sam outlaw

Sam Outlaw was born in the Midwest, grew up in California, and now lives in Nashville.

"Outlaw" is his mother's maiden name.

Sam worked as an advertising executive in his twenties while writing songs as a hobby and eventually started performing at small bar gigs near his home in Los Angeles. In 2015, Sam left his advertising career to pursue music full-time when he was offered a tour opening for Justin Townes Earle.

Later that year, Sam released his debut album "Angeleno," produced and performed by Ry Cooder and Joachim Cooder and featuring Gabe Witcher (Punch Brothers), Bo Koster (My Morning Jacket), and Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes). "Angeleno" garnered universal acclaim and multiple award nominations.

In 2017, Sam released his follow-up album, "Tenderheart." Also a critical success, "Tenderheart" was heralded as one of the year's best country albums.

Sam has toured extensively as a headlining artist at marquee festivals such as Stagecoach and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Sam has also toured in support of beloved songwriters such as John Prine, Kacey Musgraves, Dwight Yoakam, Clint Black, Margo Price, and Sheryl Crow.

In 2018, Sam and his family moved from LA to Nashville, and the following year, Sam made his Grand Ole Opry debut. Since then, Sam has made several appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and on countless more stages around the world. In 2021 he released his New-Wave-inspired third LP "Popular Mechanics" and in 2022 released a string of B-sides and singles that showcase Sam's unconventional blend of genres and subject matter.

Popular Mechanics (2021)

The new Sam Outlaw album was originally intended only för download and stream, but now Rootsy Music can proudly announce the European release on CD and vinyl!

Los Angeles-bred “SoCal Country” singer Sam Outlaw will release a pedal steel-stamped, new wave-inspired record titled ‘Popular Mechanics’ on Friday, November 12th. Solely writing seven of the album’s 11 tracks, Outlaw fuses the sounds of his favorite artists of the ‘80s - Kenny Loggins, Cyndi Lauper, Tom Petty - with stories influenced by the great innovators of the 20th century and the engineers that make up his own family tree.

The ambitious direction of ‘Popular Mechanics’ may seem like a sudden shift from Outlaw’s country-leaning albums, 'Angeleno' (2015) and 'Tenderheart' (2017), which garnered appearances on CBS Saturday Morning’s Anthony Mason, NPR, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal and more, but the gears actually started turning in early 2018 after Outlaw shelved some new material he recorded in Southern California. Following his cross-country move to Music City that same year, Outlaw found unexpected inspiration during a visit from his father, a mechanical engineer, and it prompted him to shift his focus to the technological side of music creation. The epiphany came when he connected industrial machines with the role technology plays in recorded music. Growing up on the hits of the ‘80s, an incredible time of transformation in music history, he remembers everything came into focus for the album once he envisioned the title, ‘Popular Mechanics.’

“I’ve always loved ‘80s music so I started learning about the engineers and music producers from that era, like Trevor Horn, Mutt Lange, Neil Dorfsman,” says Outlaw. “It was a time when the producer and the recording engineer were as critical to the creative process as the artists. Those producers pushed the technology to achieve their creative vision because their inspiration was not so much the music of the past, but the possibilities of the future.”

“Up until now, the music I’ve made really only shows one side of myself, but I put my whole heart on the line with 'Popular Mechanics,'» Outlaw explains. «I hope listeners will approach this album with open minds because creative expression is, after all, the shared celebration of the creative spirit that lives inside every one of us."