Following her successful, long awaited return last year for a pair of festival appearances and a headline show in London, Sunny Sweeney is set for a longer run with fourteen shows across the UK and Ireland in November. Since we last spoke to Sunny, (read HERE) she has also released her first studio album since 2017 by sharing “Married Alone” which, the Beau Bedford produced project has been met with huge critical acclaim. With the European visit looming on the horizon, Sunny jumped on Zoom to check in with us as she prepares for the tour.
Hey Sunny, how are you doing? I know you took a little bit of time out because your voice was sore so, are you on the mend and feeling pretty good at the minute? “Yeah I had a little vocal issue and evidently it’s muscular so, I’ve been at therapy almost every day for pretty much two months and it’s getting better, yesterday felt like the first day that I was making significant progress so, pretty happy about that. I’m doing the radio show on Sirius XM again but the shows don’t start again until September 27th so a little bit more time to keep it getting better.” Well, that is great to hear and hopefully it will be all sorted by November, because you are coming back to see us over here and it’s a much longer trip than last time. “I’m beside myself, I’m so excited and I’ve already started packing because October is looking pretty busy and when I leave on October 10th, I’m not coming back until December so I’ve got to be packed ready by the first week of October. There are cities that I’m playing which I haven’t even been to before and I have an aunt, well she’s not a blood aunt but she’s my mom’s best friends sister who she lives just outside of Gloucester and I call her my Aunt Sexy so, I’m able to go and stay with her for a couple of days when we do the gig there. Leek and Nottingham are new places for me, I’ve never been there before and oh yeah Belfast, which I can’t wait for so, I’m really excited.”
Looking back to last year, you played the two festivals over here where the reaction was fantastic and it must be great for you to see that having not been over here playing shows for a while, there are still plenty of people that are loving what you do and you have kept picking up new fans whilst you have been away. “Here’s what I feel about British fans, I feel like the first time that I came to the UK was like 2006 or 2007 probably and when you make a fan over there, they are always with you, those fans have stuck with me since the very first time that I met them. It’s a long process I feel like because it’s literally on a different continent but if you make the effort to go over there, make fans and make friends because I’ve got friends that live there now. I am so excited to see people that I haven’t seen in a while and I’ve got family, like extended family in Ireland. It’s been a process but people who come from where I come from in East Texas don’t travel a lot so it was a conscious decision for me to be able to go this is what I want to do, I want to go over there, I want to meet these people, I want to build relationships then continue to go over there for the rest of my career and build on that.”
Last time that we spoke, was just before “Married Alone” came out, which you had said you hadn’t really intended to write a second divorce album, but there we were and that’s what you were doing, where the record was really well received. Looking ahead to the next project, you haven’t had another divorce to make a third one ha ha “Ha ha, look at you telling me that I haven’t got married AGAIN but I’m definitely never getting married again! You can put that on the record but I have already started my next album and it is an extremely country record so, that’s what I’m doing.” That’s exciting to hear what you’re working on at the minute and that will be on the way in the future, but the last thing you put out was a nice little Bob Dylan cover where you had Miko Marks, Rissi Palmer and Tami Neilson recording that with you. Why did you decide to record that and how did you get those other ladies involved with it too? “I’ve known Rissi like forever, I mean for a long, long, long time. I love Bob Dylan and that song particularly, I feel like you can’t sing that song unless you have lived a little, you know what I mean, not believably. It’s so simple but so not simple and I know that those girls and I have a lot in common personally and with our personal lives. I just thought it would be so cool to all do a project together and I thought to myself, how about that song? We’ve all kind of lived in that world a little bit and I’m so proud of how that turned out.”
You said that the next project is very, very country and that is in the works at the moment. I know you might not want to talk too much about a timeframe at the moment but could we possibly have something new to tease by the time you come over here in November? “I don’t know if I will have a single by then but I do know that I will be playing some of the new songs that I’m going to be putting on my record, for those shows. I also know that the record will be out next year, in 2024 and my “Provoked” record that came out in 2014, I’m doing a ten-year anniversary version of that which is all pretty much going to be done differently and it is going to be badass and we’re already working on it which is so exciting. I feel like the anniversary records cool but I always want it to be different. I don’t just want a remastered version of what is already there so, we’re doing it a little different and I think you’re going to be very interested to hear how this is going to be.”
November 9 The Cluny, Newcastle November 10 Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek November 12 The Bodega, Nottingham November 13 Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham November 14 Retro, Manchester November 15 Gloucester Guildhall, Gloucester November 17 Acapela studio, Cardiff November 19 Oslo, London November 20 The Bullingdon, Oxford November 21 The 1865, Southampton November 23 The Workmans Cellar, Dublin November 24 Nashville Nights at The Copper Tap, Omagh November 26 Limelight, Belfast November 28 Broadcast, Glasgow
Sunny Sweeney returns to the UK and Ireland in November for fourteen dates starting in Newcastle on November 9th with full dates shown above and ticket details available on her WEBSITE.
Her latest album “Married Alone” is out now through Thirty Tigers and available HERE whilst you can keep up to date with Sunny socially on INSTAGRAMTWITTERTIKTOK & FACEBOOK.