If you’d gone to school with Sam Harris, and you ran into him in 2014 and asked, "So, what’ve you been up to, Sammy?" you would be starting an avalanche of creative activity which causes him to describe his current life as "an embarrassment of riches."  For not only did he start out as the winner of the original Star Search TV talent competition in 1984 with his amazing vocals, he has, by his own account, "written my own shows... written several musicals; I’ve written television sitcoms, (and) I co-wrote Liza’s Back at the Palace, for Liza Minelli which won a Tony..."

And before all of that, long before So You Think You Can Dance Canada, American Idol or Britain’s Got Talent, Sam climbed onstage at New York’s Earl Carroll Theatre and killed ’em at Star Search with his rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

Back to the present...

"It’s a very good time to be Sam Harris. I am so grateful. It sounds corny, but I wake up every day saying Oh my God! Look at my life! I have this book coming out with an amazing publisher; I have a husband I love, and child I love; I’m singing, which is something I love; I’m getting to tell my story, and nothing is more thrilling to me than being in front of an audience. To be in front of people singing and telling stories is the greatest."

It’s hard not to feel a little bit of envy over the length and breadth of Sam’s career: he’s never been a stockbroker, but instead seems to have had creative input into just about every media that has been available since the 80’s: TV, music recordings, stage, live performance, writing, directing and now, online.

"I’ve been very fortunate. I love to do what I do, and I’m always experimenting in new ways, and new areas, and have had the good fortune of a good deal of success in different areas. Working with people who teach me and inspire me, and with whom I collaborate: it’s a good life. And it got even better when I got a kid!!"

"When you have a child, it prioritizes things. And the other thing that I never could have known, growing up this misfit gay kid in this little town, is that sticking to my truth and being open and honest... I feel like I won the lottery! I’m married (partner of 20 years, married for 5), I have a child (5 years old), I have a full fabulous life. And, being someone who has a public platform, I get to promote the right side of history, as it were. By living it, being it, marching for it, and speaking up and being an example of it. In this particular time in history it’s a great time to be alive.

"When I look back at this generation I’ve grown up in and how things have changed. It’s remarkable."

It won’t surprise GayCalgary Magazine readers to know that one of the themes of the aforementioned book that Mr. Harris is writing is optimism.

"Growing up in a small town in the Bible Belt (Oklahoma) had its challenges (but) I found my music and theatre, and creating and writing, and it got me through, and it gave me purpose. I left home when I was 15 for good: I was very young, and have been making a life and career of it ever since. I’m sort of an eternal optimist, which is a good thing to be in show-business, so the book (Ham: Slices of a Life, Simon & Schuster, 2014) covers all of those different kinds of things.

"It’s a funny book, and I’m very proud of the writing, but the content is not always funny. It deals with an attempted teen suicide, some very funny show-business stories, and many different aspects of my life."

He mentions how he was encouraged to move from writing essays and plays to putting a book together by an author friend.

"(He said) Sam, you just need to be writing more, and I’ve heard this from others throughout the years, and I’ve always loved (writing), even though my primary career has been as a singer and an actor.

"I just started putting fingers to keyboard, and I love it: I love everything about writing! I love the rhythm of it, the punctuation of it, the storytelling of it. In all the different aspects of my career, which is singing and acting and directing, it’s all storytelling. So this was another way to do that.

We had a discussion about the different requirements of performance and writing:

"I’ve always loved to write, ever since I was a little kid, and when we’re talking about the persona you create onstage and in concert, a very important part of that for me was finding things to make people laugh. I tend to sing a lot of ballads, and I found in writing up-tempo monologues that I was able to balance the shows that way. So it became a necessity, and then a major part of what I do onstage."

Speaking of being onstage, "All of this has NOTHING to do with why I’m coming to Calgary, of course. It happens to be a date I’m doing (with the CPO on January 29th) called Rewind, which is 80’s music with me and Sheena Easton, who I ADORE! She’s a ball, hysterically funny, a great singer, and we’ve done a couple of these and they’re just a ball!

"I was approached to do this project, and was asked to come up with some people who would be fun to do this with, and Sheena was on my very short-list. Not only is she incredibly gifted, but she’s a mensch: funny, great to work with, and she’s the real deal."

Sam mentions that he wasn’t too sure about getting involved in some kind of 80’s ‘tribute’ band: "But when the symphony concept came in, I thought, how perfect! Because there’s so many of these songs that are completely lifted to another level by having a symphony involved. These arrangements are so stunning, and for me to be able to sing a song like Open Arms with strings soaring... it’s just glorious! Ironically, the people who grew up with these songs in the 80’s are now the people who like to hear the symphonic.

"There’s a silliness and a grandness to it that I’m just finding a joy to do... Sheena and I are guest stars: there’s music from the symphony and the pop band (that plays with them), and then Sheena and I come on and do certain songs."

We then discussed the fact that ‘symphonic’ is exactly the feel that a lot of 80’s electronic music was trying for. So to actually create the wall of sound they were originally written for, using real performers and instruments, gives goose bumps.

Mr. Harris is a little more prosaic about it: "I’m a lyric guy: the lyric is everything to me. So when something reads poetically, and has a story with a character, that’s always what appeals to me... I look for songs that touch me... I have found that a great song, and a great lyric, is something that’s always changing and evolving and unfolding, so every time I sing it, it can mean something new."

Come and hear something old become new, with Sam and Sheena and the CPO.