The Austin Chronicle Presents People To Wave To: Felt Out

There’s a particular intimacy that happens when musicians share their origin story not as mythology, but as memory. In this People To Wave To docu-concert, Felt Out – the husband/wife duo of Walter Nichols and Sowmya Somanath – trace their beginnings back to a classroom at UT-Austin, a hunch, and the quiet gravity of two people noticing each other.

“Sowmya was literally the first person who caught my eye on my first day of school at UT,” Nichols says early in the interview. Somanath remembers it from the other side: sitting next to him before they’d even formally met, double-checking her theory answers because “he’s got some music theory juice.” They laugh about it now, but that early recognition sets the tone for a story rooted in a slow-burn magnetism toward each other.

Before Felt Out, before marriage, before the guardrails came off, there was friendship. College meant a cappella rehearsals, skipped classes, pizza, and long conversations that stretched late into the night. One of those conversations – the kind where no one wants to get out of the car – ended with a simple realization: They should make music together. “We just felt some sense that it would work,” they say. “We didn’t even really know.”

Somanath’s musical background adds another layer to the story. Trained in Carnatic and Hindustani classical traditions, also singing in Tamil in some songs, she speaks candidly about the tension between preservation and experimentation – about honoring ancient forms while allowing them to breathe in the present. Felt Out’s sound grows out of that push and pull, folding classical language and improvisation into something personal, contemporary, and unguarded.

That intention sharpened during COVID, when time away from the city clarified what they were already circling. “That was when we realized we needed to be together,” they explain. The name change – from their earlier project, Emme, to Felt Out – became symbolic. “Let’s get to the truth,” Nichols says. “Let’s get to what feels really real for us.” The music followed suit.

Felt Out describes performance as a conversation rather than a presentation – a two-way street between creator and listener. Their latest album, Are You With Me?, frames itself as a question, one that reaches beyond romance into collaboration, communication, and trust. The duo talk about learning restraint, about making choices that allow each song to shine, and about trusting intuition.

At its core, this docu-concert is about recognizing something before you can fully articulate it – in music, in partnership, and in life. 

The Austin Chronicle Presents: People To Wave To is a docu-concert series produced by Kyra Bruce. Find more on YouTube.

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