This video explains how Jennifer Nettles was born and raised in rural South Georgia, where she got very involved in 4-H as a kid, a relationship that’s still a big part of her life. She went on to an extraordinary music career, winning a long list of Grammys, CMA Awards, and ACM Awards with Sugarland in the mid 2000s. By 2015, she’d started to work more in film and television, including her roles as Dolly Parton’s mother in Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors and Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors, and now she’s the host of a successful dating show called Farmer Wants a Wife. Jennifer never saw herself in that kind of role, but she talks about why this concept is so different from others in the genre, and why she’ll always feel connected to the farming community. She also shares a sneak preview of her upcoming album, Timeless, her thoughts on the evolution of country music, and what the hit song “Baby Girl” means to her 20 years later.
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00:00Welcome to Biscuits and Jam from Southern Living. I'm your host, Sid Evans, and today I'm talking
00:07with an artist who's probably best known as part of the country music duo Sugarland. Jennifer
00:12Nettles was born and raised in rural South Georgia, where she got very involved in 4-H,
00:18a relationship that's still a big part of her life. She went on to an extraordinary music career,
00:23winning a long list of Grammys, CMA awards, and ACM awards with Sugarland in the mid-2000s.
00:30By 2015, she'd started to work more in film and television, including her roles as Dolly Parton's
00:36mother in Code of Many Colors and Christmas of Many Colors. And now she's the host of a successful
00:42dating show called Farmer Wants a Wife. We'll talk about why Jennifer feels like this concept is so
00:48different from all the others in the genre, and why she'll always feel connected to the farming
00:53community. We'll also hear about her upcoming album, Timeless, her thoughts on the evolution
00:58of country music, and what the song Baby Girl means to her 20 years later on this week's Biscuits
01:04and Jam. Jennifer Nettles, welcome to Biscuits and Jam.
01:13Thank you. Thank you for having me. I love both of those things, so this is exciting.
01:17Well, you're from down there in South Georgia. I mean, you've seen your share of Biscuits and Jam
01:21over the years. I certainly have, and I'm a huge Southern Living fan, so there's that.
01:26Oh, well, thank you. That's great to hear. Yeah.
01:29It goes both ways. Well, where am I reaching you right now?
01:33I'm at home.
01:33In New York.
01:34Yes.
01:35A long way from South Georgia, and from farm country.
01:38A long way from South Georgia, and from farm country. Actually, not too far from farm country.
01:44You can hit farm country out here in like an hour.
01:47Well, I want to talk about farmers. We're going to talk about that a lot today, and of course,
01:53your show, Farmer Wants a Wife, which is in its second season, which has got to be very exciting for
01:58you.
01:59Super exciting. Super exciting.
02:01Tell me a little bit about the farmers that you grew up with in Georgia.
02:07Sure. Well, there are a couple of things. I mean, first of all, let me set the record
02:10clear and state that I did not grow up on a farm. I did grow up very far in the country,
02:16in a tiny little town, but I did not grow up on a farm. So farm life is different than general
02:21country life, right? But I had family members who did farming, and in the summers, we would go there,
02:27and everybody would make an event out of shelling peas, and we would make an event out of shucking
02:32corn and putting up the corn, putting up the vegetables in the freezer, and we'd make an event
02:36out of slaughtering a hog, and everything was its own ritualized celebration because so many people
02:43got to eat in this way. Beyond that, I also grew up in 4-H, which everybody I'm sure who's listening to
02:51this knows what 4-H is, but I will remind folks that it is the largest youth organization in America,
02:59and it's been around since 1902, and it began as an agricultural community club for kids. So all that
03:08is to say, between the two of those, I definitely grew up around farming, even though we weren't farmers.
03:15Yeah. Well, so who were some of the farmers that you would have encountered? I'm guessing they had
03:20small farms around Georgia.
