Sunny Sweeney’s Musical Full-Circle Moment

Self-producing an album wasn’t something that Sunny Sweeney spent much time pondering – until it happened.

Rhinestone Requiem is the pinnacle of her taking charge, hoeing her own bean row, and flexing her self-determining vigor. It’s just the latest from an artist committed to exploring her imaginative energies on her terms.

“I’m happy with what we ended up with on this project,” said Sweeney. “We could just pay ourselves. Plus we only had to have two opinions [hers and co-producer Harley Husbands’] versus more opinions.”

“Our mentality going in was, ‘We know how to do this and we are going to try it and see what happens.’”

Rhinestone Requiem, released August 1, is pure Sweeney, sharing tales of figures who win hearts readily and whose outlaw lifestyles embody freedom from responsibility. There are songs devoted to romantic quests, the forever keeping on and the forever searching, like such richly rendered titles as “Traveling On” and “Diamonds and Divorce Decrees.”

Most of the album’s tracks are the result of Sweeney’s collaborations with several musicians she has been working with for a number of years. There are also two covers, “Find It Where I Can,” popularized by Jerry Lee Lewis, and “Last Hard Bible” by Sweeney’s friend and mentor Kasey Chambers.

Though she once saw the sharing of songwriting duties from a tentative and even negative point of view, Sweeney wholly embraced the notion of teamwork on Rhinestone Requiem.

“Songs were written with the rest of the people that I have known for a long, long time … I know what I’m going to get when I write with those people. They know their strengths and I know my strengths, and that’s why we continue to write together.

“I used to never collaborate,” she continued. “But now I’m co-writing and thinking this is awesome. I was petrified at first. Songwriting with others forces you to put down all of your worries. A lot of people worry about co-writing. But I see it as a double bonus thing. You hang out with friends and you get to work.”

Rhinestone Requiem is a throwback to Sweeney’s upbringing and all of the earliest things that have had a colossal effect on her: Her father’s records, which she had open access to; listening to Jerry Reed; watching The Dukes of Hazzard; processing the initial songs that jiggled her plaster loose.

Sweeney vividly recalls at age 8 hearing Jessi Colter’s “I’m Not Lisa,” a great example of one of her songwriting paradigms of setting mood and meaning.

“I sat and watched the record play,” said Sweeney, “I remember thinking she sounded really sad, but now I know what she’s talking about. I also remember hearing Jerry Reed’s ‘Amos Moses.’ I thought, man, what type of noise is this? I knew I needed to hear more of it in my life. Waylon Jennings’ ‘Good Ol’ Boys’ theme and I loved The Dukes of Hazzard. I told my mom that I wanted a son and was going to name him Bo and Luke Duke. I loved them both, those Duke boys, and I loved that Telecaster sound.”

The whole fictional gang of rural Hazzard County folks, Bo and Luke and Daisy Duke, mechanic Cooter Davenport, accident-prone though incorruptible deputy sheriff Enos Strate, and others, resembled the classmates, pals, and neighbors who Sweeney was raised with in the Texas countryside.

“Those were the kinds of people that existed in my life,” said Sweeney. “Country boys were dressed like that and they’d drive too fast down the street. I saw Daisy Duke and I wanted heels like that. Daisy Duke. Dolly Parton. Grease. Heels and lipstick. I had seen my future!”

Sweeney was born in Houston, but after her father decided that he no longer wanted to work in the family insurance business, he quit the agency and packed everyone and everything up and drove more than 200 miles north to Longview, where he’d grown up.

“I’m grateful for that small town,” said Sweeney. “I don’t know if I would have ended up in the music business if I wasn’t raised there. There were opportunities for small-town people and small-town interactions, which have shaped the way I feel musically.”

Indeed, the move to Longview would play a decisive role in Sweeney’s relationship with music. There was a low-watt country music station in the town of about 60,000 people featuring a succession of howling DJs who routinely tried to break the songs of lesser-known artists, allowed for call-ins, and welcomed conversations. Sweeney started listening in the third grade and calling in to request Conway Twitty.

