Opening for the Chicks on Wednesday night, Sept. 28, at the Pine Knob Music Theatre, singer-songwriter Patty Griffin noted that when the two acts hit the road in June it was 105 degrees out.

"I prefer this weather," she said. The Chicks' Natalie Maines echoed that sentiment during the band's set, though certainly some and perhaps many in the crowd -- sporting as many winter ski tuques as cowboy hats -- may have disagreed.

But the 12,000 or so at Pine Knob's penultimate 2022 concert could agree that they were happy to have Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer back for the first time in six years, making up for a June show that was postponed by Maines' vocal problems. "I'm so glad we finally made it to this stage," Maines, a thick scarf wrapped around her throat, said early in the Chicks' two-hour show. "We thought rescheduling the 2020 tour was a long wait, then we tacked on a few months. I promise the show is better when there's singing."

The trio and its tight six-piece band (including Maines' son Slade Pasdar on guitar and keyboards) certainly made the night worth the wait, although much has changed since the Chicks last played the venue in 2016. Its latest album, 2020's "Gaslighter," took the group even further from its country roots, though Wednesday's turnout, while not the sell-outs of yore, indicated plenty of fans were happy to follow them in a pop direction. And that female-dominated crowd clearly related to "Gaslighter's" even more pronounced themes of empowerment, both topical and personal (some inspired by Maines' acrimonious divorce from actor Adrian Pasdar). There was meaning in the music, replacing the good humor of previous Chicks shows with a more sober countenance.

But that hardly means it wasn't a good time. The trio came out hot with "Sin Wagon" and "Gaslighter's" title track, and the concert was decidedly focused on the new material, with 10 of 22 songs coming from the album. They were among the most powerful and provocative moments of the night, too. During the cheatin' song "Tights on My Boat," for instance, animated caricatures of Republican senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as well as the six conservative Supreme Court judges sailed by on a video screen.

And the moving late-show pairing of the protest song "March March" -- whose video screen tally of school shootings and #blacklivesmatter murders included Oxford High School -- and the emotional mothers' ode "For Her" caused chills that had nothing to do with the weather.

It wasn't all heavy, of course. "The Long Way Around," "Ready to Run" and "Wide Open Spaces" nodded to the Chicks' past iconic status, while a mid-show sit-down segment at the front of the stage included favorites such as "Lubbock or Leave It," "Cowboy Take Me Away," a rendition of "Long Time Gone" that incorporated a snippet of the Chicks' Beyonce collaboration "Daddy Lessons" and the troupe's hit cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide." The only miscue was a well-performed but perhaps ill-timed inclusion of Griffin's "Don't Let Me Die in Florida," an uncharacteristically tone-deaf moment when people really WERE potentially dying as Hurricane Ian hit the state.

The back-end of the show, meanwhile, was quiet and serious with "Gaslighter's" "Everybody Loves You" and "Set Me Free" leading into a soaring "Not Ready to Make Nice" -- an even truer statement of purpose in the context of the rest of the show. And even "Goodbye Earl" the once-controversial 2000 single about a woman slaying her abusive husband, felt a bit more wishful than wistful but certainly made the point that as the Chicks are not averse to throwing a little gas on the fires they see burning.

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