Floating through the past, present and future with Sam Tout

Perth songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sam Tout is set to launch his debut album, Just Floating Around, on Sunday, April 21, at Lyric’s Underground with special guests Tim Schilperoort (solo) and Gist. BOB GORDON caught up with Sam Tout to chat about music and legacy.

Sam Tout is a creatively and technically gifted artist who is a product not only of his background but of his own determination and creative will.

In recent years, Sam has played around WA with new blues outfit Redcliffe and also became the musical curator of the work of his late father, acclaimed solo artist/guitarist Errol H. Tout, who passed away in December 2022, following a long illness. Sam digitised Errol’s music for online distribution, releasing his final (posthumous) album Small Window, Large View as well as the Live 1987–89 compilation.

Sam himself is a multi-instrumentalist, and his immersion in music has led him to write and record his debut instrumental solo album, Just Floating Around.

“It’s been something that I’ve wanted to do for quite a few years, and I dabbled with it a little bit but had never really taken anything too seriously,” Sam says. “As everyone knows, it’s pretty easy to start things, but finishing things is a whole other animal.

The ideas were in place, but Sam admits he had to push himself to turn them into songs, spending months writing and learning the recording process. The title track, Just Floating Around—inspired by a painting of the same name by Perth artist Di Taylor that hangs in his house—came to Sam during time spent in his old job as a broadcast camera operator, which often involved a lot of downtime.

“I had Cubase on my laptop and was just messing around with different synth sounds and arpeggios,” he recalls. “Literally on that laptop and a pair of headphones, I just went down that rabbit hole and started layering a few bits and pieces on top of each other until I was like, ‘wow, this could actually be really quite a soundscape’. And then I went straight home after that and added the guitar parts onto it to turn it into a song. That one kind of came about really quickly.”

While Sam plays guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums on the album, the second track, Tele Rhythm, also features Sam’s Redcliffe bandmate Tim Schilperoort on additional guitar work. Tim also contributed to The Dredded Shops and Home to You.

“The title, I suppose, suggests it,” says Sam of Telerhythm, “but I was messing around with a Telecaster using delays to create a bit of a drum pattern with the guitar. That then became the basis for the song, and I wrote it around that. There’s basically a whole bunch of different polyrhythms going on there to create that piece. I’m very interested in delays and using delay in a musical way.”

The Dredded Shops, meanwhile, comes from a different place. No noodling or experimenting with effects or delays here—just a visceral reaction.

“They’re all sort of about things that I think about,” Sam qualifies, “and some of them I’ve tried to have a bit of humour in there as well. I go grocery shopping every week, and I did a really horrible shop once with screaming children everywhere. Just absolute chaos. It was like, ‘I hate this. It’s the worst thing ever. I’m going to go home, and I’m going to make a song about the utter chaos and idiocy of going grocery shopping’.

“And that’s where The Dredded Shops came from. I just sort of came up with a riff and I was like, ‘Yeah, this is good. I’m going to make a song about this’. I didn’t want this album to sound too sad and depressing. It needed a little bit more upbeat stuff on there as well. So that’s in there to kind of balance it out.”

Sam was determined that every piece of music would have a point to it, and there’s certainly a balance there. Head Chef is about his newfound love of cooking—the preparation and the process. Wisdom Teeth is musically evocative of the experience of having those invader teeth force their way through your gums.

“It’s a Les Paul played with an e-bow, and it sounds like a guitar that’s trying to push through something but with obstacles in its way,” he notes. “I really wanted to create an atmosphere with that one.”

The final track on the album, For Dad, is a tribute to Errol, performed beautifully on his father’s beloved Ovation acoustic guitar. It’s both a moving and fitting closing musical statement.

“I wanted to try and write a song in the style that I would think he would enjoy as a piece,” Sam explains. “So I brought in a bit of ‘if I were him, what would I do?’ and that came out in about two days.

“I recorded that one on his Ovation. I play that guitar, and I just… I hear him. That song is basically just a thank you to him for everything that he did and how he still inspires people and me, certainly, to this day. It feels like he still really lives on through music.”

For Sam Tout, Just Floating Around represents his cherished past, his active present, and his promising future. He challenged himself to write and self-produce a debut instrumental solo album, and he has come out the other side of it all with something of which he is proud and that he hopes will move others who listen to it.

“If it can actually make people feel something, then that will make me very happy,” Sam ponders. “For them to actually think about things and the ideas that are presented in the music, rather than just going, ‘oh, yeah, that’s easy to listen to’. People are going to have to be the judge. I’m so close to it now that it’s impossible for me to step away from it, knowing what it actually sounds like to the average listener.

“So I’m just going to have to put it out in the world, and it can just become property of the world at that point, I suppose. And that’s cool.”