Joe Sumner is Sting's son. It's okay if you didn't know that. In fact, Sumner would rather you didn't.

It's hard to get out of Dad's shadow, especially when Sumner's band, Fiction Plane, is opening for the Police on Wednesday.

Sumner, 30, spoke with tbt* by phone:

The music on your new album Left Side of the Brain seems largely upbeat with elements of reggae and rock. But the lyrics are often really heavy. Was there some frustration during the writing?

We had a difficult time making this album. I think what we tend to do is go to the dark places and battle the horrible stuff, then write about it, and then play music. And when we play music, we'll feel great. I think that's where that kind of contrast comes from.

Is it difficult proving yourself as your own musician, rather than just being affiliated with your father?

We tried to completely deny it. Yeah, that didn't work. Then you're just talking about denying it ... but there's much worse things. We kind of just decided to be concerned about the actual music rather than how the music came to be. We just do the music part and the PR is for someone else. I don't care - they can think we're all evil, spoiled bastards.

I've also read that despite your father's success, you weren't the least bit interested in becoming a musician until you heard Nirvana.

Yeah, that's about right. I found all music to be kind of cheesy and corny up until that point. I didn't relate to it. So then I got into that and it was the first time I could tell everyone in the world to just f--- off. I had my own music. But I guess it was also like 18-million other people's music.

It appears from your message board that you've got some obsessed fans. Do you know about the Fiction Plane Harem?

I know about it. We see them often - they're kind of a worldwide network. ... They're sort of everywhere. Those are the people we're really starting to recognize, and you know, it's good for us - it takes away a lot of the work of organizing things (laughing).

The former name of the band was Santa's Boyfriend?

Yeah, that was one of the original names. That name stuck for a while. In a way I regret changing it because no one ever forgot that name.

Then how did you get to Fiction Plane?

Fiction Plane was the name of a song that we wrote. ... It's a fictitious place that we can do anything we want in because we never wanted to decide to be a certain kind of band. We all just wanted to be able to do smash metal, or reggae, or play the cello if we felt like it. We didn't want to be called the crazy wiry guitar band or jazz quartet. We just wanted to be something completely open and changing. And we're sort of changing anyway all of the time. It works. The name is not so memorable, unfortunately. We met David Spade and he thought we were called The Pilot Inspectors.

What makes the band different?

Come see us live. I think we're doing something different. We're really playing our hearts out and we're improvising large portions of our show. We want people to get involved ... and be part of it - that's the main thing - that's what's exciting me at the moment.