03:22Mm-hmm. I will tell you a story. My favorite farmer was my bus driver. I rode the bus to and
03:29from school, and I was far enough from my school that I was like the second person to be picked up
03:33and then the second to last kid to be dropped off. But I rode the bus from first grade all the way
03:41until, well, in junior high, then my parents started taking me. But all of elementary school,
03:47I did. And my school bus driver was a precious, sweet, sweet man named Red McKinnon. I don't actually
03:57know what his real first name was. Red was not it. He was called that his whole life because he had red
04:02hair. But he was a pepper farmer. He grew hot peppers. And he was the sweetest, kindest man. And he
04:10would let me sit up beside him, up beside the bus drivers in those old school buses. They had little
04:15heaters that were built into the bus. And he put a little cushion on there. I was like one of the
04:21youngest kids on the bus in the first grade. And he would let me crawl and sit on the heater and sit
04:28up there beside him while he drove. And we would talk and talk and talk and talk. And he was already up
04:33in the mornings because he had already gone and done all of his farm work. And then he'd drive all the
04:38kids to school and then get back to it. But he was a dear, dear soul. And rest in peace, it has
04:44passed, obviously. But he was probably one of my most favorite farmer encounters.
04:51And really left an impression on you.
04:53Oh, such kindness. Such kindness. He wasn't one of those school bus drivers. You know how a lot of
04:59times school bus drivers can get a bad rap, you know, at times.
05:02Well, they can get cranky.
05:03And I don't blame them. Now that I'm an adult, I see why this happens. But he was never that. And
05:08every year at the end of the school year, for those of us, probably the last, I don't know,
05:15maybe third of the bus, for those of us who were in the last third of his drop-offs, every year at
05:22the end of school, the last day of school, he would drive us into town and take us to the Dairy Queen.
05:27And he would buy us all a little treat. Just so sweet. Oh, so sweet.
05:34He knew how to win y'all over.
05:35He sure did. He sure did.
05:38You mentioned 4-H, and I know you've been a spokesperson for them, and you've clearly
05:44loved that organization so much. When you think back to your 4-H days, what was a really proud
05:51moment for you with 4-H? Oh, my God. I mean, I love 4-H so much. I have to tell you,
05:59I was a 4-H-er from fifth grade all the way until I graduated high school. The thing that I did that
06:04I loved the most in Georgia 4-H was a couple of things. And I did everything from like CPA,
06:11DPA, county project and district project achievements whenever you're in fifth and sixth grade.
06:16And I also did leadership, like was on the district board and state board when I was in junior high
06:22and high school. But the things that I did the most that I love about 4-H is I was a part of a
06:27performing arts group out of the Georgia 4-H club called Clovers and Company. And this was all
06:33volunteers, of course, the adults who organized and facilitated and ran the thing. And kids all over
06:40the state would audition for this. And you could, from the time you were in the fifth grade to the time
06:46you graduated. So it had all ages and you auditioned and only a certain amount were chosen.
06:51And I auditioned and I was selected. And I did that every year, every year from fifth grade all the way
06:57through my high school. And I remember when I did it, I loved it so much. And when I walked in for the
07:04first time and I saw all of these kids, because I was from a little town, Douglas, Georgia, Coffee County,
07:09it's like we had, you know, you could be in the children's choir and we had little community
07:15theater stuff here and there, but that was really for the adults. And so there wasn't a lot that was
07:22offered there at the time. I was in the band, but in terms of singing and acting, there wasn't a lot.
07:28And I remember walking in for the first time at Rock Eagle 4-H camp where they hosted this
07:33and did all the teaching for the shows that we learned each year and just seeing all these kids
07:39and being like, I have found my people. Like these, they were kids who just loved performing. They just
07:46eat, slept, drank, loved it, loved performing. And I would not be doing what I'm doing today
07:53as a performer, as an entertainer, if it weren't for that organization. I loved it. I did so much with it
08:01and still actually am a big part of 4-H and actually connected them with the Farmer Wants-A-Wife
08:06folks. And they're doing some co-promotions for this and supporting each other, which is just so
08:11lovely to see. And then the second thing I did in 4-H that I just loved so much is that I was a camp
08:17counselor when I was in college at Rock Eagle 4-H Center, which is in Eatonton, Georgia. And getting to
08:26be a part of that community and getting to just have fun with kids all summer, it was such a great
08:34job. And the camaraderie and the friendships, not to mention obviously the experiences and playing all
08:41summer with kids, but the camaraderie and the friendships are what I truly treasure and have
08:45friendships, deep, deep friendships still to this day.
