INTERVIEW: Jennifer Nettles has fallen in love with Broadway
Photo: Jennifer Nettles will bring her Broadway Under the Mistletoe tour to Town Hall. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by On Tour PR with permission.
Jennifer Nettles, the accomplished singer and country artist, has fallen in love with Broadway, and it’s a safe bet to say that Broadway has fallen in love with her. During the pandemic, she released a well-received solo album called Always Like New, featuring 10 selections from the world of musical theater and the American songbook. Listeners can enjoy unique renditions of “Tomorrow,” “Wouldn’t it Be Loverly” and “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”
She followed that recording with a limited engagement run in Waitress on Broadway only a few weeks ago, and now she’s back in Midtown Manhattan with a special concert. Her Broadway Under the Mistletoe tour stops at Town Hall Wednesday, Dec. 15, and audience members can expect holiday songs, Broadway tunes and a few choices from her storied career with Sugarland.
Nettles has stayed busy over the past few years. She was a judge on TBS’ competition series Go-Big Show, and she also appeared in HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. Her previous solo albums include Playing With Fire and To Celebrate Christmas, no doubt this latter one inspiring some of the selections for the Town Hall concert.
Grammys? Yeah, Nettles has those as well, thanks to her work with Sugarland and also a collaboration with Jon Bon Jovi on the hit tune “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” Her theater work, in addition to Waitress, includes performing as Roxy Hart in Chicago on Broadway and as Donna in Mamma Mia! at the Hollywood Bowl.
Recently Nettles talked with Hollywood Soapbox about staying busy during the holidays, the upcoming New York City concert and her time in Waitress. Here’s what she had to say …
On staying busy during the holidays …
It is a busy time, and I feel super, super grateful. In the entertainment world, work is always episodic, feast or famine, but after the famine of the pandemic, to have a beautiful feast of work and Broadway reopening and do a few concert tours and TV and film, I just feel grateful for the feast that is being able to work again.
On what fans can expect on the Broadway Under the Mistletoe tour …
The majority of it is going to be holiday and Broadway just as the title of the tour implies, Broadway Under the Misletoe. I’ll be celebrating music from my latest album, which is Always Like New, which is wonderful and for me super rewarding, one of the most rewarding recordings of my whole career, to be able to sing all of this beautiful, wonderful musical theater music and the American songbook. So I’ll be excited to perform that live and then of course holiday classics that we all know and love.
On the joy of the holidays and holiday music …
I love it. I love the holidays, and I love holiday music, Christmas music as well and have always. Even as a singer I’ve loved it because it is an opportunity especially when you have success as a singer-songwriter. That success can get you into the gilted silo where it’s this sparkling silo of success, but they want you to stay in the same sound that you are. For an artist like me that is constantly growing and expanding and who also from a vocal perspective loves singing all kinds of stuff, holiday music was always an opportunity to be able to sing so many different styles.
On how the record Always Like New came about …
I could make a million records of this [type of music]. I could do so many different versions of this album and have still so much to choose from. That whole canon is absolutely an embarrassment of riches. … [We] were very specific on how we chose songs for this record, in the sense that we wanted to make sure that we were able to pay homage and respect to the original composition, but at the same time have it reimagined in a fresh way that would allow for a different discovery whenever you listened to it. I think that’s a beautiful criteria, but sometimes a challenging one to achieve. We found some songs that when we approached them, they were too much like the original. Other ones we wanted to make sure that we could maintain some of the spirit and energy of something and respect the composition, but redefine it and rearrange it. It was an interesting process to get to do that. … We want to be able to have the classics, but we want to have some contemporary theater, some current pieces as well. We want to make sure that we’re representing certain composers, that those are represented throughout, and still we could never get to all of it.
On her time back on Broadway in Waitress …
I loved it so much. It was so rewarding on so many levels. First of all, personally, my dear friend Sara Bereilles who wrote the music and lyrics, for she and I to get to share this together. We’ve been trying to make this work for quite a while, for many years, and was just so lucky with the openness of the calendar considering the pandemic and as Broadway was starting back up. It worked out that I could make it work on my end because we’ve been wanting to be able to do that for such a long time. It definitely feels like a beautiful moment, a next level of celebration and arrival for me. I definitely don’t think that circle is closed because as you can tell I have a deep, deep love for musical theater in general. I’m developing my own musical and have been for a couple years, writing and developing that, so you’ll continue to see me on those stages.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Jennifer Nettles will bring her Broadway Under the Mistletoe tour to Town Hall in New York City Wednesday, Dec. 15. Click here for more information and tickets.
