Souls in Rhythm vocalist and keyboardist Scott Henderson\u2019s ability to balance multiple tracks in his career started years ago.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t work out. At the same time, he was hustling for gigs for his R&B outfit, future two-time Juno nominee the EarthTONES.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn between classes I was plugging quarters in the phone trying to get the EarthTONES rolling,\u201d says Henderson. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s We Will Rock You. He led the National Music Centre\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Souls in Rhythm released its new album, Stranger in My Heart, earlier this week. It was a somewhat quiet launch, particularly considering it\u2019s the band\u2019s first full-length album in 18 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe decided not to do a big rollout,\u201d he says. \u201cI think people are hip to a long pre-launch on social media. I just didn\u2019t feel like saying for a month: \u2018the album\u2019s coming out, the album\u2019s coming out.\u2019 So we just put it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t Make Everything About You. Henderson, bassist Caleb Roddick and guitarist Vincent Bundick didn\u2019t 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 \u201cpulled in different directions\u201d for various projects, so they wanted to be sure they had a large collection of new songs to choose from.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t Make Everything About You, the bass-led dance-pop banger Gaslight, R&B-soul number Boombox and reggae-fuelled title track.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew, from our live show, we wanted to inject some higher BPM and faster songs in our set,\u201d Henderson says. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henderson was in high school when he began exploring doo-wop and soul albums in his parents\u2019 record collection before gravitating towards more groove-based sounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the 1980s, pop music was great for melody and synthesizers \u2014 which I love\u00a0 \u2014 but there wasn\u2019t a ton of funk,\u201d he says. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, Souls in Rhythm are aiming to book some festival gigs. They\u2019ve already landed a spot at Kinfest in Millarville in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I could picture was a street summer party,\u201d Henderson says. \u201cThat\u2019s all I could see in my mind. We\u2019re feeling good about the vibes and the timing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stranger in My Heart is now available on streaming services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Souls in Rhythm vocalist and keyboardist Scott Henderson\u2019s ability to balance multiple tracks in his career started years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[15808,51,15809,15807,15811,15806,260,15810],"class_list":["post-36185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-caleb-roddick","tag-calgary","tag-calgary-stampede","tag-earthtones","tag-michael-buble","tag-scott-henderson","tag-university-of-calgary","tag-vincent-bundick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}