Sonny and the Sunsets

Hey, I'm in a little town called Medina, Ohio, somewhere between Cleveland and Columbus...I drove 600 miles yesterday and didn't speak to a single person all day (well, after I left, I had quite an extended conversation with Bill before taking off) until I got to the hotel.

And still, somehow, life goes on without me.

Dusted is running my Sonny and the Sunsets review today:

Sonny and the Sunsets
Longtime Companion
(Polyvinyl)

Sonny Smith is, in a way, the songwriter with a thousand masks. He’s been a playwright and performance artist as long as he’s been a singer. One of his earliest recordings was called One Act Plays, which was exactly what it sounds like — a series of short dramas set to music. His 100 Records project created full-blown singles for 100 imaginary bands, art and all. Smith and half of San Francisco’s psychedelic garage scene acted out his musical scenarios — as Nuggets guitar-chimers, Latin garagistes and, in one case, a lost and lonely Johnny Cash-style country crooner – on 2011’s compilation Hit After Hit. The “I” in Sonny Smith’s songs is almost never the “I” in Sonny Smith’s life, and he extends this concept well beyond lyrical content, to matters of style, genre and musical arrangement.

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I'm going to drive to Indianapolis today, with a possible stop in Columbus for lunch and a look at Ohio State (they must have record stores, right, even a football school?).