08:48I think in some ways, maybe you never really graduated from being a camp counselor.
08:53In many ways, I did not. That is for sure.
08:57Well, I want to talk about the show a little bit more in a minute, but we always talk a little bit
09:01about food on this podcast.
09:04Yes, please.
09:05And when you think about the people in your family that could really cook,
09:08and it could be aunts, uncles, grandparents, who comes to mind?
09:13Grandmothers and my mother. My great-grandmother, Grandma Bray, Mildred Lee Osteen Bray was her name.
09:20We have one little acre of land, and on it was our house and her house, my great-grandparents.
09:26And we lived in sort of like a little Scottish clan on the corner of two dirt roads. So it was like us,
09:32my great-grandparents, a great-uncle and aunt, another great-uncle and aunt, my maternal great-grandmother.
09:39So I had two sets of great-grandparents, not my great-grandfather on one side, but like two sets
09:44of great-grandparents right there that walked up and down the road and could see. And it was such
09:49a fun, free way to grow up, just like outside all the time. Me and my cousin, Josh, that's all we did
09:54was just play outside.
09:55So great.
09:56But my Grandma Bray, she was always cooking, and she would always say,
10:01well, y'all can come over. I don't know if I got enough. And then it would be like a feast,
10:05okay? Because she was accustomed always to cooking for farmhands, because whenever they
10:10were in their working years, they were tobacco farmers. And so she would always cook way too
10:15much because she was used to cooking for an army of people. And it would be fried chicken. It would
10:20be fried Irish potatoes. It would be rice and tomato gravy. It would be cubed steak. It would be mashed
10:25potatoes. It would be big boy peas and black-eyed peas. It would be Ford Hooks and turnip greens and
10:32butter beans and biscuits. Actually, she made, which I love, she made what she called a hoe cake,
10:39which some people call a Johnny hoe cake. But it was basically like a skillet biscuit,
10:44okay?
10:44Right.
10:45It was like a big, giant biscuit, but just made in a skillet. You didn't put it in the oven.
10:51She was just such a great cook. And every afternoon when I would get off that bus that Mr. Red
10:56was driving, I would get off and I would go over to her house, and she would have saved me some of the
11:01lunch that she made. And I would, of course, immediately eat because all children are starving
11:05when we get home. I don't know why. I would sit on the little, she had a, it was an ottoman,
11:10but she called it a hasick. She put out the hasick and she put my little plate there and I'd sit and
11:14I'd watch The End of Another World, which was a soap opera at the time. I'd watch The End of
11:21Another World with her. And then I might get to watch a little Tom and Jerry or Mr. Rogers,
11:25maybe electric company, depending on what the timing was. But yeah, it was such a great way
11:31to grow up. But yeah, she was a great cook. My mother is a great cook. She cooks many of the same
11:36things that I just shared with you of my grandmothers. Now she'll also do chicken and
11:41dumplings. She does a couple of other healthier options too, not just fried chicken. There's roast
11:47chicken, there's turkey, those sorts of things. She does some scalloped potatoes, really desserts.
11:54We all love the desserts. I mean, what's not to love? Yeah.
11:58Yeah, that's great. And I'm sure a lot of those recipes have passed down, whether written or not.
12:04And as a matter of fact, my mom and I just did a little passion project a number of years ago.
