Ask Jennifer Nettles where she lives, and she begins to respond with “Atlanta, and also Nashville.”
Then she pauses and unleashes a throaty laugh.
“If you really want to know where I live, it’s the first bottom bunk on the passenger side of the tour bus.”
No kidding.
Since April, Nettles and her Sugarland bandmate, Kristian Bush, have crisscrossed the country on the ambitious “The Incredible Machine” tour, a visual feat that incorporates the “steampunk” look they created to complement their upcoming release of the same name.
The tour is wrapping up in Florida, but with the album dropping Oct. 19, the duo is taking to the Internet the night of Oct. 18 to promote the release with a live concert from New York’s Best Buy Theater.
The show, which will stream live on YouTube (www.youtube.com/sugarlandvevo ), is being directed by famed choreographer Kenny Ortega.
As of late this week, Nettles and Bush hadn’t yet met with Ortega -- which is fine with Nettles.
“From what I understand, this is an opportunity for [Ortega] to create improvisationally. He definitely has the skills and chops to do that, so it’s super-exciting,” she said. “There can be some co-creating going on, but with this project, everything is happening in the moment.”
Sugarland will perform all of the songs from "Machine” as well as longtime fan favorites.
Through the typical cycle is for a band to release an album and then tour to support it, Sugarland chose to flip-flop the sequence as a method of promoting the new material.
“We did it to get fans excited by seeing something new visually, and also to see how they responded to the new stuff,” Nettles said during a recent pre-show call from Savannah. “They have their phones and flip-cameras out and post videos online, and that gets them excited in their communities.”
The band does, however, plan to return to the road in early spring, keeping the same high-tech production but adjusting the set list to include more “Machine” tunes.
Before the holidays, Sugarland will also jet west to participate in the VH1 Divas’ “Salute the Troops” special, which will film at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego and air Dec. 5.
Though typically an estrogen-fest, Nettles confirmed that Bush will join her for a couple of Sugarland songs before she slides into group numbers with fellow divas Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj and a kindred Georgia spirit, Keri Hilson.
The opportunity to perform alongside non-country acts has Nettles particularly jazzed.
“It’s exciting to represent and show what it is that we do and have the cross exposure with each other's fans,” she said.
While Sugarland has never comfortably squeezed into the genre-specific box of country -- hearing a Blondie or Beyonce cover during the band’s live shows is more of an expectation than a surprise -- country radio nonetheless still struggles with this renegade approach.
The first single from “Machine,” the bouncy “Stuck Like Glue,” currently sits at No. 5 on Billboard’s country singles chart three months after its release and has sold more than 600,000 downloads.
Yet, some country radio programmers balked at the mid-song reggae breakdown and liberal use of Auto-Tune and created self-edited versions of the song.
Mark Richards, program director at Atlanta's WKHX-FM (Kicks 101.5), isn't fazed by Sugarland's musical detour.
"There are a lot of records moving more pop than country," he said. "Here in the ATL, we wouldn't think twice about playing the song."
Clay Hunnicutt, a senior vice president at Clear Channel who oversees Atlanta country station WUBL-FM (The Bull 94.9), said there will be no song editing in what he calls, “Sugarland country.”
“I don’t understand why some people think it’s not country. It is country,” he said.
Regardless of what it’s considered, Nettles understandably bristles at the manipulation of the band’s work.
“It’s offensive when someone takes your piece of art because they can and change it just because the technology exists to do so ... as our manager eloquently told Billboard, you wouldn’t go up to a Van Gogh painting and take out some stars. The same holds true for music.
“But,” Nettles continued, “in a way, it’s brilliant because one of the goals of art is provocation, and this song has provoked people to lots of dialogue about what is country, who is country, why does it matter? At the end of the day, most people like lots of different music. It isn’t our job to figure out how to sell it. It’s our job to make the best records and write the best songs.”
On the Web
A live Sugarland concert from the Best Buy Theater in New York streams at 9 p.m. Oct. 18 at www.youtube.com/sugarlandvevo .
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