Sonny Flaharty

Welcome to our SonicBid EPK. We pray this serves you well. The CD A Higher Perception is the first in what we pray will be many musical treks toward a more rewarding spiritual life for us all.
To answer questions already asked we reply. Yes, this is the same recording artist and songwriter whose first recording is in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the same man whose 1967 recording of ?Hey Conductor? remains a staple on the collectors market, a recording that in a single week in 1967 went from Pick Hit in all the major music trade papers of the time, to the most widely banned record of the era. Hey Conductor the rather innocent story of a generations trip has lived a long life.

WHERE WE'RE GOING

A Higher Perception is the story of this generations Quest, a quest for God in every moment of their lives. The truth, the joy, the never-ending awe of a growing knowing of God.
In 1986 on a Friday night near a roadside in Nashville Sonny Flaharty got on his knees and said one simple prayer. The prayer was from a miserable man with nowhere to go. It was ?God, I don?t know what?s wrong, but my life is a disaster. Please Lord, kill me or cure me. Amen?
What was wrong was a growing addiction to drugs, especially alcohol, and God apparently had no plans for Sonny?s immediate transition to spirit, so He cured him.
We all know that God often uses others to work many miracles in our lives. So it was with Sonny. The day following the prayer Sonny had been booked to play a show opening for Tammy Wynette in western Tennessee. It was a fundraiser for a youth camp at the site. Little did he know that the youth who would live there would be kids addicted to drugs.
That day Sonny met a man named Paul R. On the following Wednesday Paul invited Sonny to a ?meeting ? at the Musicians Union rehearsal hall on Music Row. When he got there Sonny found himself in the middle of his first ever Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. There he found a God of his understanding, the God he?d known as a child, and that God continues to rule his heart and soul to this day.
Now free of drugs and alcohol Sonny found a new creative outlet and though he continued to write songs, he was now a television write and producer.

ANSWERED PRAYER ?THE OTHER WAY

In the following years life had never been better for Sonny and he continued in prayer always ending with the words of Christ ?not my will but thy will be done.
On a fall morning in 1993 Sonny got a call from Los Angeles. A business associate, film producer Anthony Cardoza was calling but it wasn?t business Anthony had on his mind. He said that a friend of his, a make-up Artist named Kathy James had moved to Nashville and suggested that he use her for make-up during his shoots. He agreed to call her and see if he might be able to use her.
?What I discovered upon talking to her was that she was already well established in the growing film industry building in Nashville and that her prices were higher than a producer of local commercials could afford.?
However that wasn?t all that Sonny discovered. He found a warm, interesting, voice on the other end of the line. After a week of talking for several hours each night the two decided to meet face to face the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
?We met at the Bongo Java Coffee shop just of the Belmont College campus,? Sonny says, ?and the moment I saw her my heart fell. As we talked that afternoon I knew I wanted to see her again. I thought we could have an occasional dinner and maybe a show together. We were both single and each wanted someone to share time with. The one thing I knew I didn?t want was to fall in love. I was happy as a bachelor. I had failed miserably as a husband several times and had no interest in falling in love or marrying again. It is quite apparent now that God had other plans.?
Sonny left for Dayton, Ohio to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family and says he couldn?t get Kathy off his mind. He prayed for the next four days that he would not fall in love. The prayers always ended, however, ?not my will but thy will be done?.
Upon returning to Nashville the first thing he did was call Kathy and ask her over. What happened that night was the answer to his prayers, especially the ?thy will? part. He knew he didn?t want to ever be without her and proposed marriage. Kathy accepted. They were married August 19, 1994 behind a 150 year old cabin by the writer and Minister Will Campbell.
A few weeks earlier Kathy had given Sonny a poem she wrote. It was called ?Love Is? and it was, as Sonny explained, ?the most beautiful lyric I?d ever read. I knew it should be a song.? He suggested she let him write a melody. After the melody was written and applied, the couple took the song to Sonny?s beloved friends John Denny and GodsChild Records owner and producer John Rees. In John Denny?s studio he and Rees produced a demo for Kathy and Sonny of this, their love song. It was first played at their wedding.

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