By DAN ARMONAITIS
Sunny Sweeney has been churning out no-nonsense country music for the past decade and a half, impressing audiences with a powerful sound that’s commercially accessible yet filled with a renegade outlaw spirit.
“I’ve always been an independent artist and then for a couple of years I had a record deal,” Sweeney said, referring to a brief period in the late 2000s and early 2010s during which she was signed to the Big Machine and Republic Nashville labels. “Clearly, I feel better when I’m doing what I want and not having talking heads telling me what to do. I feel like I’m able to portray what I want better that way.”
Sweeney, who was nominated in 2013 for the Academy of Country Music’s Top New Female Vocalist award nearly a decade after her career began, will make a stop Thursday, Jan. 16 at Ground Zero in Spartanburg, sharing a bill with Nashville-based singer-songwriter Erin Enderlin.
“Erin’s one of my best friends and this is the first tour that we’ve done together, so I think it’ll be pretty fun,” said Sweeney, who noted that the two have co-written songs together in the past.
Sweeney, a Texas native who resides in Austin, last performed in South Carolina as an opener for rock ‘n’ roll legend Bob Seger when his tour came through North Charleston in May 2019. She’s also toured extensively throughout the U.S. in recent years with contemporary country outlaw Cody Jinks.
“It’s kind of all I know how to do, so I guess it’s a good thing that people want to come to my shows,” Sweeney said of her career longevity. “I’m still writing and singing and just doing my thing. That’s kind of what indie artists have to do; you have to grind the pavement.”
Sweeney burst onto the scene with her acclaimed debut album, “Heartbreaker’s Hall of Fame,” which was independently released in 2006 and re-released by Big Machine a year later. She’s since put out three other albums and landed a Top 10 country hit with her 2010 single “From a Table Away.”
Referring to her fierce independent streak, Sweeney said that, as a Texan, “it’s kind of in my blood a little bit” and then added that being a woman is also a factor.
“I don’t really ever pull the girl card but it’s inevitable that that’s kind of a thing, so you have to maybe be a little more aggressive than you would (as a man) to try to get your foot in the door in some places,” she said.
As a longtime resident of Austin, Texas, Sweeney said she met Spartanburg native and Uncle Walt’s Band co-founder Champ Hood on a couple of occasions before his death in 2001 and that she’s known Champ’s son, Warren Hood, who is an acclaimed musician in his own right, for quite some time.
“I haven’t seen (Warren) in a really long time, but we used to kind of run in the same circles a long time ago,” Sweeney said. “Warren is amazing, and he’s been amazing since he was a kid. He was just one of those prodigies who started playing really young and kicked ass from the beginning.”
As for Thursday’s show at Ground Zero, Sweeney said she’s looking forward to the opportunity to meet new fans.
The venue, despite the fact that it’s offered an eclectic array of musical talent for more than two decades, still has a reputation as mainly a rock and metal club, which suits Sweeney, whose songs include several hi-octane drinking anthems, just fine.
“We play in a lot of rock clubs actually,” Sweeney said. “I don’t have a lot of slow songs. I have a couple, five or six, out of our set that I think are slow, but most of them are uptempo and fun, so I think (the music) can kind of go either way.
“We can do a listening room where we play acoustic or we can play a rock club, it just depends. I mean, my band is really good and they can definitely hang with the rock guys.”