Sam Palladio

As a kid he did a great impersonation of being in bands – from the age of five. He was a multi-instrumentalist at 13, when a second cousin’s gift meant he could now annoy his parents on guitar, bass and drums. As a student he convincingly gave the impression of being Biffy Clyro’s biggest fan – a standom that, only a few years later, would help see him support the Scottish legends on a European acoustic tour.

Then, fresh out of London’s Rose Bruford College with a degree in musicianship and acting, he landed his first stage role: in a Barry Manilow jukebox musical. Then, his first dramatic role: playing Joe Strummer in a Sky comedy-drama Little Crackers.

In BBC newsroom period drama The Hour the following year, he was “unnamed Rockabilly”. And a year after that, the young Englishman made his debut as Gunnar Scott: aspiring country singer, wannabe rocker and roguish heartbreaker in American TV series Nashville, a musical drama from ABC. Over six seasons and 122 episodes, Gunnar became an anchor of the show alongside Hayden Panettiere’s Juliette Barnes and Connie Britton’s Rayna Jaymes – and the Brit became a star of US television.

But even as his acting career skyrocketed, and even though music was front and centre onset, offset, too, Palladio was still pursuing his personal musical dreams. Living in Music City itself, the singer and songwriter was spending any and all of his spare time creating his own music and playing in Nashville bars. Being an American TV acting A-lister was all well and good but Palladio knew where his lifelong passion lay.

“The idea of making my own album had been gnawing and knocking and banging at the back of my mind for the most of my life,” says Palladio from the music room in his Nashville home. So, when the titular show ended in 2018, it was time to lean in. The result is a brilliantly evocative album with a beautifully transporting title, The Perfect Summer’s Day, Before We Lost The Light. That glorious name is derived from the lyrics of the song ‘Something On My Mind’, a piano- and horns-studded symphonic tribute to his mother Sally, who passed away that same year after fighting a brain tumour. As he says now: "It then took me over a year before I could pick up a guitar again and start to put into words what I felt about that experience. Then I finally found what I needed to say, and the first song that came out was ‘Something On My Mind’. It’s the song that connects the whole body of work for me and one that I’m most proud of."

Recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles’ Sunset Sound, and mixed by Grammy-winning producer Dave Sardy (Noel Gallagher, Band Of Horses, Royal Blood), the album also speaks to Palladio’s lifelong experience in and around music, and to his deep immersion in heartland Americana, while also retaining his native appreciation for the smarter edges of British rock.

“More so than acting, music is what grounds me,” he says. “It's where I'm able to discover what I think about things and put it into songs. Process emotion. It's a safe space for me. I love the craft of acting, I love playing, I love becoming and disappearing into different worlds. So it's been a really nice hand-in-hand. But with the show coming to an end, that finally gave me a bit of time to figure out what kind of artist I wanted to be. What record I wanted to make. What the sound of it would be.”

Even before he was free from the exacting filming demands of a top-rating TV show, he started stretching his musical wings. Discovering that arena-sized Biffy Clyro were appearing at Nashville’s Mercy Lounge – a 250-capacity club that he himself had played – an excited Palladio tweeted the band. Next thing he knows, he’s backstage with Simon Neil and the James twins – all of them huge Nashville fans.

“Cut to the following year. It was the final season in ‘Nashville’. I was always pitching my own songs for the show. And then my character had his final song in the show, where he goes from the country thing to, fuck it, he's going to be a rock star. So I said to Simon: would you be up for trying to write a song for my character's final song? He said: it would be an honour!”

A transatlantic VoiceNote writing session ensued. Ultimately the producers opted not to use the Palladio-Neil composition, but no matter: they did use a Palladio solo composition, and a fast friendship was formed, resulting in him supporting the band in Europe.

Back in his adoptive hometown, meanwhile, Palladio connected with Søren Hansen, a Nashville-based Danish musician and producer (formerly of the Copenhagen rock band New Politics). “We're both European, we both have an outsider perspective of the States, and that European humour. Søren's one of those Rain Man genius-style studio guys who works lightning fast. We did this weird cheesy Christmas song that I'd written for a Netflix movie that I was in, because they needed a song for it. And he knocked that out of the park.”

Inspired, the Anglo-Dane partnership worked throughout the pandemic, writing and recording consistently in Hansen’s home studio. They kept it fun, free, loose and unhurried. The laidback, late night groove of ‘Spill Your Heart ‘was tackled a good five times before the pair were happy with the vibe. And even then there was space and time for a special collaborator: Simon Neil, who supplies effortlessly cool vocals.

