After a six-year separation, Sugarland returns to its roots
Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland
Like coming home after a long vacation, Sugarland returned to country music after a sixyear hiatus to find that the only thing that had changed was their perspective.
OK, and the addition of “bro country” — the modern strain influenced by electronic and hip-hop music.
“We probably have a lot of friends who are upset with us because we skipped bro country,” joked Kristian Bush, who comprises the duo alongside Jennifer Nettles.
Bush and Nettles will perform tonight at Value City Arena on their aptly named “Still the Same” tour, their first since 2011.
Formed in 2004 with former vocalist Kristen Hall, the then-trio took off with song “Baby Girl,” a pop-country tearjerker that tracked the rise of an aspiring Who: Sugarland Where: Value City Arena, West Lane Avenue and Olentangy River Road Contact: 1-800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com Showtime: 7 p.m. Thursday Tickets: $48 to $78
singer much like them. Hall left the group in early 2006.
For the next six years, Bush and Nettles dominated charts and sales, earning three No. 1 Billboard 200 albums and 17 Country Music Awards wins and nominations.
The duo were standing on the peak of their commercial success in 2012 when Nettles told her partner she wanted to go solo.
Bush, 48, had already undergone one major transition when moving from folk-rock band Billy Pilgrim to Sugarland in the early 2000s, so he tackled the split from Nettles with tenacity, launching a solo career of his own.
Despite his veteran status, Bush’s 2015 debut, “Southern Gravity,” put him in the same award categories with other new (and youthful) artists such as Lindsay Ell.
Nettles did most of the singing in Sugarland, and to new listeners Bush’s solo singing seemingly came from nowhere.
“People didn’t have a good idea of what I sounded like when I sang,” he said. “I had to break the ice anytime I stepped up to the mic and say, ‘Don’t anybody get nervous.’”
Bush, who wrote 300 songs for his album, didn’t mind the anonymity.
“When you hear a song on the radio, you almost never say, 'That’s my favorite singer'; you almost always say, 'That’s my favorite song,'” he said. “That’s important to me. That means that there’s a chance to make something brand-new tomorrow that might affect you."
He’s taking that same attitude of audience-led discovery into Sugarland’s new endeavors.
After all, six years is a long time to be away from the mainstream, and he acknowledges a whole generation might not know their early music.
When Nettles called up her co-star in 2017 to gauge his interest in getting back together, he agreed on a reunion but wasn’t sure what to write about.
They decided to stick to what they knew.
“The truth always worked, so let’s write about people who haven’t seen each other in a while,” Bush said of settling on a subject.