12:08It looks like a little church cookbook that we did that she wanted to put together. My mom's very
12:13creative. She wanted to put together all of our favorite recipes. She remembered and have that
12:18saved and bound and shared. So we had a lot of fun doing that. But also I would be remiss if I did not
12:26mention very specifically my Aunt Kay's banana pudding, which is delicious. Absolutely delicious.
12:33She makes it with condensed milk, of course. So if you're worried about your cholesterol,
12:39do not look there. But it's delicious.
12:41But if you're worried about cholesterol, you don't need to be worried about anything when you're eating
12:45banana pudding. So there you go. There you go. I thought I read somewhere that you had a
12:50grandmother called Buma. Buma. Yeah, that was my father's mother, my dad's mother. What a great name.
12:56Yeah. So her name was Edith. But we ended up calling her Buma because, you know, as a lot of times that
13:02can happen in families, the firstborn grandchild usually names the grandparents. And my oldest cousin
13:09on that side, her name is Michelle. Hey, Michelle, if you're listening. My grandfather would always come
13:13around the corner and try to scare her. Boo. Boo. Boo. Try to scare her. So she started associating
13:18him with the word Boo. So then that became his name, not only just to her, but to everybody.
13:25Okay. Then, of course, it would follow suit that then our grandmother would be called Buma.
13:31Boo and Buma.
13:31I love that. I mean, of all the grandmother names, and there's so many great ones. That's a new one.
13:36I haven't heard that. And I just love it.
13:38Buma. And she was something else. I'm here to tell you. She was fun and witchy.
13:43I mean, so many things. She had a wicked sense of humor. And she had a parrot. And she had taught
13:51that dang bird. First of all, it laughed just like her. And she had taught it to say these little
13:57fun phrases, A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, and just all these little things that she would work with it on.
14:03She was quite a character. She was a fun character.
14:06So who was the most musical person in your family other than you?
14:09I mean, there's no one person who had followed specifically a music track. Now,
14:16my grandmother, my mom's mom, Nanny is what we called her. She sang in the trio whenever she was
14:21growing up. And my mom sang in the choir. And my dad had a fantastic voice. I remember whenever I was
14:27little, sitting up in the front, standing up actually beside him in the cab of the truck.
14:32And this was no car seats or anything. Lord help us. How are we even here?
14:39Islands in the Stream would be on. Of course, he would sing Kenny's part and I would sing Dolly's
14:43part. And just listening to music and singing along, I have so many great memories of that.
14:48But mostly for me, in addition to those family associations, mostly for me, it was in church.
14:55That's where I really grew up learning and getting to understand what it is to see people sing
15:04with passion and with conviction about something that they believe in. And to this day,
15:09it's a litmus that works for me with songwriting and with performing. I have to be able to connect
15:14to it in a really spiritual way to be able to feel like it's something that I want to perform.
15:20Yeah. On the music front, Jennifer, I want to ask you about one song. It's a song that I believe
15:27has an anniversary, and it's Baby Girl, which I think it came out 20 years ago. So the idea behind
15:36that song, for the three people out there who may not know it, is a songwriter who's writing home
15:43to her family. And she says, Dear Mom and Dad, please send money. And you were in a very different
15:50place in your life and in your career at that time. And I'm just curious, what does that song
15:55mean to you now?
15:57That song means so much. I mean, first of all, I'm grateful, so grateful for that song. And because of
16:04that song, Sugar Land went on to have such great success and really form a career. And then I think
16:11in terms of the story that is reflected in that song, I know that there was a part of me and a
16:18part of us in writing that we were manifesting of what we wanted it to be and the kind of story that
16:25we wanted and the kind of success that we wanted. And to be able to share that success and also share
16:30that pride with the people that we love the most and take care of our people when we are taken care
16:36of too. That song to me is such a gift and represents a part of me that is very alive and
16:45well, you know, which is my dreamer. I have a huge dreamer. And the dreams have shifted and changed
16:52throughout my life and grown and evolved. But that baby girl is still here, for sure.