After her parents’ divorce, Longview was also where her mother met Paul, the person who would become her stepfather – and, in hindsight, her biggest career influence. Paul and one of his brothers liked to twang the guitar. Nurturing and never hardhearted, Paul slowly and caringly taught Sweeney how to play the instrument. The first guitar that he gave to her was a black composite Martin, “a cheap, old, sentimental thing,” she said. She learned that her grandfather was a member of a big band orchestra. He played the trumpet, drank scotch, and chain-smoked cigarettes. She thought that he was the apex of cool. But the notion of becoming a musician as an occupation seemed, in her words, “far-fetched.” She asked Paul what he thought – and he merely grinned.

Years later, Sweeney, thinking about her stepdad’s tenderness, her grandfather’s stark sense of flair, and some of the songs and musical moments that touched her as a child, she re-examined her intentions.

“I had a college degree and I didn’t want to use it. I wanted to work for myself and wear jeans everyday and be my own boss. That was 20 years ago.”

Sweeney, now 48, lived in Austin for approximately 25 years, going through some precariously bony times, financially. She juggled other jobs while making barely enough to cover bills. At one point, strapped for cash, she pawned the original Martin that her stepdad had given to her. The Chaparral Lounge in South Austin was the very first place that Sweeney performed and several months elapsed before she would muster the courage to return to the stage a second time. That second performance took place in August 2004 at the Carousel Lounge on East 51st Street.

“There was a halfway house across the street and I was not that good,” she said. “My mom said that there were two or three minutes in between each song and lots of discussing how we were going to play it.”

Swiftly, however, Sweeney improved. “I threw myself into it 150 percent.”

She began hustling seven nights a week, performing wherever there was the potential of a free meal or the likelihood of even a single pair of listening ears. At grocery stores, perched on hay bales, in the rutted corners of falling apart parking lots. If the spot had electricity, she would play there. And if it didn’t, she would still sing, at any rate.

“Many nights I played outdoors without lights,” said Sweeney. “We had lights on a stick, two canister lights, before LED lights. At Poodle Dog Lounge, which was a staple in Austin – now Aristocrat Lounge – there was no stage. No credit card machine. No dance floor. There were some chairs, and you were three feet in front of that, standing there. I missed one or two Sundays in three years.”

At Poodle Dog Lounge, Sweeney played her set between 8 and 11 p.m., plenty of shuffles and polkas to satisfy the dancers. Her act was mostly covers, with the occasional original thrown in, hoping that the audience was too sauced or too ebullient to even notice.

Her rewards and incentives, she said, were comparatively picayune. “Eating for free was pretty cool. Not having to get up early. Maybe play at a couple of other nearby towns.”

Things were moving along satisfactorily, if not spectacularly, when she received a message on MySpace from a record producer who told her that he liked what he had heard out of her in a club in Austin one night. He was based in Nashville, and once he learned that Sweeney would be performing there, he showed up. Without delay he offered her a recording contract.

Since then, she has won over a sizable group of listeners with a repertoire of songs that are frank, discerning, and occasionally grief-stricken, teasing, provocative, and ultimately convincing.

@sunnysweeney New song from the new record! You ever tried to get away from a relationship that keeps sucking you back in? #sunnysweeney #countrymusic #foryourpage ♬ original sound – Sunny Sweeney

Co-producer Harley Husbands has worked with Sweeney for about 10 years, his guitar licks always craftily and reliably adding richness to their musical portraits. The pair are so joined at the hip that his contributions to Rhinestone Requiem are virtually indistinguishable from Sweeney’s, their palettes bleeding into a single piece of artistry.

“We live together and work and travel and play together,” said Sweeney. “That forces you to work well together in the studio. We’ve got no time to not work well together. Having a bad day? Too bad.”

Sweeney said that the vocals on the record are about as close to the authentic article as she could deliver, done without any polishing or cleansing or much enhancing. She credits Harley with being the ultimate arbiter, the most prized of assayers. He knows her voice better than anyone. If she didn’t sound right at a particular moment, he made sure to tell her so.

“I’d be in the vocal booth running through songs and he would be in the control room, knowing what I do like hearing out of myself… He knows what I like to hear. If he was not hearing me sing that way, he would know it perfectly. It’s as close to me knowing it on my own as possible.”

Her vocals on Rhinestone Requiem are firm, authoritative, and insightful enough to be considered some of her best work.

“It is not smushed down and compressed,” said Sweeney. “It is as close to sounding as they’ve sounded at the show. I don’t like it when you buy a record and put it on the turntable and it doesn’t sound like what you’ve just heard at a show. I like reaching the high end. It can be shrill. Either people love it or hate it. Harley’s job was mixing me and pulling out my significant sound and frequency, but without squishing what people are already used to hearing.”

