Sam Adams Was Here

He wasn’t always the funny one. You see him now and would have thought that he grew up as the class clown, but Sam Adams was a self-described introvert growing up in Cleveland, Ohio.

He wasn’t always the funny one. You see him now and would have thought that he grew up as the class clown, but Sam Adams was a self-described introvert growing up in Cleveland, Ohio.

December 17, 2021 marked the fourth year in a row that Sam Adams took to the historic Lyric stage in Harrison. The funny guy took the audience through new material including a look back at young Sam or “Butch” as his family called him. Growing up as a boy with three sisters, Sam was found keeping to himself often. He found solace in music and band.

“I just kept to myself and was a great student,” Sam recalled. “When I was in the fourth grade, I found music. The band teacher saw me and said, ‘You got the lips for trumpet.’ It was odd but he was right.”

At a young age, you could find Sam playing trumpet in bands with members twice his age. Years later, Sam found a brotherhood in the United States Army that he had never had before. He also found a talent that he didn’t know he had. After urging a friend to act on a crush by writing a letter and finding out that the new recruit couldn’t write, Sam took it upon himself to write the letter for him. Not long after, he had men begging him to write letters for them. Little did Sam know that a career in sports and joke writing would be in his future.

“I really found a brotherhood that I never had before. They saw something in me that I did not quite see in myself,” Sam said.

After a short stint in the Army due to hypertension, Sam eventually found himself in Denver, CO. While working for insurance companies, he pursued a career in sports writing. Comedy was not a dream quite yet. What started as a passing comment from a friend on the basketball court, became a possibility years later.

“I remember a friend joking with me on the basketball court that I should try comedy. It was not until 11 years later that I saw an ad for a comedy club and thought, ‘Maybe I should try comedy,” Sam recalled.

And try comedy was exactly what he did. Now he is touring around the country bringing laughs to audiences from all different backgrounds.

While in Harrison, Sam took the audience through a time that was filled with appliances with knobs, a time before automatic faucets. Making people smile and laugh has become a true calling for Sam. You can see what his friend saw in him all those years ago when you go to one of his shows. He ended the show with a standing ovation from the Harrison crowd with a promise to be back soon!