Posted 09.01.2010
Cote’s Colorado: Sam’s choice
Denver sportswriter Sam Adams makes a mid-life plunge into comedy
By Mike Cote
Ask Sam Adams what advice he might give to young professionals, and he's quick to answer: Don't quit the day job. But what happens when the day job quits you?
Adams had to confront that question 18 months ago when his longtime employer, the Rocky Mountain News, surrendered the newspaper war to The Denver Post and ceased publishing. At the time, Adams was working full time as a sportswriter and honing his standup comedy skills on the side, performing at corporate events and doing short sets at Comedy Works.
Now comedy alone pays the bills, and Adams has graduated to headliner status at Comedy Works, one of a handful of local comics who have earned that distinction. Adams is cued up to serve as emcee at the ColoradoBiz Gen XYZ young professionals event on Sept. 30 at Mile High Station.
"Being an entertainer is not easy," says Adams, 50. "I wish I had made this type of decision when I was in my mid-20s. It's funny, because I went from insurance clerk to sportswriter and sports columnist, and now sports columnist to comedian. You got to have a lot of energy. There are a lot of young kids who are out there trying to make it."
Despite his late start - Adams was 41 when he performed comedy on stage for the first time - he has gained considerable ground, including top honors at the Great American Comedy Festival last year.
"It's been fun for me because one minute I was just an open mic'er, a guy who would come down to Comedy Works on a Tuesday night and try some things," Adams says during an interview at the company's Greenwood Village club. "And in just an amazing shift of less than 15 months, I went from open mic'er to regular here."
Adams can thank Sam Walton for inspiring one of his most colorful bits. We're talking colorful as in "caramel nut" or "papaya" - shades of paint that also match shades of skin. Adams visited Wal-Mart for the first time a couple of years ago while spending time in McCook, Neb., for a comedy gig and ended up lingering in the paint department.
"Being the silly guy that I am, I started looking at these colors. I got to the browns, and I put one up against my skin. This guy comes up, and asks me what I'm doing. I said ‘I'm just checking my color.' I said ‘What color are you?' And he said, ‘Well I'm white.' And I said ‘No, you're not.'"
After a while, Adams had gathered random customers to press paint sample cards against their skin - and had nailed a new framework for a subject he had tackled previously. But this time, he had props, including his own distinctive shade: the aforementioned "caramel nut."
"It was so off the beaten path that I took it to the stage that night," Adams says. "I had done something similar before, but when you whip out those cards it just freaks people out."
The best comics make you think and rattle your nerves a bit. The title of Adams' upcoming DVD, "The Right to Laugh," alludes to that sensibility, the idea that anything - even race - is funny if you find the right setting.
"I went to a high school that was in an all-Caucasian neighborhood," the Cleveland native says. "Being African-American, it was not easy. I used to get chased to the bus stop. I don't feel like it's a funny thing, but when I joke about it it's because I've seen the painful part of it."
Despite its potentially prickly nature, audiences have uniformly responded favorably to that part of his act.
"I think people just really need to relax. Go find your true color. That's when you realize it's really not as big as we make it. Papaya smoothie. Coco mocha," Adams says. "I'm surprised no hardware stores have picked me up as a spokesperson. Maybe I need to find a better color than caramel nut."
On ColoradoBiz TV: Check out more of our interview with Sam Adams .
Mike Cote is the editor of ColoradoBiz. E-mail him at mcote@cobizmag.com.
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