HINCKLEY, MINN. – Name the last member of a country-music duo to go on to a successful solo career.
Not Big Kenny or John Rich. Not Kix Brooks or Ronnie Dunn.
You don't have to go as far back as Dolly Parton, who left Porter Wagoner in 1970. But the answer does stretch back to Wynonna Judd cutting the cord from Mama Naomi in '92.
It's not known if Jennifer Nettles is leaving Sugarland, but judging by her Minnesota solo debut Saturday at the sold-out Grand Casino events center in Hinckley, Sugarland is not her sweet spot. Her cup of tea is 1970s lite-FM pop/rock.
Not only did she offer karaoke-like covers of Ambrosia (eeh), Barry Manilow (yuck) and Bob Seger (awright!), but she also delivered new material from her two-month-old debut solo album, "That Girl," which sounded like the '70s. She even reshaped four Sugarland tunes to fit this style, and — to top it off — her wide bell-bottoms were, like, totally '70s, man.
Whether you call the music singer-songwriter, Southern soul or yacht rock (Nettles used that phrase), it was clear that this wasn't Saturday-night music. There was only one up-tempo tune, the main-set closer, the gossip-obsessed "Know You Wanna Know" cowritten by Nettles with '80s/'90s popmeister Richard Marx. The rest of the songs were ballads or midtempo.
Nettles, 39, showed off her rangy, powerful and twangy voice, but her material — which she cowrote with such respected names as Sara Bareilles, Butch Walker and Mike Reid — was not particularly compelling.
Her debut single, "Falling" — a reflection about losing her virginity behind a barn to a boy who worked for her family and was heading off to college — hasn't gained much radio traction and didn't get much more than a polite reaction on Saturday. Same for the show opener "That Girl," a tune about not wanting to be that girl who cheats with a married man but did it anyway and now feels compelled to confess to his wife. At least, "That Girl" was punctuated with "whoa-ooh-ooh-oohs," a bit that historically worked for Sugarland, notably on "All I Want to Do," which she sang Saturday in a stripped-down version.
