Souls in Rhythm vocalist and keyboardist Scott Henderson’s ability to balance multiple tracks in his career started years ago.

In the early 1990s, he was studying Canadian history at the University of Calgary with a plan to become a social studies teacher. Well, that was officially Plan B if the music thing didn’t work out. At the same time, he was hustling for gigs for his R&B outfit, future two-time Juno nominee the EarthTONES.

“In between classes I was plugging quarters in the phone trying to get the EarthTONES rolling,” says Henderson. “I was managing and in the band at the same time. I got it to a place where we were touring. By my third year of university, we had gone to Hong Kong and New York. The ball was really starting to roll, so I left university.”

The EarthTONES would break up after a short but fruitful five-year run, and Henderson immediately formed the funk-soul outfit Souls in Rhythm. To keep that band afloat, he started taking on 9-to-5 jobs that would eventually lead to gigs in music education and directing.

These days, Henderson says there is an even split between his many day jobs and Souls in Rhythm. Still, many in Calgary likely know him best for his various roles behind the scenes. As a teacher, he has worked with more than 5,000 singers and appeared on the series Canada Sings for two years as an on-camera coach. He has worked with singers performing at the Junos and the Canadian Country Music Awards. He has provided backup vocals for Michael Buble and played keyboards on the American tour of Queen’s We Will Rock You. He led the National Music Centre’s Rock the Nation concerts, was artistic director of the Young Canadians and has been the music director for the Calgary Stampede Grandstand Show for more than a decade. Earlier this week, he served as music director for the 2026 Celebration of the Arts at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.

All of which makes him extremely busy with a workload that will likely increase in the months leading up to the Calgary Stampede and the launch of its 2026 Grandstand Show.

Nevertheless, Souls in Rhythm released its new album, Stranger in My Heart, earlier this week. It was a somewhat quiet launch, particularly considering it’s the band’s first full-length album in 18 years.

“We decided not to do a big rollout,” he says. “I think people are hip to a long pre-launch on social media. I just didn’t feel like saying for a month: ‘the album’s coming out, the album’s coming out.’ So we just put it out.”

Still, there has been some evidence that the album was highly anticipated. Within a day of him sending it to CKUA, the station played opening track Don’t Make Everything About You. Henderson, bassist Caleb Roddick and guitarist Vincent Bundick didn’t plan on taking nearly two decades to put out a new full-length, and numerous singles have been released in the past few years. But they are all busy musicians “pulled in different directions” for various projects, so they wanted to be sure they had a large collection of new songs to choose from.

While Stranger In My Heart may have had a quiet release, the album is anything but quiet. Other than closing ballad I Know You Are, the album is full of dance-ready, soul-funk workouts. That includes the Prince-like Don’t Make Everything About You, the bass-led dance-pop banger Gaslight, R&B-soul number Boombox and reggae-fuelled title track.

“We knew, from our live show, we wanted to inject some higher BPM and faster songs in our set,” Henderson says. “We certainly had some faster songs in mind. The album has some mid-tempo grooves and the ballad, but the only real parameter I guess was to find some really fast songs that can find another gear in our live show. The other parameter was just writing a lot of songs. Over the past two years, we had several sessions, whether it was all three of us or Caleb and I or Vince and I and just writing, writing, writing.”

Henderson was in high school when he began exploring doo-wop and soul albums in his parents’ record collection before gravitating towards more groove-based sounds.

“In the 1980s, pop music was great for melody and synthesizers — which I love  — but there wasn’t a ton of funk,” he says. “But the funk that was there in the eighties was amazing: Prince, Michael Jackson. So I just became a huge Prince fan and have just loved funk since I was in high school. Then you just go down the rabbit hole of who influenced Prince: James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone.”

For now, Souls in Rhythm are aiming to book some festival gigs. They’ve already landed a spot at Kinfest in Millarville in June.

“All I could picture was a street summer party,” Henderson says. “That’s all I could see in my mind. We’re feeling good about the vibes and the timing.”

Stranger in My Heart is now available on streaming services.