The Chicks Announce 20th Anniversary Reissue of 'Taking the Long Way' With Unreleased Tracks and Full-Album Tour

The Chicks will mark two decades of Taking the Long Way with a triple-LP reissue and a tour that performs the entire album live for the first time. The 20th Anniversary Edition arrives on 2 October on Columbia Records, featuring two previously unreleased tracks and demo versions of two of the album's best-known songs (Billboard).

The reissue adds 'Thin Line' and 'Live Wire' to the original 14-track running order, along with demo recordings of 'Not Ready to Make Nice' and 'Flowers.' For listeners who already own the album, those four cuts are the reason to pick up the new package.

Taking the Long Way was The Chicks' seventh studio album, originally released on 23 May 2006. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — the chart that ranks the week's most-consumed albums in the United States — and became the last record the group released under their former stage name, The Dixie Chicks. The trio — Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer — earned five Grammy Awards for the album, including album of the year, plus record and song of the year for 'Not Ready to Make Nice,' which reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The tour opens on 30 September at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, two days before the reissue hits shelves. Billed as a celebration of what promoters call the record-breaking album, the run is staged at intimate theatres across the United States, including a stop at The Anthem in Washington, D.C. on 12 October and The Truth in New York on 17 October (Rock Cellar Magazine; Hartford Courant).

Registration for the tour presale closed on 31 May 2026, according to posts on the band's official Facebook and TikTok accounts (Facebook; TikTok).

In a statement, The Chicks said they were excited to finally share the unreleased tracks and to perform the full album on the road. The original release runs 66 minutes across 14 tracks and carries the Columbia imprint (Apple Music).

For fans, the combination is straightforward: a chance to hear songs that never made the 2006 cut, alongside a complete live run-through of a record that arrived amid heavy public scrutiny and walked away with five Grammys. The tour's theatre-sized venues suggest the band is opting for close-quarters rooms over arenas — a fitting match for an album that, two decades on, still invites listeners to sit with it.