I think the girlfriend wondered what was going on. She was just bringing me a coffee as I was playing back the tape of my Sugarland interview, I pressed pause, out of politeness. But not before the gorgeous Jennifer Nettles had hollered in her exuberant Georgia twang, “You should see me in the bath tub or in the shower!”

Now, I admit the invitation to picture the lovely Ms. Nettles wearing nothing but soap suds was an appealing one; so much so, that at the time she said it, I almost lost the thread of the interview.

But while the Georgia Peach may have been being flirty, we hadn’t been caught talking dirty. We were actually talking French, Conversational French, to be precise. For it’s when she’s alone with her rubber duck that Jennifer gets to grips with her foreign language tapes.

To let her finish painting the picture of her bathroom routine...

“I take my half hour and I’m laying there, going through the whole bit.” She puts on a French accent: “Would you like to eat something? Would you like to drink something?”

It’s all part of the preparations for Sugarland’s invasion of Europe this month, which includes the hot country duo’s UK debut at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire – an impressively large venue that suggests their plans for an international career are not only serious, but well underway.

To riff on the title of their second album, Nettles and her musical partner Kristian Bush are Enjoy(ing) The Ride at the moment. Their third CD, Love On The Inside, has passed the million sales mare, and already yielded two country chart toppers.

It’s unusual for a Nashville act in their position to take time out from the lucrative American market fro a visit to dear old Blighty. But, then, Sugarland are an unusually country act.

With a musical and visual style wholly their own, they manage to come over as pop oriented act while serving up music with a very strong roots content. Apart from the down home instrumentation, the industrial strength twang of Jennifer’s vocal mark her out as the most backwoods Barbie since Dolly.

Yet when Jennifer starts reeling off the duo’s musical influences, we finds The Clash and the Ramones (his) and Tori Amos, James Taylor and Coldplay (hers), rubbing shoulders with more country names, like Nanci Griffith.

It’s such wide ranging tastes that allowed them to duet on US TV with r’n’b diva Beyonce on a bluegrass cover of the latter’s hit, Irreplaceable, and with Adele at the recent Grammy Award ceremony.

Currently mixing songs by REM and the B52s in to Sugarland’s stage show, Jennifer says, “We love to take these songs and try to arrange them in a way that allows us to make them our own.

“When we brought Irreplaceable into the show, we’d start playing this bluegrass music and everybody would be like, ‘What is this song gonna be?’ Then, all of a sudden, we’d come in with the lyrics and they’d either fall down laughing or scream and sing along.

“Long story short, it got around to Beyonce that we were performing it this way, and she was able to see our performance. She loved it and said, absolutely, let’s perform this together.”

A cover that took on a life of its own to become a surprise chart hit for Sugarland was the Dream Academy’s 1985 hit, Life In A Northern Town.

“I have been a fan of that song since the 80s,” Jennifer gushes. “I think it’s one of those songs that everybody liked at the time, because when we play it, people are, like, ‘Oh my God, I loved that song!’

“Kristian had loved it as well. At one point, I brought it up with him. We wanted to do a holiday song and, for some reason, that song feels like a holiday song, to me. It don’t know if it’s because of the sleigh bells, or because it mentions the Salvation Army band... but it felt ‘holiday’ to us.

“We were on the road with Little Big Town and Jake Owen supporting us, and we thought they would be fantastic for this chorus, which almost sounds like a choir. So we just threw it together and it came together so nicely.

“Originally, it started out as video thank you, for CMT, who were sponsoring out tour. We had our videographer video us on stage and we gave it to CMT, just to say thanks for all your help. But they loved it and put it on air, and radio picked up on it from there. So the whole thing was super organic.”

Surgarland’s take on Life In A Northern Town is so cool and atmospheric that it would make the perfect single to introduce them to UK radio. Radio 2’s forty-something audience would have fond memories of the original, but enough time has elapsed to let the new version sound fresh.

Jennifer tends to agree.

“I love the fact that it’s a song by British artist, about a British songwriter, because it’s about Nick Drake. And here you have these country singers from the States doing this song...” She lets out a chuckle

“But I think there’s a nostalgic quality to it that everybody can relate to. Everybody can relate to looking back on their life and looking at those times in your life when you were part of a family, and how that made you feel. It think it’s testimony to the fact that if you have a good song, people are gonna enjoy it.”

Despite the track’s success in America, however, the record company’s line is that DJs over here wouldn’t spin a live track...

So the single released to accompany Sugarland’s UK visit is the first US Number One off Love On The Inside, All I Want To Do, which has been remixed with less twang for British ears.

The process was pioneered by Sugarland’s label mate Shania Twain who, of course, went on to huge crossover pop success – and it’s a route Jennifer is totally open to.

“The thing I find is that good songs transcend genre,” says Jennifer. “Usually we have someone who comes up to the meet and greets after a show and says, ‘I don’t like country music, but I like what you do.’ And we say, ‘You are who we records for.’ Because we love all kinds of music, but we want to bring people into the very beautiful music tradition that is country music.

“Really, all you need is a foot in the door, so that someone will give an eat to your music, and if that is because the production is maybe something that they are more accustomed to, then that’s great.”

All I Want To Do was co-written bye the duo and Bobby Pinson who, judging from the number of co-writes credited to him on Love On The Inside, is one of Sugarland’s favorite songwriters at the moment.

“Oh, we love Bobby Pinson!” Jennifer gushes. “He was actually an artist for a while, and that’s how I was introduced to him. I heard his song on the radio and I thought, this is genius; I love everything about it.