Eventually, he had 10 impeccable songs. ‘Meanwhile In London’ was pegged as a great curtain-raiser, both for the album and for the launch of Sam Palladio: solo artist. A sun-kissed showcase for Palladio’s warm, woodsy vocals and way with an earworm melody, it’s a nod to his own story. “This is my experience of being a British guy who spent a long period in the States and fell in love,” he says of his girlfriend, musician Cassadee Pope, the first female artist to win The Voice in the US. “Then, travelling so much, missing home, wondering what that person was doing – you start getting all those intrusive thoughts! So I wanted to make a record opener that spoke to who I am.”

‘Bullet For Your Love’ was another early stand out, a hymnal piano ballad that builds to a soaring crescendo and that recalls modern soulmen such as Hozier and Paolo Nutini. Its deep sense of passion and emotion came from very real places: when he wrote it, Palladio had just lost his mum, and he and Pope had been held up at gunpoint in an attempted carjacking outside his Nashville apartment.

Both experiences made Palladio reassess where he was at as an artist. “I’d written a bunch of songs that were trying to be hits but that didn't mean shit,” reflects this hard taskmaster. “And actually what really meant a lot was what I had to say about loss and what you go through with trauma.”

Then, digging back into the southern rock he’d been hearing in situ for the best part of a decade, is ‘Tennessee’. A rollicking bar-room anthem, it boasts scorching riffs and soloing from Foo Fighter Chris Shiflett, an old school friend of the “guitar wrangler” on Nashville.

“What Chris did was a perfect blend of his crunchy Foos thing, with a little bit of his chicken-picking country guitar, because his sensibilities are country, and he loves that world,” notes Palladio. “Again, I was so thrilled that he was happy to put his name to this project.”

There’s a different energy and feel to ‘BOAT’, a mix of the skinny New Wave energy of The Cars and the Britpop anthems loved by adolescent Palladio.

“I wanted to do an homage to a bit of the wildness of some of those bands, where the bridge goes fucking mental and weird. It was about having no-holds-barred in the approach to songwriting, and trying something that was pushing the boundaries. But in a funny way, it's a song for my dad losing my mum. I wanted to take a heavy subject matter, but inject some passion and energy and life again. And dance through the sadness of what was going on. I wanted to write my fucking dad a rock anthem! And tell him: you're not alone. It just felt really exciting to find that energy.”

There’s another senior Palladio in the closing ‘Wake Me Up in Nashville’: his grandfather. He was a decorated World War 2 bomber pilot who, as it happened, had an ill-fated wartime romance with a Nashville woman. He died in 2018 but his story and his voice live on in the album’s closing track, a glorious song with what Palladio accurately describes as a “throwback, Simon and Garfunkel-doing-The Boxer pocket.

And last, but also first, is his mum Sally, as hymned in the gut-punching pain – but also hope-filled transcendence – of ‘Something On My Mind’.

"I wanted to dedicate the album to mum and took the chorus lyric, “there’s something on my mind, it haunts me every night, the perfect summer's day, before we lost the light”, to create the title. It symbolises mum being the light of our lives, and the darkness once it fades. I liked the joy and beauty of the line on its face value, as it reminds me a youthful summer days on Cornish beaches. But I also liked the dichotomy it created when put into the context of loss. Ultimately, I felt that it allows her to live forever through song."

With a composition as heartfelt and artful as ‘Something On My Mind’, that's job emphatically done. Prepare for a happy-sad, tear-stained singalong when Palladio and his band perform live this album centrepiece.

Born in Nashville, with some judicious nods back to the UK, The Perfect Summer’s Day, Before We Lost The Light was finished in Los Angeles. Working in the iconic “Prince room” in the legendary Sunset Sound studios, Sardy applied additional production, and called in some musician friends. Palladio was only too happy to have Matt Chamberlain (Stevie Nicks, David Bowie) replace his own drum work, while ex-Jellyfish man Jason Faulkner (St Vincent, Beck) came in and “replayed a load of guitars, and put in some beautiful organs and keys. So, we'd done a lot of the groundwork in Nashville, and then this little bit of California stardust was sprinkled through.”

It was a wonderful end to a serendipitous story of magical debut album. After a handful of years in the acting spotlight – a career that certainly isn’t going away: he’s just shot as Joe Strummer again, for the Bob Marley: One Love biopic – Palladio is ready for his rock’n’roll close-up. And after an album preview show in Nashville at Jack White’s club The Blue Room, Sam Palladio is ready to bring it all back home, which he did so in style treating fans to a taste of the album at London’s 100 Club in June 2024 where he was joined onstage by Chris Shiflett for a performance of ‘Tennessee’.

“I love America, I love Nashville, and it’s been career-making for me to be there. But my roots are at home and the UK is a real focus for me.”

The Perfect Summer’s Day, Before We Lost The Light, then: a dream title for a dream album.