16:59Dear mom and dad, please send money. I'm so broke that it ain't funny. Well, I don't need much. It's
17:07enough to get me through. Please don't worry, cause I'm alright. See, I'm playing here at the bar
17:16tonight. Well, this time I'm gonna make our dreams come true. Well, I love you more than anything in the
17:25world. Love your baby girl.
17:31Well, it's such a great song. And I know people just want to hear it every time you get up on a
17:36stage, probably to this day. Yep, they do. They do. And I love that they do.
17:43After the break, I'll talk more with Jennifer Nettles about the new season of her show,
17:48Farmer Wants a Wife, her upcoming album, and the evolution of country music.
17:55Welcome back to Biscuits and Jam from Southern Living. I'm Sid Evans, and today I'm talking
18:05with the award-winning musician and actress, Jennifer Nettles. All right, well, let's talk
18:10about the show, Farmer Wants a Wife, for a minute. I mean, this is not a new show. It's new to the U.S.,
18:17but it's been around for quite a while. 13 years all over the world. Right, started in Britain before
18:23coming here. And it's basically a dating show where you're matching farmers to women who are
18:31not farmers, right, for the most part. Probably 85% of them are either from the city or definitely not
18:39farm life. So it's really one of the more successful shows globally in this kind of genre.
18:47I mean, what is the magic behind this concept? A few things. I think the way that this show has
18:56promoted and propagated and created an outlet for authenticity, for authentically looking
19:06for love. Okay? When this first came across my desk, I was immediately like, a dating show? No,
19:13thanks. Because I don't watch them. I think they are highly dramatized. They're way overly dramatic,
19:20and it's just for people to get on there and behave badly and get 15 seconds of fame and become
19:25Instagram influencers or something. It's not my favorite. Right. So at first, I was like, yeah,
19:30no, thanks. And then they came back and shared a bit of their record. And from this show,
19:34over the past 13 years, they've had over 200 marriages and over 500 children as a result of
19:41this show. And when I saw that, I sat up and was like, wait a minute, did I see this right?
19:46You know? And sure enough, yeah, those are the successes that they have had. And that got my
19:50attention enough to watch a few episodes. It is heartwarming. It is endearing. And the success of
19:56the show is about looking for true love. And that is why it has been so successful. It's people who
20:02are willing to ask the questions, put themselves in a unique circumstance. I mean, with the television
20:08cameras there, that's definitely unique. And for these farmers, they bring back five ladies onto
20:13their farm to live with them for those women to get to see. And if they take to farm life and what
20:19it's all about, and for them to get to see how those women might acclimate to farm life, that's not
20:24common. You don't really have five women in your house, right? So unique circumstances,
20:29but all looking for love in the ways that we would all want to. And in ways, frankly, that now,
20:36man, the more I learn about the younger people and how they have to date with all these apps,
20:42I don't think it's truly connective. You would think that with the internet and all of this
20:46social media that we can connect with anyone in the world. No, you can maybe share hellos and
20:51information, but to really connect, especially to the level that you would want to with someone
20:56that you might consider being your partner for your life. No, that ain't going to happen on the
21:01phone. Not at first. I think it's going to take a lot more than that. And this show just cuts right
21:06through that.
21:07So Jennifer, not everybody ends up getting married on this show. So it's not really a success for
21:12everybody. But what do you think some of the women have learned about themselves and about what it
21:20takes to be a farmer just going through this process?
21:24I mean, I think not only do the women get to learn this, but I think those of us who are watching
21:28get to learn as well, if you're not familiar. And as a matter of fact, on some press that I was doing
21:33today with all the farmers, one of them shared that in addition to the fun fish out of water moments
21:40for a lot of these ladies who get in there and they're in mud up to their waist, or they're trying
21:45to do something with livestock that's freaking them out or, oh my gosh, are their nails going to break
21:49or whatever it may be. In addition to all those moments, there's a lot of really informative
21:55moments where these women get to realize, oh, this isn't just a lifestyle. This is a job and it's not a
22:01regular job and it's not a nine to five job. If you're a cattle farmer, the cows don't care if it's
22:07cold. They don't care if you're sick. They still need the same thing. And they need it at all times,
22:13day or night, whatever. They need it when they need it, you know? So I think everybody even
22:19watching will get an appreciation for what it is to be a farmer, not just a quaint hashtag that you
22:26might put on your social media, hashtag farm life. Okay, maybe, but there's a difference between that
22:31and really what these gentlemen do. Yeah. I want to switch to country music for a second and music in
22:37general. I know that there are a lot of people that have been looking forward to your next
22:43album. And I believe you have something that you've been working on that's called Timeless.
