Mistletone

Artwork by Ben Montero

SONNY & THE SUNSETS TOUR DATES:

MELBOURNE: FRI NOV 15 @ MELBOURNE MUSIC WEEK OPENING NIGHT at The Residence w/- The Bats, Boomgates, Montero, Vishnu Keys + DJs Higher Power + LA Pocock. Tickets on sale now & selling fast! Doors open 7:30pm.

SYDNEY: THU NOV 21 @ Pop-Friendzzzy w/- Surf City, Community Radio + Adults @ Goodgod. Presented by Popfrenzy. Tickets on sale now.

BRISBANE: FRI NOV 22 @ California Design Up Late. See the Queensland Art Gallery in a different light when Sonny & the Sunsets play an Up Late Friday night event during California Design 1930–1965: Living in a Modern Way, an exhibition of more than 250 iconic designs from mid-20th century California organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Up Late offers a unique opportunity to see the ‘California Design’ exhibition after hours, enjoy live music in the Gallery’s beautiful Watermall and sample from a Californian inspired menu in the surrounds of QAG’s Sculpture Courtyard. Tickets and details here.

Sonny Smith will also be a guest speaker at Melbourne’s Face The Music conference, details below:

MUSIC = ART: Saturday 16 November, 12.20 – 1.10pm @ Arts Centre Melbourne. Sonny Smith joins panelists Caroline Kennedy and Darren Sylvester and moderators Simon Winkler & Lauren Taylor to discuss the work of musicians who create art and artists that create music. As a vehicle for expression, can the microphone be replaced by a spray can, a tattoo gun, lasers, lump of clay or a camera? We sometimes see these worlds collide, blur, cross-pollinate at art shows or in elaborate stage shows and sometimes two callings exist in isolation. Presented by Melbourne Music Week and Face The Music. Bookings & further info here.

• “Smith and the gang have some garage rock fun: Smith whoops like an ape, claps his hands to match his vocals, and then a delighted Tahlia Harbour playfully sings along with the instrumental outro. Both musically and lyrically, the album presents some of the Sunsets’ best work yet” – PITCHFORK review

Mistletone is proud to present the return of San Francisco’s rollicking garage-rock raconteurs, Sonny & the Sunsets. Sonny & the Sunsets are no strangers to Oz audiences; they opened Golden Plains 2011, were special guests on The Clean’s Australian tour, and headlined Mistletone’s sold out “Sonny Tones” party in Melbourne, where they are a firm favourite with three 3RRR Albums of the Week to their name.

Sonny & The Sunsets are the energetic accompaniment to the dynamic workings of Sonny Smith: playwright, novelist, filmmaker, comic book artist and all-round awesome human. Swooning out to Sonny’s sardonic, laid-back style, The Sunsets provide the perfect ensemble for Sonny’s vintage callbacks; a bubbling pot of 50s and 60s pop, country and folk, doo wop, garage rock and RnB, delivered with all the nonsense and energy of a midnight beach party.

While Sonny & The Sunsets draw on a variety of retro inspirations, their albums stand as intangible classics of their own. The latest and greatest Sonny & the Sunsets album, Antenna to the World, was recently released on Popfrenzy.

SONNY SMITH BIO:

Sonny Smith began playing Jimmy Yancey covers on piano in little mountain town clubs of Colorado when he was 18. These piano gigs led him to Denver and then into Central America where he busked up and down the Telemanca Coast with a couple friends in a band. At this time he was working on screenplays which ultimately broke apart into long-winded songs with characters, dialogues and plots. Sonny’s early CDs include This Is My Story, This Is My Song, released in 2002, followed the next year by Sordid Tales of Love and Woe, Sweet Lorraine featuring Jolie Holland on harmonies. In 2000, he wrote and directed his first short movie “Kid Gus Man.” In 2005, he garnered a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts to write and perform the play The Dangerous Stranger, and received a residency in 2006 from the LAB in San Francisco to produce part two of the saga, “Stranger Danger!” Sonny also wrote “Steppin’ Out,” a column for the New Mission Newspaper, in addition to publishing stories in various literary magazines. In 2005, Watchword Literary Magazine commissioned Sonny to produce One Act Plays, a CD that includes Edith Frost, Neko Case, Miranda July, Jolie Holland, Andy Cabic, Virgil Shaw, Mark Eitzel, John Dwyer and Mekons’ Rico Bell, among other talented artists. Following this was the release of Fruitvale, a collaboration with Wilco’s Leroy Bach and other Chicago musicians that features songs Sonny wrote about his then neighborhood in Oakland. In 2009 he released Tomorrow is Alright (soft abuse/secret seven) with his band Sonny & The Sunsets, a loose collective of musicians including Shayde Sartin & Tim Cohen of The Fresh & Onlys, Tahlia Harbour of Citay and The Dry Spells as well as Sub Pop recording artist Kelley Stoltz. The Sunsets now include Ryan Browne, Tahlia Harbour, and Kelley Stoltz. In 2009 he acted in a short film by Robert Arnold All Animals. In March of 2009, he gained another residency through The Headlands Center for the Arts to begin a large project called “100 records” in which 100 artists make 7” record covers of fictional bands that he supplies the music for. The show debuted for a seven week run at Gallery 16 in San Francisco in April 2010. It then travelled to Okay Mnt Gallery in Austin, Texas and will finish in New York at Cinders Gallery. Artists involved were William Wiley, Alika Cooper, Chris Johansen, Alice Shaw, Paul Wackers, Rebecca Miller, and about 90 more… Tomorrow Is Alright was released on August 31, 2010 via Fat Possum. The album’s single, “Too Young to Burn,” made its way around the blogosphere and caught the attention of many. After multiple tours and various collaborative/solo releases, Sonny and the Sunsets released their 2nd full-length, Hit After Hit, via Fat Possum on April 12, 2011. On April 23, 2012, Sonny & The Sunsets signed with Polyvinyl Records for their 3rd album, Longtime Companion (AKA Sonny & The Sunsets’ country album). Longtime Companion was released June 26, 2012. Another Sonny & The Sunsets album, Antenna To The Afterworld, followed in 2013 on Polyvinyl and was locally released via Popfrenzy.