Sunny Day in December

East Texas Songstress Plays The Duck This Weekend

Mark Williams
Music Editor

Between having three dogs named Merle, Nash, and Dolly and an East Texas accent so pronounced you could pick her out in a crowded honky-tonk from across the room, Sunny Sweeney is a country girl; that much was clear long before she ever got around to recording her debut album, "Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame." So what was Sweeney thinking when she left for New York City after graduation to pursue a career in theater or comedy instead of conquering the dance hall and Opry circuit? Maybe she was just testing herself —- making absolutely sure she was born to be a country singer, not just another pretty young improvisational comedian from Longview. 

There was a time when Sweeney seemed determined to collect as many different W-2s as she could instead of pursuing her destiny; and she actually did okay at the comedy thing —- after leaving the Big Apple and returning to Texas to hook up with a comedy troupe in Austin. But every time a skit found her singing, it became more and more clear she was just putting off the inevitable. “My friends in the improv group kept saying, ‘Man, you should try singing,'” says Sweeney. “At first I thought they meant ‘cause I wasn't good at the comedy stuff, but they were just being supportive and wanted me to succeed at what they thought were my strongest points.” 

Her family seemed intent on pushing her in the right direction, too. Her stepfather, a musician and songwriter himself, had tried to teach Sunny guitar when she was a child, but it didn't stick. Years later, when he tried again, it did. So much so, she became obsessed. “He gave me a guitar for Christmas and taught me the three country chords: G, C and D,” she says. “The next day we drove to Colorado to go skiing, and I played the damn thing the entire way up there and back.” 

That was all of three years ago. And she's been making up for lost time —- with a vengeance —- ever since. She played her first “real” gig, fronting her own band in September 2004 at Austin's Carousel Lounge. In less than a year, she was holding down weekly residencies at multiple Austin honky tonk bars and even scored a short tour or Europe, highlighted by sharing a bill with Dwight Yoakam at a festival in Norway.

But this all didn't just fall into her lap. As she puts it with her characteristic, matter-of-fact bluntness, “I have busted my ass doing this. The crowds at home started coming pretty steadily after four of five months, but those first months were the longest months I've ever had. I booked myself on like over 200 shows the first year I had a band. This is the hardest I've worked on anything in my life, but I still cannot believe this is my job. I'm doing what I've always wanted to do, and, honestly, it's the thing I'm supposed to do because I haven't gotten fired yet!” 

But the real proof that Sunny Sweeney is doing exactly what she's supposed to be doing is all right there in her first record. “Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame,” recorded in Floresville, isn't one of those quiet, timid little baby-steps records that slowly grows on you. It explodes into the room and demands your full attention.

The first thing that grabs you is her voice —- a big, bold and brassy instrument that brings to mind both the classic female county singers of the '60s and '70s that she grew up on as part of a country music loving family. “Growing up in East Texas, we had mostly country radio stations, but I was a child in the early '80s right when the genre had started its downfall,” Sweeney admits. “But the first time I heard Merle Haggard, I remember actually thinking, ‘Now this guy, his songs are worth something!' I'd hear something else I didn't like, and then I'd hear the intro to a Merle song and my heart would stop. And I always loved Loretta, too, but it wasn't until I got older that her lyrics really started to mean so much to me. It was from her that I learned that it's OK to be yourself: write from your heart and what you know.” 

Sunny Sweeney whoops it up at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck (2425 Norfolk, Houston) on Sunday (12/7) at 6PM; tickets are $12. Call 713-528-5999 for more information and reservations…

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