“I called Kristian and said, ‘Look out for this guy,’ and, long story short, we met up and were able to start writing together. Since then, Bobby’s pursued writing full time, as opposed to being an artist, and that’s definitely been our gain. We love writing with him. He has a wonderful way with more poignant and emotional songs.

“Now, All I Want To Do is a fun, light hearted song. It has a lot of levity to it, so that was fun to write with him, because it was different for him.”

Another fun Pinson co-wrote is It Happens, with it’s suggestive little “Shhhhhh,” in front of the word ‘it.’

Jennifer lets out another of her big hearted laughs.

“Poor Bobby! We took him out on the road with us for four or five days and just threw him into: ‘OK, we know what you can do. Now let’s see what we can do together that’s different.’

“That shhhhh was actually Bobby’s idea. Softening it in that way, because they’re obviously not gonna play the word shit on the radio! He came up with the idea of that almost non-verbal shhhh, to make it cheeky in that way.

“He actually came up with the music, too. That really chunky guitar sound ala Juice Newton, which was right up our alley at the time.

“The song is basically a way of looking at the world and saying, hey, sometimes there doesn’t have to be a reason; we don’t have t imbue everything with meaning. As humans, we’re always trying to see a lesson, or make some sense out of something. But sometimes things just happen. You have a bad day and you have to e able to shake it off and keep going. And if you have a sense of humor about it, that usually helps.”

A more serious Pinson co-write is Sugarland’s most recent country chart topper, Already Gone.

“I already had the idea for the song, and how to place the different stages of a person’s life in it: when you’re leaving home, when you’re falling in love and when you’re leaving a relationship. I had been playing around on the guitar and came up with sort of 6/8 chorus that was really repetitive.

“I look it to Kristian and Bobby and said, ‘OK, this is what I’ve got, what can you do with it.’ Knowing that Bobby would have the perfect sensibilities and sensitivity for a song of that nature. It’s definitely one of the more emotion songs on the album.”

Despite its success, the laid back nature of Already Gone may not have made it an obvious candidate fro release as a single. But Jennifer says, “I think this record is really diverse and what we want to do, in the way that we choose our singles, is to show that Sugarland is not homogenous; that we like different styles and that we write different kinds of music under this roots/ country umbrella.

“You may be a person who likes something fun and dance-y, and we’ve got that. Or you may be a person who likes something that hits you in the gut, and we’ve got that too.”

Getting back to the funny songs, Steve Earle is an out and out novelty about the man in the title.

“Steve is an excellent, excellent songwriter and a wonderful musician. He has such heart and guts and passion about him. Kristian and I were both fans and we were listening to his new record, which had just come out at the time, called Washington Square. If you don’t have it, get it. It’s fantastic.

“I didn’t know that much about Steve as a person, and Kristian was telling me about his life: how he’d been married, like, seven times and the first one and the fourth one were the same woman... and I just got such a kick out of that. I thought his life is a country song. It’s so extreme it’s a caricature.

“The other think Kristian was saying, was that on each of Steve’s records he normally puts a long song to his current wife or love interest. So I thought wouldn’t it be funny if we wrote a song in which I asked Steve to write a song about me, and we just took it from there.

“We thought the song would just be a hidden track on the album, because we didn’t know if everyone would get it. But the label was, like, ‘No way! Put it out there! It’s great!”

And what was Steve’s reaction?

“Interestingly enough, we sent it to him before we released the record, because we wanted to be respectful and say, ‘We’ve written this song bout you. Please make sure you’re comfortable with it, or at least know it’s happening.’

His manager wrote us back and said Steve’s reaction was, ‘I’ve had books written about me, and articles, and I don’t read anything that’s written about me. Why would I listen to a song written about me?’ So he supposedly wouldn’t listen to it. But his manager said he gave him the gist of it and Steve chuckled. So, if I made Steve Earle laugh, I consider that a success!”

One thing Sugarland have in common with Earle is that both acts favor illustrated album covers, instead of standard artist photo.

“That’s definitely deliberate,” says Jennifer. “We’ve tried to capture some of the emotion and energy of the album in the cover, and you can’t really do that with a photograph. I think it’s actually pretty lame to be, like, ‘Here’s our pretty picture on the front,’ like it’s some sort of yearbook. When I think about albums and bands that I liked back in the 70s and 80s, you say all this beautiful artwork.

“Not to say that I would never put a photo on there. It would have to be the right photo and make the right statement. But I think it’s more interesting to put a piece of art on there that tries to show what’s going on, rather than just a photo to promote your face.”

Avoiding the image problems of Stetsons and cowboy (or girl) boots, and genre-free look of Sugarland’s painted album covers may aid their acceptance in the mainstream UK marketplace.

Having dipped their toes in international waters, Sugarland are certainly planning a reture to the UK – “Next year, during the festival season,” Jennifer promises.

At a time when Taylor Swift is also gaining attention on this side of the pond, Jennifer believes a possible new trend of country acts looking for exposure beyond their traditional domestic marketplace is an artist-led phenomenon, as opposed to a policy change by the typically parochial Nashville based record labels.

“Sometimes, for want of a better work, Nashville can get a little ethnocentric, in that you have your little bubble and this is how everything works within that bubble. But I think every once in a while you get an artist, hopefully like us who pokes their head through and says, you know what? We really want to get our music out there and see how far it can grow and how far it can go. So this tour is not only part of a dream for us, it’s part of a plan.”