Sam Shaffer

After releasing four records and performing with Chicago psych trio Faintlife, Sam Shaffer took a moment of pause to write the songs that would become his EP "Quiet Delta." The songs were then recorded in winter of 2021 at Shirk Studios with Sam's childhood best friend and bandmate Quebec Gibbins from Canton, OH on drums, and several prolific Chicago musicians including Kellen Boersma on bass, and Mike Novak on baritone guitar. Colorful masterstrokes of pedal steel guitar were performed by Mike Drassler. The EP was born somewhere near where 'OK Computer' got sober and steady, and took up residence in the forest, about an hour outside of Nashville. Quiet Delta refers to a place where the accumulation of inner change opens up to a wider interpersonal context. Amidst the landscape of carefully arranged song structures, Sam's lyrics are blissfully vague and universally thematic. 
 Sam moved to Austin in late 2021 and finished writing and recording his debut solo record 'Valley of the Living Water.' Layering silky vocal melodies with bass, guitars, drums, and synthesizers, it is in this latest work that Sam leaps forward as a multi-instrumentalist. The record's folk-style framework is kindly met with psychedelia at any turn. It is “a piece of world music that sounds like it is in love with everything all around and as such we can learn a thing or two from it.” (mp3hugger). Sam now plays guitar and sings in Walkabouts, a newly formed psych rock group based in Austin.