Sunny Sweeney brings Texas twang to Stickyz

Track Five on Sunny Sweeney's latest album, Trophy, is called "Bottle By My Bed."

You'd be forgiven for thinking that was a bottle of whiskey. Sweeney, after all, is a spitfire singer-songwriter from Texas whose outlaw-tinged country leans close to the honky-tonk, I'm-drunk-again spirit of George Jones -- just see Trophy's "Pass the Pain" for starters.

But "Bottle By My Bed" isn't a drinking song. It's a lament about a woman who sees her friends settling down and starting families while her own efforts to have a child haven't worked out. She's wishing that was a baby's bottle by the bed.

"I'm very grateful to have that song out for the world to hear," Sweeney says from her home in Austin, Texas. "I really feel that people can relate to it, but nobody wants to talk about it."

It's a maudlin track, but also an eye-opener, as is the entire album. Trophy, Sweeney's fourth LP, will be released Friday, and hints at maturity and vulnerability as she confronts issues like addiction on "Pills" and suicide in the closing track, "Unsaid."

"It's maybe the most adult record that I've made," Sweeney, 40, says. "I don't like ever saying what my record is about, but listening to the songs, these are pretty adult subject matters. There are still drinking and partying songs, but as you get older, your mentality changes."

Sweeney, who grew up in Longview, Texas, will perform Saturday at Stickyz Rock 'n' Roll Chicken Shack in Little Rock.

She started playing music after graduating from Southwest Texas State University.

"I didn't want to get a real job," she says of her career path. "Anything I could do to get me out of having to sit behind a desk."

Trophy, released on Thirty Tigers, is the follow-up to 2014's Provoked, which featured "Bad Girl Phase," her fun, swaggering ode to raising hell.

The title cut from the new album, where the narrator confronts her husband's ex-wife, sounds like the perfect sequel to "Bad Girl Phase."

"That could have gone on my last record too," she says of the song. "We were laughing ... all the way through writing it."

Four of the songs on the album, including "Bottle By My Bed," were written with Sweeney's friend Lori McKenna.

"Lori has the melodies of a bird," Sweeney says. "She blows my mind."

She also writes with her best friend, Brennen Leigh of High Plains Jamboree.

"After a while you find this little group of people that you're comfortable sharing ideas with," Sweeney says of the co-writing process. "I like going back to those people because you have that comfort level."

One situation that found her out of her comfort zone, though, was hearing from her hero, Loretta Lynn, after Lynn had to pull out of a show at Billy Bob's Texas in Fort Worth a couple of years ago.

"They asked me if I could fill in for her," Sweeney says. "I'm like, 'duh,' and I [did the show]. Then she called me on my cellphone to thank me. I was on the treadmill when she called and I almost fell off. She was amazing. She's everything."

Weekend on 03/09/2017