Hutch

 

I've heard about Austinite Sunny Sweeney for a little over a year now.  I've haven't seen her live yet, but I've been meaning to.  So when I got a copy of her debut CD, Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame, I was excited to give it a listen. I listened to it...and I didn't particularly like it.
Something about it just didn't do it for me.  I only gave it one listen though, and vowed to sit down and give it another listen at a different time, because so often one's first impression of a song or artist or album is highly influenced by a variety of other factors. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for that kind of music that day.  So I vowed to give it another listen some time later.  Well, I ended up going on vacation, and the vacation ended up being extended way longer than I expected.

When I returned home, I had totally forgotten about the CD.  Then one day, I put my CD player on shuffle.  My CD player holds 51 CDs, and I love to hit the shuffle button, and the CD player randomly selects tracks from all the discs in the carousel.  It's like your own private radio station, or a different mix tape each time you listen.

This time when I hit shuffle, in between the Hayes Carll, Mike McClure, Mark Jungers, and Butch Hancock, came a distinctively refreshing honky tonk female voice.  I liked it, and wondered who it was.  Being too lazy to get up and stop the shuffle cycle to see, I just let it keep going.  The random music continued for another hour or so, and then another track by this unknown female honky tonker came up, and I liked this track, too.  This time I had no choice but to stop the shuffle to see what CD it was.  It was Sunny Sweeney, of course.

I was glad to hear it.  One, because it reminded me that I needed to review it, and two, because I wanted to like the album more than I did the first time.  So I gave the whole album another couple listens all the way through.  I did like it more this time.  But while I was glad that the shuffle pulled up two songs that I liked, that was also part of the problem.

Listening to the album all the way through, there are some definite hits, but also some misses.  There's a good mix of songs on the album, but I might prefer to hear them as singles than as a cohesive album.  The first two tracks get the disc started off right.  “Refresh My Memory” is a great classic country sounding song.  “East Texas Pines” cranks it up a
notch or two, and sounds a bit like a rocking Dwight Yoakam (Pete Anderson era) song. There are some tremendous songs, including “Lavender Blue”, a stunning duet with Jim Lauderdale, and “Here Lately” a great song about getting over a breakup.  But
scattered throughout the great tracks are some that just don't hold my interest.  “Next Big Nothing” and the title track both seem a little too simplistic, relying on some catch phrases instead of substance.

The CD ends on a positive note, with a stellar cover of Lacy J Dalton's “16th Avenue”, which made me immensely happy, and which Sweeney absolutely nails.

This modern day honky tonk album features songs written by the legendary Keith Sykes, and Jim Lauderdale, and Sunny herself.  It took me one or two listens to get used to Sunny's voice, but once that happened, I was sold on her classic country sound.

The playing on the CD is superb, and I think she's definitely on the right track. Overall, of the 12 songs, I really like 6 of them, and two more are growing on me.  Of the ones I don't particularly care for, I'd still rather hear one of them than 95% of the stuff that's played on country radio these days.

Sunny Sweeney lists Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn as two of her idols. That's two pretty good people to try to emulate.  Sweeney is off to a good start with her debut album.  Her pure honky tonk country music is a welcome sound to my ears.  I definitely plan to go see her live in the very near future.

Click here to visit her website.

Written by Chad Hutchinson, October 2006

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