammy Awards, winning all five categories in which they were nominated.
The band then went on pause for a few years to spend time with their families, though they remained a group. They resumed touring in the 2010s, appearing at various Canadian festivals, and in 2016 embarked on a globe tour that took them across the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. After a 14-year break, they returned in 2020 with “Gaslighter,” their debut studio album.
The Chicks changed their name to The Chicks in June 2020, removing the connection to the Mason-Dixon line, which has overtones with slavery.
