Surfer girl Tristan Prettyman deals with dealing BY JONATHAN STERN

San Diego has great weather and a high rate of tanned skin per capita, and it makes a tasty burrito. Of late, the city has also been producing promising singer-songwriters. Ten years ago it was a young Alaskan named Jewel. Two years ago it was a side-cocked trucker-capped Jason Mraz. This year’s model: surfer girl Tristan Prettyman, who just released her Virgin debut, Twentythree, and is on a tour with the John Butler Trio that comes to the Somerville Theatre this Sunday.

"I just went jump-roping outside," she says on a tour break in Iowa. "I went home for about a week and just surfed my butt off. I was so refreshed and recharged. I’m like, ‘All right TP, we’ve got to get your shit together. You need to stay focused and on the right track, and healthy and mellow and we have to take this seriously.’ "

Not that TP’s prone to slack off. Between playing coffeehouses up and down the West Coast, surfing every day, and modeling swimwear for Roxy, she kept busy until Virgin came calling last year. The label took her seriously, hooking her up with producer Jesse Harris — better known as Norah Jones’s muse and the man who wrote "Don’t Know Why." He sat in with Prettyman — along with venerable musicmakers like Jones’s bassist, Lee Alexander, and Matt Johnson, the drummer on Jeff Buckley’s Grace.

With the help of relentless touring, Prettyman’s sunny folk-pop’s been selling steadily. But she’s apprehensive. "What I don’t want to happen is tour and tour and tour until the label is like, ‘Time to make a second record.’ I’m like, ‘Well I haven’t even written anything.’ "

Recently the San Diego Music Awards honored Trizzy P (as she’s known to fans) in the Best Acoustic category, making this the second year in a row she’s taken home a prize (last year’s was for Best New Artist). "It’s the San Diego Music Awards, so pretty much everyone knows each other. I was in a category with all of these people that I’d met and have been playing longer than I have, so I accepted my award for everyone else. We’re all just trying to get out there and do our thing." Indeed, she’s pondering taking some of her San Diego crew out on the next tour. It would be her way of returning the favors done for her by Jack Johnson, G. Love, Mike Doughty, and Ray LaMontagne, who have all had her on their radar. "Ray. He’s rad. He’s just so rad. I went to the John Mayer show and I think I talked to him through the whole show. Y’know those people that you want to know but you just don’t connect? I feel like every time I see him I’m just catching up with an old friend. It’s been nice to have that normal person who’s on the same page as I am."

Although much of Twentythree is dedicated to men who missed their opportunities with Prettyman (and vice versa), there is finally a guy in her life: Mraz. Of course it’s become tabloid fodder. "I’ll do an interview for TV or radio and I have four minutes to talk about my album and they’ll be like, ‘You’re 23 and you have a new album out and your boyfriend is Jason Mraz.’ I’m like, ‘We have three minutes to talk about the album. I’ll tell you about my boyfriend later.’ "

For right now, Prettyman is going through the same existential crises that come with being 23, in love, and on the road. And she’s going to have to make some changes in her songwriting strategies. "I can’t write a love song anymore," she says with a laugh. "Because now everyone will know who I’m talking about."

Tristan Prettyman + John Butler Trio | Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, Somerville | Oct 2 | 617.931.2000.