Sonny Smith (second from left): "A friend died, and at a visit to a psychic a different dead person came into the room and had stuff to say to me."

When not writing, singing, sharing one-act plays or investigating psychic phenomena (see below), Sonny Smith from Sonny & the Sunsets stumps for his new album Moods Baby Moods. The band hits Soda Bar on the Friday, June 24. Sonny sent some answers through the email aether.

Any memories of playing San Diego?

“I played the Belly Up once, and this surfer guy with hair to his butt, cutoff jeans, and a button-up dress shirt rolled up in a red convertible Cadillac, and his lady had a blue bouffant kinda hairdo, ’70s Dolly Parton style, and she was dressed kind of country with heels and jeans, and the guy was in the opening band and the bands’ name had ‘Whiskey’ in it. I can’t remember the name or the music too much, but I thought, Yeah, it would be fun to live in San Diego like those two…”

You've experimented with plays and comic books in aural form. What inspired you in that direction, how did those experiments turn out?

“I like to set out to write actual plays and then let the plays become songs, or I like to set out to make a song and let it become a comic book. I like that shift. It’s almost a trick I play on myself. Because it makes the songwriting more original, less predictable. Working on dialogue over the years, and linear narratives with plots and such, it just effects how I write everything. There’s always a story…”

How are the paranormal investigations going? Any spooky stories to share?

“I wrote that album Antenna to the Afterworld because a friend died, and at a visit to a psychic a different dead person came into the room and had stuff to say to me. So, yeah, it was all spooky, and I’m not a big believer in that stuff, but it felt pretty real, and naturally led to some interest in the afterworld…”

Which artists influence you the most and why?

“I get inspired about every week by someone new, but the ones that stand out for me tend to be artists that tapped into some kind of very prolific flow. Like they just can’t really stop. This could be someone like Keith Haring, or an older Charles Bukowski, or John Coltrane, or Sun Ra, or Woody Guthrie. Follow me? They were just flowing through words or melodies or folk songs or whatever their medium was. Letting it all hang out, I find that inspiring…”