By the way, a requiem, by definition, is an action or token of remembrance. It is a word that has generated a bit of droll reaction, Sweeney said. “Some guy just wrote on my page that we need to pick a word that we can pronounce. I laughed my ass off out loud. My sister said that we need to get those boys a dictionary!”

Nevertheless, it is a pleasing and easily engaging listen, whether to devotees or casual fans of clear-cut country. Out of the new songs, “Traveling On” and “Diamonds and Divorce Decrees” are receiving the largest number of spins.

“I hate having to pick songs to release as singles,” said Sweeney. “I think we should release all of the songs and let people pick themselves. There are a couple of deeper ones, like ‘Half Lit in 3/4 Time’ that I’m really liking. ‘As Long as There’s a Honky Tonk’ is going over well at gigs and live is getting a really good response.”

Indeed, the formula of Rhinestone Requiem is the same modus operandi of loving labor, mischievous candor, bittersweet humor, and resolute truthfulness. And it seems to be paying Sweeney impressive dividends.

“Years of wearing myself out and gigs and travel,” said Sweeney. “I’ve started to see people now at every single gig. It’s all starting to feel real now. We’ve been living with these songs for a year, and now other people are now hearing them. The excitement is building.”


Photo Credit: Nash Nouveau

WATCH: Kasey Chambers, “Lose Yourself” (Eminem Cover)

Artist: Kasey Chambers
Song: “Lose Yourself” (Eminem cover)
Release Date: July 29, 2022

In Their Words: “Eminem has been one of my favourite songwriters for many years. We listen to a lot of him in our house. I’ve been mostly influenced in my life by writers who bravely put fearless emotion into lyrics and no one does that better than Eminem. I don’t really care too much about what genre music fits into, just that the sound comes from a real, authentic place from inside the artist. Eminem makes me feel things when I hear him. Not always the most comfortable things but I’m not sure that music is always meant to make us feel comfortable. I’ve had it in the back of my mind for years that I knew there was a version inside me somewhere of ‘Lose Yourself’ on a banjo (it took Covid lockdown to give me enough time to learn the lyrics properly and write a melody to it) that I wanted to play live but it was really just for the self-indulgent reason that I love the song so much. I had no idea that audiences would respond to it like they have. Something else takes over my body when I play it and I get completely lost in it. I can honestly say it’s the most I’ve ever connected to a performance of a cover song in my life.” — Kasey Chambers


Photo Credit: Samantha Meuleman

Darin & Brooke Aldridge’s ‘Inner Journey’ Always Leads Back to Bluegrass

The first time they ever sang together, Darin and Brooke Aldridge harmonized on “The Prettiest Flower,” an old hymn familiar to any Baptist church. They’ve scarcely stopped since then, with their latest album Inner Journey placing their stunning musical blend at its center on classics like “Teach Your Children Well” as well as songs written by the likes of Kasey Chambers, First Aid Kit, and Nanci Griffith.

“Brooke and I have always been trying to develop our sound. On this one, we stayed true to our bluegrass roots in some of the material,” Darin says. “We’re more of a vocal band. We can base things around Brooke’s singing and our duet style and harmonies, and we want our songs to send a message out that speaks to us.”

Versatile enough to sing a Louvin Brothers song one minute and a Bryan Adams song the next, the married couple commands a musical vocabulary that nonetheless lends itself to bluegrass. Darin Aldridge co-produced the project — their first for Rounder Records and sixth overall — with Mark Fain. And on the afternoon following this interview, Brooke Aldridge picked up her third consecutive IBMA female vocalist trophy, indicating that their audience is on this journey too.

BGS: This album begins with “I Found Love,” which has a tie to Earl Scruggs, right?

Darin: It does. I listened to that on a plane ride back from somewhere in New England and I had my iPod with me and the Earl Scruggs and Friends record was on there, with Vince Gill and Rosanne Cash singing it. I just thought, “Man, that would be a good grass-up number right there for us.” It’s a pretty good tempo and a duet and it speaks to what I was just saying – about what I want to get out there, in our life and in our history, and what we want to go forward with. Then I got to looking at the writing credits and it was Earl and Randy Scruggs and our buddy Vince. That was perfect. That’s all we needed.