22:49And I'm just wondering if there's anything that you care to share about that project and what's in
22:54the works. Sure. Well, I think first of all, for anybody who has been a fan of mine throughout the
23:00course of my career, what you continue to see is that I can't sit still and that I love expansion.
23:09I love mixing it up. I love doing different things. And while I am super, super proud of
23:17all the music I've created in my past, I don't just stop there. I want to continue to grow as an artist.
23:23And sometimes people who are real fans of just me and my artistry, they like that. And sometimes
23:28people who are just radio fans sometimes don't get into everything that I do musically outside of
23:34what would be on the radio. All that is to say, Timeless is a record that I wrote and recorded
23:40with a friend of mine named Noel Chacris. He is a Latino artist. And we have written these beautiful
23:48soaring, most of them romantic ballads in Spanish and English. We wrote a whole record in Spanish and
23:55English. And I can't wait to share it. I feel like people don't really write love songs much
24:02anymore. And this is definitely an album of love songs. And it's big, big singing and big, big joy and
24:13passion. And the plan is that we're going to put that out this year. So musically, that'll probably be what
24:18you see for me next. Well, you keep us posted, okay? I will do that. I will do that. Looking back,
24:25we were talking about kind of the early days of Sugar Land and earlier in your career. And one thing
24:31that has remained constant from where I'm sitting is that you've been a force for change in country
24:38music. And you've brought attention to inequity with female artists, and you've supported the LGBTQ
24:47community and so many other important changes that need to happen. And when you look back to the early
24:542000s, when you and Sugar Land were just blowing up, how would you characterize the differences in
25:01country music between then and now? I mean, I could characterize it in a lot of different ways. I think
25:08back at that time, we were just coming off the heels of what was an amazing career for women in both
25:17pop and country. We're talking the Shania Twain's, the Faith Hill's, the Martina McBride's, the Kathy
25:23Matea's, the Mary Chapman Carpenters, the Jodi Messina's, on and on, that women were very present
25:30and very celebrated in the genre at that time. And since that time, the evolution has continued
25:38to expand. Also, we had the Dixie Chicks at that time, you know, so sonically, it was a very exciting
25:44time to be coming onto the scene, I have to tell you. It was a very exciting time. And one of the
25:49things that actually drew me to the project itself, because Sugar Land started as a writing project,
25:54we didn't know where it was going to go. One of the things that drew me to it is that at the time,
25:59in pop music, things seemed to be leaning more towards like Britney Spears. It was kids, it was pop,
26:07it was music that while I love like anybody else, it didn't feel like me. I felt like we had seen this
26:14before in Madonna, or we had seen it in Cher, certain other pop artists, that people can tend
26:22to get really, what's a word that I could use, just like really pigeonholed, right? As for who they
26:28could be and how they could evolve, even though obviously those women had a myriad of different
26:32images. But I didn't see that happening as much in like the Britneys and the Christina Aguilera's,
26:37et cetera, and pop. And I loved the stories that country music was telling. I'd grown up on country
26:44music, of course, even though I like everything. So for me, I was drawn to country music at that time,
26:51because it was a place that a singer songwriter could really tell stories. And it felt like a good
26:55match. And luckily, it took off. But all that is to say, I continue to see it evolve
27:01musically, in terms of, you know, always there has been a dance between country music and pop
27:09music. It used to be when you think about Elvis, he would do the blues, he would do gospel, he would
27:15pull from all these different influences. So did Johnny Cash, when he talks about his song,
27:21Shoeshine, and he talks about the little kid who was shining the shoes and the rhythm that he had in
27:26it, that inspired his guitar rhythm at the time. So an artist is an artist, no matter where she is,
27:31no matter where he is. And she's finding inspiration through other people that inspire her. And so
27:36we've always, as country musicians, been influenced by all different other genres. But I definitely see
27:42that expanding. You hear way more rap influence now in country than you ever did. I mean, when
27:50Christian and I did Stuck Like Glue, we had that little rap snippet in it for those listening that
27:55remember the, whoa, whoa, whoa, you almost failed. You stuck together from the ATL. Okay. So there,
28:01that was scandalous at the time. Sid, certain radio stations edited it out without even asking our
28:09permission. They edited that part out. I was incandescent about that. Okay. But now, now everybody's
28:20rapping, especially all the dudes. So it's interesting to watch that evolution. That's
28:27on one side of commercial country. Then you have the fantastic, more like blues and Americana stuff.
