Indeed, ‘It’s Better to Travel’ : Pop music: Seven years after its hot debut, English group Swing Out Sister kicks off its first U.S. tour tonight at the Coach House.

Swing Out Sister’s Corinne Drewery is a longtime admirer of American jazz, R & B and classic pop. So it’s understandable why the English singer is nervous about touring the U.S. for the first time.

When she tries to anticipate how U.S. audiences will react to her soul- and jazz-inflected pop band, Drewery said she can’t help but think back to a raucous scene in “The Blues Brothers” film. The two soul singers played by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi encounter a less-than-hospitable small-town American audience.

“In the film, the barmaid (in this club) says, ‘We play both kinds of music: country and Western,’ ” recounts Drewery by phone from a tour stop in Japan. “When (Aykroyd and Belushi) get up on stage, they have to bring the chicken-wire fence down, because they’re getting bottles, bones, beer cans and chairs thrown at them! (The American audience) may be an expressive audience, but I hope it’s expressive in a good sense.”

It should help that Swing Out Sister has had seven years to prepare. The group, which kicks off that tour tonight at the Coach House, began its career like a house afire in 1987. That year, Swing Out Sister’s “It’s Better to Travel” debut album spawned a No. 6 pop hit with the brassy and sassy “Breakout” single. The band also earned a Grammy nomination for best new artist. It was an even bigger sensation in England, where its first album entered the sales charts at No. 1.

Unfortunately, the nascent group (which also includes keyboardist Andy Connell) hadn’t established itself as a live attraction when “It’s Better to Travel” became a popular album. “Our commercial success came before our touring,” Drewery said. “We were always at the wrong stage.”

Swing Out Sister had grand plans to tour with an orchestra in support of its second album in 1989. An infectious tapestry of strings, horns and soaring vocals, “Kaleidoscope World” offered a striking reinterpretation of ‘60s-styled pop and soundtrack music.

But when this ambitious work proved unfashionable amid the high-energy dance music of the late ‘80s, U.S. tour plans were nixed. The group did, however, play some dates with a small backing band in England and Asia.

A proposed American tour following the release of “Get in Touch With Yourself” in 1992 was also scrapped. The duo couldn’t persuade its record company to pay for a tour using the horn players, guitarists, percussionists and backup singers it needed.

“We’ve been offered to do shows using DAT recordings or sequencers, which would be less costly,” said Drewery, who writes most of the band’s material with Connell.

“We’ve also been asked to strip the band down or perform as a piano and voice (duo),” she said. “But that’s not the way we like to do things. People would be disappointed if they heard that. We could come back (at some point), and do an unplugged show, but (a lot of people) haven’t heard the plugged version yet.”

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With the recent release of the band’s fourth album, “The Living Return,” Drewery and Connell insisted on a tour with an eight-piece support band. Mercury Records finally consented.

“If we didn’t tour with this record, there would have been no way we could possibly do any kind of promotion here, because every time we’ve come to America to do promotion we’ve talked about coming back to tour,” she said.

“We’ve done it three times. If we didn’t tour this time, people wouldn’t (trust us again). The record company would rather stick you on a few TV programs where you can get a few more million people than you can playing a few club-like venues, which is what we will be playing,” Drewery said. “So we had to kick and fight.”

The fighting is on behalf of “The Living Return,” which has a rawer feel than the group’s pop-early albums. A handful of songs on the new album resulted from jam sessions.

The harder jazz and R & B feel to “The Living Return” is partially a result of the month Drewery and Connell spent in 1993 in New York City.

“We set up a little studio in the Mayflower Hotel overlooking Central Park,” said Drewery, a fashion designer before Swing Out Sister was formed. “We had a great time. We went out to clubs and saw McCoy Tyner, Poncho Sanchez. . . . Thank goodness for the blizzard of ’93. We couldn’t leave the hotel, so we had to sit there and start writing some tunes. It did help getting that direct hit of energy from New York.”

Drewery expresses unabashed enthusiasm when discussing her numerous influences, which range from Diana Ross to John Coltrane.

“To be recognized in a place where we’ve received most of our inspiration from would be a great achievement,” she said. “There are so many American artists we are awe-struck by. You would like to perform to people they’ve performed to and be appreciated by them.

“Hopefully, we won’t need the chicken wire.”

* Swing Out Sister and Louise Goffin play tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $19.50. (714) 496-8930.