Brooke: It’s one of those positive songs that we set out to do a long time ago when we first started making records. We talked about how we wanted to have a positive and uplifting message in most everything that we ever recorded. Some people have told us down through the years that we weren’t going to do very well doing that kind of thing. But I think that’s not the case at all! We’ve done very well sticking true to what we love and what we believe in, in each other.

But when you hear a good heartbreak song like “Every Time You Leave,” how do you respond?

Brooke: Oh, gosh, you just realize how true those words are. Because just like “Every Time You Leave,” we’ve all been through hard relationships or hard times in our families where we’ve lost loved ones or things haven’t worked out quite the way we wanted. I think that really speaks measures to me when we’re listening to songs like that and trying to decide what’s going to affect somebody out there listening.

Darin: The harmony speaks to us as well. We got to do that song with our buddy Jimmy Fortune. We got to tour a lot with Jimmy in the last couple of years and wanted to get a good song that represented that out there on the road for our singing together, and it just comes perfectly.

I want to ask you about “Your Lone Journey.” I learned that from a Doc Watson record.

Darin: Yeah, we did, too.

Why did you choose to include that song on here?

Darin: We got to visit Doc and become friends with him through MerleFest, through him being in North Carolina. A friend of mine took me up to visit him at his house about a year before he died. We’d been featured in Bluegrass Unlimited maybe a couple months before, and Rosa Lee brought the magazine to us when we got there. She said, “I’ve been reading about you all and glad that you all are here.”

She got to telling us the story of how she wrote that song. She was just sweeping in her kitchen, wasn’t she, Brooke?

Brooke: Yeah. And I think the words just came to her. She was sweeping and her and Doc arranged it, I guess, and made it theirs. What a great-sounding song.

Darin: Yeah, we sat there with them in the living room and talked about that, and he got to talking about Merle, and when he couldn’t wait to see him in heaven with his own eyes again. It is powerful, man. We just wanted to include that and it’s got an old-timey feel to it. Brooke’s got a really good mountain voice as well. It really fits.

Brooke: What Doc and Rosa Lee had brought to the music over the years and what they mean to us — we definitely wanted to include one by them. And it was funny because Doc kept saying that a lot of people title this song, “Your Long Journey.” And he’s like, “That’s not how Rosa Lee wrote it. It’s ‘Your Lone Journey.’” We made sure to get that right on this record.

Darin, have you been playing guitar your whole life?

Darin: I started probably 12, 13, something like that.

Never put it down?

Darin: Nah, I picked up the mandolin when I was 15 or 16. My brother and his baseball buddies had a little basement band. They’d all get around — he was a drummer – and pick on rock music and stuff like that, so I slowly learned that. I’d listen to the tunes after they’d quit playing and I’d start figuring them out, so I could sit in with them. Then the next week or two, I’d learned the tunes better than they had. Then their guitar player would ask me, “How’s that really go?”

Brooke: A little Van Halen? (laughs)

Darin: Yeah, all that stuff — ‘80s hair band stuff, I was big on [that]! Then I got to singing more in church as I grew and got into a gospel band through some buddies in the marching band. They went to church somewhere and said, “You play and sing — you got a banjo?” I actually had a banjo at the time but really hadn’t learned how to play it. I was like, “Oh, yeah, I can play banjo.” So I learned real quick, just so I could be in the band and start picking and singing. And I quickly moved to the mandolin after that. One of the guys could just play in a certain amount of keys, A and D maybe.

Ricky Skaggs has always been a huge influence and I wanted to do something I saw him do on the Opry, which was a quartet with a mandolin and guitar. Since we were singing in churches a lot, I wanted to do some of that material like Bill Monroe did. I recorded [the Opry] on a VHS tape, so I went upstairs with the mandolin and watched it. This song was in G, so I sat down and figured out the notes on the mandolin. I come down there to show it to him so he could play it, because I was the guitar player in the band. He said, “No, man, you just play mandolin.” [All laugh] So I just started playing mandolin from then on.

Brooke, did you start singing when you were around 12 or 13, too?

Brooke: Probably from the time I could talk, I started singing. My mom, my sisters and I used to sing in church. As I was getting a little bit older, my parents realized at an early age that I could pick up lyrics to a song just by hearing at one time. They started putting me in singing competitions. The school system where I was, in Avery County, used to have a yearly talent show. It would start out in the elementary schools, and if you placed first, second, or third you went onto the county-wide talent show and got to showcase your talent in front of everybody.

