110. Sunny War
Singer-songwriter, guitarist, and performer Sunny War is my guest this week. \n\nExtreme emotions can make that battle all the more perilous, yet from such trials Sunny has crafted a set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles, as though she\u2019s marshaling all her forces to get her ideas across: ecstatic gospel, dusty country blues, thoughtful folk, rip-roaring rock and roll, even avant garde studio experiments (like the collage of voices that closes \u201cShelter and Storm\u201d). She melds them together into a powerful statement of survival, revealing a probing songwriter who indulges no comforting platitudes and a highly innovative guitarist who deploys spidery riffs throughout every song. \n\nIt's a style she\u2019s been honing for most of her life, at least since she took her first guitar lessons and fell in love with music. True to the punk ethos, her first punk band, the Anus Kings, made music with whatever they had at hand, and what they had at hand were acoustic guitars. That made them stand out among other Los Angeles groups at the time, and today Sunny is the rare roots artist who covers Ween and can drop a Crass reference into a song (as she does on \u201cWhole\u201d). \u201cI don\u2019t really make music with a traditional roots audience in mind. I like weird music, outsider music, like Daniel Johnston and Roky Erickson.\u201d \n\nEven as she was developing a guitar style that married acoustic punk to country blues, those two sides of Sunny were already at odds. As a teenager, she began drinking heavily, which led to her dropping out of school. She played punk shows, stole and chugged bottles of vodka, and quickly became addicted to heroin and meth. For money she busked along the boardwalks in Venice Beach, recording an album to sell out of her guitar case and letting that self-destructive side win most of the battles. But \u201cthe body can\u2019t handle both heroin and meth,\u201d she explains. \u201cWhen you\u2019re young, it\u2019s hard to gauge that you\u2019re killing yourself.\u201d A series of seizures landed her in a sober living facility in Compton, so emaciated that she could only wear children\u2019s pajamas.\n\nMusic remained a lifeline, and she fell in with a crew at Hen House Studios in Venice, where over the years she made a series of albums and EPs, including 2018\u2019s With the Sun and 2021\u2019s Simple Syrup. Twelve years after she kicked meth and heroin, Sunny is remarkably candid about this time in her life. \u201cEveryone I loved died before they reached 25. They OD\u2019ed or killed themselves. We were just kids who didn\u2019t have anyone looking out for us. You\u2019re not supposed to know so much about death at such a young age. Maybe that\u2019s why I write a lot about not taking shit for granted, because it always feels like something\u2019s about to happen.\u201d (sunnywar.com)\n\nIf you enjoy the podcast, please let others know, subscribe or write a review. 5 star ratings and reviews on Apple Music as well as subscribing to my YouTube Channel help out the most!\n\nIF YOU'D LIKE TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST IN A MONETARY WAY, I'M NOW ON PATREON! www.patreon.com/andysydow\n\nGuest Links:\nWebsite: https://www.sunnywar.com\n\nEpisode Music:\nOriginal music by Andy Sydow\n\nSponsors:\nA huge thanks to our sponsor, Narrator Music.\n\nFor any sponsorship inquiries, shoot me an email at middleclassrockstar@gmail.com\n\nnarratormusic.com