28:32You've got your Chris Stapletons. You've got your Jason Isbells. You've got those ones that feel
28:37much more classic in that way. Zach Bryan, you know? So it continues to evolve and it's always going to.
28:44And there are always going to be the factions of those people who are like, oh, it's too pop. It's
28:50not country anymore. And there are always going to be the diehards who are like, I've got to have it
28:54like this or it's not country. Okay. Like you all make up a beautiful tapestry of what is country
29:00music. So musically, it's evolved in a lot of ways from an activism perspective, as you mentioned that,
29:06you know, still, still way, way struggling and way, way behind in terms of equity for women. I mean,
29:13is it better? I don't know. The conversations are being had. I definitely see more people of color
29:19than I ever have before. So things are evolving and they'll hopefully continue to do it. And it'll
29:26never be fast enough for some of us. You have to keep being true to yourself and true to your heart
29:30and trying to pave the way and open the doors for those to come behind you. For that next little baby
29:35girl who has a dream, you have to keep paving the way and opening the door for her.
29:39Yeah. Well, I look forward to seeing where you take this next and hearing the new album. I can't
29:48wait to hear that. Jennifer, I just have one more question for you. What does it mean to you to be
29:53Southern? I love being Southern. I think that one of our biggest pieces of our culture, I got to say
30:02peaches from Georgia. It was like a Freudian slip. One of the biggest pieces of our culture that I love
30:09is that we are joyous. We are full of gratitude. We can laugh at most everything, even the inappropriate,
30:17even the sad. And I think that that is a real resilience. I think we are a resilient culture
30:24of people. I think we are a diverse culture of people. I love, even though we have a sad and
30:31unfortunate part of our history, the ways that cultures have informed each other to become what is
30:38Southern culture, I think is really, really beautiful. And I celebrate being Southern and I
30:46enjoy the opportunity to show people what it really is to be Southern. People have a stereotype,
30:52you know, they want to think that it's all ignorance, deliverance with the banjo, right? And it's not. We are a
31:00fun, loving, warm, happy, joyous group of people and culture. And I'm super proud to be Southern.
31:10Well, beautifully said. And I have so much more I'd love to talk to you about sometime. So I hope you'll
31:14come back.
31:15Yes, I would love that. Thank you for having me.
31:18Jennifer Nettles, thanks for being on Biscuits and Jam.
31:21Thank you. Thank you.
31:21Thanks for listening to my conversation with Jennifer Nettles. Southern Living is based in
31:28Birmingham, Alabama. Be sure to follow Biscuits and Jam on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
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31:39we'd appreciate it. You can also find us online at southernliving.com slash biscuits and jam.
31:44Our theme song is by Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek. I hope you'll join me next time when I'll be
31:49talking with the American Idol sensation and granddaughter of Loretta Lynn, Emmy Russell. We'll see you then.