Those kinds of things, and doing community events and competitions all throughout my childhood, really prepared me for loving this more so when I got to adulthood. And so it’s been a neat journey. After Darin and I met, I had goals and dreams, of course, just like everybody in the music business does. We still talk about how we never imagined we’d get to do some of this stuff we’ve gotten to do. It’s been really cool to see those things become reality.

What are you looking forward to the most with this record coming out?

Darin: It’s been a few years since we put one out. I think we’ve grown a lot in those two years, and everything that’s followed, with what we’ve been doing, recording, trying to say as artists. We have grown maturely, too, in our music. And I think this record reflects that.

Brooke: I think that’s why we chose the title that we did, Inner Journey, because as kids, you imagine or dream about things that you can be when you grow up. And then, when you come into adulthood, you stop and think about where you came from, and what you’ve gotten to do, and if your heart really followed that path from a child to now. And I feel like ours definitely has. It’s been our inner journey. God has put us exactly where we needed to be at that exact moment.


 

‘Bittersweet’

Five years in the making, Kasey Chambers' Bittersweet marks a change of direction for the Aussie native (who's already won considerable accolades for this record from scribes back in her homeland). It starts at the crossroads where Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska meets Emmylou Harris's '70s sweetness then picks its own path, barrelling down the road with the sincerity of Southern roots music, the veracity of '70s punk, and the shiny-object swankiness of American pop radio.

The opening cut, "Oh Grace," is a perfect archetype of the Harris-in-Nebraska observation, a sparsely populated song of bittersweet love set against a simple guitar strum, brushy drums, and a beautiful fiddle solo by Ashleigh Dallas. But then Chambers unveils "Is God Real" and adds a contemporary chime to the whole affair. It's an urgent appeal of uncomfortable agnosticism over a pulsing electric guitar, delivered in the voice of a lost little girl, with unbounded urban energy. "Wheelbarrow" turns in three directions in a New York minute, evolving from a gospel a cappella tune to a banjo-balanced back porch sing-along to a thrashing rock tune in a matter of about eight bars. Later, Chambers sticks close to the folkie format on "I Would Do," channels her inner Alphabet City punk on "Hell of a Way to Go," plays things a little on the bluesy side on "House on a Hill," then closes the record with the full-on Springsteen harp and hustle of "I'm Alive."

Though the influences here are broad-ranging , all the tunes work together — a testament to Chambers' compositional fortitude and producer Nick DiDia's steady hand. Like some other solid records we've heard this year from Hannah Miller, Laura Marling, and Jessie Baylin, this is what roots music sounds like at the most inventive edges of the genre.

Listen to the record here.

Hey Nashville, Get Off Your Ass and Go See Some Live Music in August

August 1 // Fantastic Negrito // The High Watt

Yeah, yeah. NPR. Tiny Desk Concert. That may have been the boost Fantastic Negrito needed to get going, but now he's cruising along on his own, incredibly powerful momentum.

August 2 // Traveller // The Basement East

Supergroups are all relative, in the end. The latest one to crop up in Nashville is this little trio of Robert Ellis, Cory Chisel, and Jonny Fritz. Go see for yourself if the whole is greater than the sum of its artists.

August 4 // Kasey Chambers // City Winery

The Aussie singer/songwriter makes a rare appearance in Nashville to show off her shiny, award-winning new album.

August 7 // Amanda Shires // City Winery

Eight months pregnant, Amanda Shires is a living testament to "leaving it all on the field" … or stage, as the case may be. (And, no. Mr. Shires won't be there. He'll be in Seattle.)

August 20 // The Farewell Drifters // Station Inn

There's no better play in town to hear some pickin' and some sangin'. And, really, not that many better bands in town to do said pickin' and sangin'.

August 21-22 // Langhorne Slim // Mercy Lounge

For everyone who couldn't get into Langhorne Slim's recent album release performance, this two-night stand is for you. Go get your sweat on!

August 26 // Steep Canyon Rangers // City Winery

Like good wine? Like good bluegrass? Here you go.

August 28 // Keb' Mo' // Schermerhorn Symphony Center

It seems fitting that a gentleman of the blues such as Keb' Mo' would do his thing at the Symphony Center. And what a thing he does.

