Battle Ground’s Sweeney has a Northwest passion

BATTLE GROUND — Amber Sweeney grew up in Los Angeles but came home to the Pacific Northwest.

She’s been drawn to singing and playing the guitar since she was a child, she said. She got nothing but encouragement from her family — including her guitarist father, whose own band was pretty darned good in its day, she’s been told. She was further inspired by the bluesy singing and slide guitar of Bonnie Raitt, the brilliant song writing of Sheryl Crow and the all-out rock attack of sisters duo Heart — all of which convinced her that a woman could make it big in the music business.

But she found networking in Los Angeles soulless, superficial, “What can you do for me?” Sweeney hated that. “L.A. was a rat race,” she said. She enjoyed some top-flight, professional music teachers there, but the boys’ club that is rock ‘n’ roll still never rolled out the red carpet for Sweeney.

Meanwhile she started playing bass and singing in a band from, of all unlikely places, a Washington town called Battle Ground. Sweeney visited here with her new friends — and fell in love.

“This is my rhythm. This is my place,” she realized. She moved to Battle Ground in 2003. “It was the best decision I ever made,” she said. Eventually she realized that she was so enchanted with the people of the Pacific Northwest — who don’t just want to use you, she said, but to get to know you and hear your story — that she wrote a fun, funky tribute song about her adopted home and its people.

Then she enlisted as many talented friends as possible to pitch in and make “The Great Northwest” into a true anthem — a rousing, rocking boast about “kickin’ it” in the upper-left corner:

“This is how we do it in the Great Northwest

We play between Portland and Seattle’s best …

We gotta put our hands up and celebrate who we are

We might be made in the rain, but sunshine lives inside our hearts.”

Sweeney sees the song about much more than inner sunshine in the land of rain. It’s about the causes and crusades that Pacific Northwesterners get so passionate about — such as human rights for everyone, Sweeney said.

“We are the lovers, we are the champions of freedom

We are the dreamers, we know to keep on believing …

The song features a strong, funky groove, horn and string sections, and even a guest appearance by Seattle rapper Wanz (heard on Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”) who delivers a quick tour of places our upper-left corner is distinctly not:

“This ain’t no land of cheese, no Hollywood lights …”

Lone singer

At 34, Sweeney is a full-time, self-supporting musician, she said.

That means staying super busy taking studio work as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and lyricist as well as pursuing her own solo success.

“You’ve got to diversify” to make it in the business, she said.

Connections in Los Angeles helped get her voice and her compositions onto television shows such as “One Tree Hill” and “Life Unexpected.” And her 2014 collaboration with Seattle producer Geoff Ott for London Tone Music’s “Year in Your Ear” project produced a hit blues tune, “Lone Sailor.”

Now, “The Great Northwest” is already out as a preview of “Believing in Love,” a seven-song CD that will be released in late January. You can hear and purchase “The Great Northwest” via the website www.theambersweeney.com.

A CD release party for “Believing in Love” is set for 6:30 p.m. Jan 26 at the Moulton Falls Winery, 31101 N.E. Railroad Ave., Yacolt. Sweeney will be joined by a full band.

For every sale of a physical CD, $1 will go to the Rocksolid Teen Center. Rocksolid is a youth community center in Brush Prairie — a place where kids can go after school to play, study, get homework help and be safe.

Sweeney, who said she suffered some tough times as a teen, is a strong supporter of Rocksolid.

Then, Sweeney said, she’ll be setting off on a two-week solo-acoustic tour throughout the Great Northwest and beyond.