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Welcome to sampayne.com,
the online home of Sam Payne: storyteller, writer, singer/songwriter, radio personality, and arts educator. For the last twenty years, Sam has brought a unique variety of storytelling, music, and workshop experiences to festival stages, concert halls, classrooms, universities, museums, and recordings, all over the country and beyond. Sam's audiences remain loyal friends, and find in his stories and songs resonant images that give faces and names to their deepest feelings about family, faith, and notions of home. He's shared festival stages with some of America's greatest storytellers and entertainers, in an exciting age of storytelling revival. Here, you'll find stories, songs, the scoop on new releases, details on where to hear Sam live, information about how to book Sam for a show, and more. Click around and enjoy yourself. We're glad you're here.
“Sam Payne is super intense, and underneath it all, there’s actually something there. It’s like, I used to try to like Whitesnake because they were so intense. But in the end, there wasn’t anything more than intensity there. Sam, on the other hand – Sam is like the Whitesnake I hoped I was getting into. He’s like a really good Whitesnake.”
–Bil Lepp
Big news! There's a new album! You can listen, purchase, and download it HERE. It's a recording of songs and stories made live at the National Storytelling Festival in the impossibly picturesque town of Jonesborough, Tenessee. Find out more about the festival – the center of storytelling in America and beyond, and a beloved destination for tellers and listeners since 1973 – by clicking HERE.
“A voice so pure it made your heart soar and set the tent
lines aquiver. Polished and alive.” – Ingrid Nixon
Here's a thing. BYU Magazine did a wee Q&A segment on Sam a few months ago, and as a follow-up, the most excellent photographer Brad Slade and his team wanted to shoot this fun video of Sam's song "Bone Joe." Brad and his guys were awesome enough to track down and purchase an actual Fisher-Price Western Town playset(!!).
Here's an ad for Sam's radio show on BYU Radio. It's called The Apple Seed: Tellers and Stories, and it's on every day at 2:00pm Eastern Time. You can hear it anywhere in the world on Satellite Radio (Sirius XM 143), or right here at BYUradio.org. The show features tellers you love, and introduces you to tellers you'll love by this time tomorrow. Give a listen! You'll be glad you did. The show's archive features hundreds of episodes and thousands of stories, for your listening pleasure anytime you like.
In addition to his work as a live performer and as the producer/host of The Apple Seed: Tellers and Stories, Sam produces Highway 89, the popular live music and interview show on BYU Radio (Sirius XM143, or right here at byuradio.org). Every once in awhile, he gets to make music right along with the great acts on the show. Here's a performance of "St. James Infirmary Blues," with the Roadside Ramblers.