Sunny Sweeney is as adept at scuffed-boot honky tonk as she is at rib-crushing balladry, and on her latest full-length effort, Married Alone, the Texas native does what she does best by defying categorization and resisting cliche.
Enlisting country chimera Paul Cauthen to co-produce beside Texas Gentleman Beau Bedford at Dallas's Modern Electric Sound, Sweeney stacks the album with her signature attitude, a smattering of pop charm, special guests galore and plain, old-fashioned good songs.
It's a safe bet some of those tunes will feature in Sweeney's set when she performs Saturday, Dec. 16, at New Braunfels' Redbird Listening Room. Sam Downing will open the limited-seating show.
"I always feel like the artist should be in charge of all things creative, and I was at a company where that was not the M.O.," said Sweeney, calling from a motel room during a recent run of shows. "It was just like pulling teeth trying to figure out who was going to produce my record, and it was the first person that we could all agree on. Long story short, we agreed on Paul and he did a great job."
Cauthen also lends his considerable vocal talent to the dented-heart "A Song Can't Fix Everything," a tune Sweeney co-wrote with Lori McKenna.
"We were in the studio recording it, and we were talking about putting a male harmony on it, and Paul just started singing it. I was like, 'Well, obviously, you're doing it. Why am I hiring someone else when you're literally doing it right now?' Sweeney said with a laugh. "He just left that vocal and that was that. His voice is so haunting. I love him."
Even before the pandemic — "stupid COVID," Sweeney calls it — Married Alone had been in the works, with Sweeney writing and assembling songs from some of Music City's finest tunesmiths, including Kendall Marvel and Waylon Payne ("Fool Like Me"). Hannah Blaylock, Autumn McEntire and Josh Morningstar penned the title track, which also features Vince Gill on vocals. For Sweeney, it was a song that came along at a particularly notable time.
"It was perfect! I was coming out of my second divorce and my friend Arthur sent it to me and he was like, 'OK, you need to listen to this song, but make sure you're by yourself because you're probably gonna lose your shit!'" Sweeney said. "I got through one verse and one chorus and was sobbing, and I called him and was like, 'Uh, whose song is this and how do I get to record it?' And he's like, 'It's yours if you want it.' I've had that song on hold since April of 2019."
Sweeney said her song-selecting process — personally and professionally — is more instinctual than calculated.
"Sometimes you just relate to them and sometimes you don't," she added. "I do write songs, and so typically that's what I go for as far as like I know what we've come up with to record, but then you hear something like 'Married Alone' or 'Fool Like Me' and you're like, 'Oh shit! I wish I'd written that!' It's usually that sentiment, I guess — I wish I would have written it. And then you have to call the people that wrote it and be like, 'Can I record that? Please?'"
An album highlight is the painfully inventorial "How'd I End Up Lonely Again," which Sweeney co-wrote with Josh Morningstar and Channing Wilson.
"We were all just talking about like, 'I'm getting divorced twice before the age of 40. How does that happen?'" Sweeney said. "They're both just such good writers and friends, so it's easy to be vulnerable and talk about crap with them."
The flipside of "Still Here" explores the equally wrenching experience of making a marriage work at any cost — for good or ill.
"Things change, people change, but that song, man ... I loved that song the minute I left that [writing session]," Sweeney said. "It was with Lori McKenna and she's ridiculous. I don't even have words for how great she is. She's been married a really long time, and she's kind of like a beacon to me. She just has all the things going — she has kids and a family — and she's so great to aspire to be like, you know what I mean? I'm sure she has problems. Of course, everyone has things going on in their life, but I look at her and she's just so sweet, writing songs with whoever, just about shit falling apart all around them. Which is typically my relationships."
And does that potential for domestic bliss maintain a hold in Sweeney's thoughts?
"No. Not anymore," she said. "I kind of came and went with all that. I'm very, very happy with my dog as my child and he's a handful enough. He's very, very small and he travels well, and he doesn't talk back and he doesn't eat a lot and he doesn't need me to cook and he doesn't need me to do laundry. He's just a great little roommate and a great little boyfriend. Five pounds of fury!"
$50, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16, Redbird Listening Room, 1260 Business I-35 South, New Braunfels, redbirdlisteningroom.com.
Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter| Or sign up for our RSS Feed