August 29 // Ruby Amanfu // The High Watt

As she gears up to release a solo record, Jack White's "Love Interruption" sidekick is doing three special performances. Luckily for us, she's from Nashville. Hometown crowd better represent!

August 30 // Rayland Baxter // 3rd & Lindsley

This guy. Rayland Baxter and his band will, no doubt, play the crap out of his super-solid new record, Imaginary Man. So, like, you should go enjoy it. 

LISTEN: Mary Gauthier, ‘Sorry You’re Sick’

For most of his career, such as it was, Ted Hawkins was a street performer in Southern California, entertaining tourists and locals alike on the Venice Beach Boardwalk and the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica — his sandpaper voice a perfect companion for his poignant tunes. Many musical types tried to “discover” him over the years, so Hawkins ended up with a handful of releases on different labels, big and small, before he passed away in 1995. His debut, 1982's Watch Your Step, even won a five-star review in Rolling Stone.

On October 23, the first-ever tribute album to Hawkins will find its way into the world. Cold and Bitter Tears: The Songs of Ted Hawkins features a host of superb singer/songwriters — including James McMurtry, Kasey Chambers, Mary Gauthier, Tim Easton, and Sunny Sweeney — paying their respects to the largely unknown great. As his Los Angeles Times obituary read, “At the time of his death, Hawkins remained the greatest singer you’ve never heard. Hawkins clearly was transported somewhere else as he sang, and when he became aware of the audience, he seemed dazed: [Everyone] applauding wildly, some in tears from the sheer, sad beauty of his songs.”

The first track to emerge from Cold and Bitter Tears is Gauthier’s rendering of “Sorry You're Sick.” She says of the pairing, "I knew I could find the center of that song because I'm an alcoholic. I'm in recovery and sober a long time, but I know that feeling of being in a room with someone who's dope sick or booze sick and what you need to get them is dope or booze. Having experienced it, it touched me and brought me back to a time in my life that was truly difficult. [Hawkins'] songs are timeless. What matters is that people get to hear them and this project will increase the opportunity to discover these songs.”

Cold and Bitter Tears: The Songs of Ted Hawkins drops on October 23 via Austin's Eight 30 Records.

Track listing:
“Big Things” • James McMurtry
“Cold and Bitter Tears” • Kasey Chambers and Bill Chambers
“One Hundred Miles” • Tim Easton
“Sorry You’re Sick” • Mary Gauthier
“Strange Conversation” • Jon Dee Graham
“Happy Hour” • Sunny Sweeney
“I Got What I Wanted” • Randy Weeks
“Baby” • Tina-Marie Hawkins Fowler with Elizabeth Hawkins
“I Gave Up All I Had” • Gurf Morlix
“Bad Dog” • Danny Barnes
“Bring It on Home Daddy” • The Damnations
“My Last Goodbye” • Ramsay Midwood
“Who Got My Natural Comb” • Shinyribs
“Whole Lotta Women” • Steve James
“Peace and Happiness” • Even Felker

LISTEN: Kasey Chambers, ‘Bittersweet’

For her 10th studio album, Australian singer/songwriter Kasey Chambers decided to shake things up a bit. Rather than bringing back her brother Nash, Chambers turned to producer Nick DiDia, known for his work with Bruce Springsteen and the Wallflowers. She wanted something new. And she sure got it.

The band behind Bittersweet included Bernard Fanning on acoustic guitar, keyboard, piano, and vocals; Ashleigh Dallas on banjo, fiddle, and mandolin; Dan Kelly on electric and acoustic guitar; Matthew Engelbrecht on bass and flugelhorn; and Declan Kelly on drums, percussion, and vibes; with Bill Chambers contributing additional background vocals. The group went in, laid it down, and walked out a week later with a record that blends folk glory, blues swagger, and alt-country bravado. For its effort, the set has already won multiple awards and myriad acclaims in Australia.

“The last five years of my life have been wrapped up into this one album — Bittersweet — and I'm so excited for it to be finally released in America,” Chambers says. “I collaborated with producer Nick DiDia and singer/songwriter Bernard Fanning from Australia's rock royalty Powderfinger to make this album come to life with a whole new approach. It's filled with my heart and soul and dirty electric guitars — just the way life should be.”

Bittersweet will be available on July 24 via Sugar Hill Records.