Sugarland

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Sugarland

Country music duo

"I ain't settlin' for anything less than everything," ran a line in the 2006 hit "Settlin'," by country vocal duo Sugarland. The line could serve as a motto for the fast-rising Atlanta-based act, which scored unusual success with its 2004 debut album, Twice the Speed of Life. The powerful vocals of lead singer Jennifer Nettles, together with consistently strong songs and a determination to cross the boundary between country and rock music, made Sugarland into one of the most talked-about groups in country music during the early 2000s.

Sugarland started out in 2001 as an Atlanta-area trio, with singer-songwriters Kristian Bush and Kristen Hall joining Nettles. All were well known to observers who followed the music scene in the southeast United States. Their backgrounds were dramatically different. Nettles was raised in Douglas, in south Georgia's Coffee County, where she soaked up the musical environment at the local Southern Baptist church. Bush, though born in Tennessee, attended prep school in Connecticut, at Avon Old Farms School. His musical interests there was centered on alternative rock music. "We [Bush's brother attended the nearby Choate School] cut our musical chops sneaking out to the New Haven Coliseum to see R.E.M. shows," he told Patrick Ferrucci of Connecticut's New Haven Register. His ties with the Atlanta area began when he attended Emory University there. Hall, who grew up in suburban Detroit, had aspirations of becoming a folk singer-songwriter. Her music industry breakthrough came when she helped out on an early EP album by the folk-rock duo the Indigo Girls and wound up with a co-producer credit, "basically for making coffee," she told Karman Kregloe of the AfterEllen.com website.

All three had some success in the 1990s, but none broke through to national recognition. Nettles had regular gigs in Atlanta-area clubs as the frontwoman for her own Jennifer Nettles Band and of a group called Soul Miner's Daughter; she sang gospel, rock, and soul music in addition to country, and in the late 1990s she appeared on some dates of the female-oriented Lilith Fair tour. Bush was a member of folk-rock duo Billy Pilgrim (sometimes dubbed the Indigo Boys), which recorded two albums for the Atlantic label before being dropped. Hall toured the folk circuit and recorded as a solo artist for the Windham Hill label and for Indigo Girl Amy Ray's Daemon imprint. By the early 2000s all three artists were looking for the creative spark that could take them to the next level. "I traveled around as ‘Kristen Hall’ singing these dingy songs about having my heart broken or being pissed off at my parents or whatever it was, and finally it got to where I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can't do this anymore,’" Hall recalled to Kregloe.

In or around 2001, Hall began contacting other Atlanta-area musicians in the hopes of finding a fruitful collaboration. She worked briefly with both Bush and Nettles separately, but nothing really clicked creatively until they came together as a trio. Among the first songs they worked out together was "Baby Girl," to which all three made compositional contributions; a country song in a classic success-story mode, it became one of the major hits spawned by their Twice the Speed of Life album. The new group, soon named Sugarland, began drawing large crowds around Atlanta and beyond. They marketed a self-issued CD, Premium Quality Tunes, on their website. In 2003 Devin Grant of the Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier suggested that Sugarland "will no doubt soon attract major label interest," and urged local fans to see the trio "before they go on to inevitable stardom."

The prophecy came true when Sugarland appeared that year at an industry event attended by Mercury Nashville president Luke Lewis, who signed them immediately. "And I don't pat myself on the back, because I think any of my peers, if they had been there that night when they did a showcase in Nashville, would have seen the talent," Lewis mused to Nick Marino of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Sugarland went into the studio with veteran producer Garth Fundis and emerged in October of 2004 with Twice the Speed of Life. Radio programmers took to the group's upbeat, rock-inflected sound, airing no fewer than five singles from the album over the next 18 months: "Baby Girl," "Something More," "Just Might (Make Me Believe)," "Down In Mississippi (Up To No Good)," and "Stand Back Up." The first two narrowly missed the top spot on Billboard magazine's country singles chart, peaking at number two. The Jake's Ice Cream chain named a flavor Sugarland Swirl after the group.

Sugarland, because of the rock and folk influences brought by its various members, was sometimes held up as an example of how far country music had diverged from its rural roots, but to Bush the diversity of sounds was a strength rather than a weakness. "Crossover, I think, is a really dirty word in Nashville," he observed to Walter Tunis of Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader. "But we're from Atlanta, where everything is crossover. Somewhere between R.E.M., the Allman Brothers, and OutKast is where we live." Sales of over two million copies for Twice the Speed of Life vindicated the trio's judgment, as they toured with country headliner Kenny Chesney and took home a Grammy Award for Best New Artist and a host of Academy of Country Music award nominations. The crossover trend continued as Nettles appeared in a duet with veteran rocker Jon Bon Jovi, "Who Says You Can't Go Home," which appeared in early 2006 and reached high chart levels in both the rock and country markets.

The level of success Sugarland achieved came at a price: the more songwriting-oriented Hall tired of the group's constant touring (they were scheduled to be on the road nearly constantly in 2007) and left the group in 2006. There was speculation that Hall's status as an open lesbian, rare in the country music industry, was connected with her departure, but Hall herself told Marino, "I don't want to be a touring musician. I just want to be a songwriter. … We accomplished some great things. I started the band. I named the band. We fought a war to make a brand name—we did it. It's awesome. I'm totally proud of it and support it."

Hall's departure did not radically alter Sugarland's sound, for that sound had always been squarely focused on the voice of Nettles, a rich, throaty contralto in a classic church-trained Southern mode. Nettles and Bush, working mostly with other songwriters, extended the rock influence in the Sugarland sound on their second album, Enjoy the Ride. The producer was Byron Gallimore, noted for his work with Faith Hill, a singer somewhat similar to Nettles stylistically. The album appeared in late 2006, and Jody Rosen of Entertainment Weekly noted that Nettles's "powerhouse performances on ballads like "Want To" will strike fear in the heart of many a Nashville diva." With "Want To" and the inspirational "Settlin'" as its lead singles, Enjoy the Ride climbed the charts in early 2007 and gave its duo creators another ride on the roller coaster of country music success.

For the Record …

Members include: Kristian Bush, multiple instruments and vocals; Jennifer Nettles, vocals; Kristen Hall, vocals (left group, 2006).

Formed 2001 in area of Atlanta, GA; signed to Mercury label, 2003; released debut album, Twice the Speed of Life, 2004; performed on Grammy awards show, released Enjoy the Ride, 2006.

Awards: American Music Awards, favorite new artist; Academy of Country Music Awards, top new duo/vocal group; Grammy award nomination, best new artist; five Academy of Country Music award nominations.

Addresses: Record company—Mercury Records Nashville, 54 Music Sq. E, Ste. 300, Nashville, TN 37203-4386. Website—Official Sugarland Website: http://www.sugarlandmusic.com.