X
Ambassadors
RENEGADE MEN
W
riter Thomas Mann once coldly
posited 'You can never go home
again,' but X Ambassadors
bandleader Sam Harris would respectfully
disagree.
The Ithaca, NY-bred group’s recent
debut VHS opens with a scratchy recording from the family archives, taped at the
turn of the new millennium, wherein
father Rob Harris asks his young aspiringartist, son Sam, where he’ll be in 15 years,
and junior curtly replies, “I will not be here
– I will be away from you guys, far away”
– it quickly segues into the band’s handclap-kinetic breakthrough hit, a tale of teen
rebellion called “Renegades,” then plays
back like old Super 8 footage through
other vintage dialogue snippets ‘interludes’ like “Smoke,” “First Show,” and
“Moving Day.” They work as transitional
scenes that set up musical, decidedly autobiographical reflections such as “Fear” –
featuring KIDinaKORNER Interscope
labelmates Imagine Dragons and “Jungle”
and “Low Life,” both boasting an appearance from the bluesy Jamie N. Commons.
And, indeed, the kid and his keyboardist,
brother, Casey had to leave town to find
fame and fortune.
However, looking back, Sam Harris,
now 27, can see his career path all too
clearly, unfolding like a docu-drama. He
despised his small-town surroundings as a
child, but – even though he just moved to
Los Angeles with his girlfriend – he has a
whole new appreciation for Ithaca as an
adult. “I definitely remember feeling like,
‘I want to get the fuck out of here,’ because
I wasn’t a really big sports guy and there
wasn’t much to do other than play hockey
or wrestle,” he recalls. “I guess there was
football, too, and I tried. I played on the
football team, and it sucked. I was just
obsessed with music, and I wanted to
move to New York really badly – I wanted
to do something big with my life, and that
wasn’t going to happen if I was going to be
20 illinoisentertainer.com january 2016
sticking around Ithaca.”
And now? Ithaca is fantastic, he
enthuses, and he loves going back to visit
his friends and folks. “So much of who I
am is because of where I’m from,” he
believes. “And I feel that so strongly in
everything that I do. I’m proud to be from
upstate New York, and proud to know
about a place in the country that a lot of
people don’t know much about. Ithaca is
beautiful, but there’s a real sinister quality
to it. During the winter, it gets real cold
and dark and desolate up there. And that
darkness is a big part of me, so I love it
when the weather starts getting cold and
the leaves start falling off the trees. That’s
when I feel like I’m most in tune with
myself.”
In retrospect, the rocker also understands the crucial part his film-industry
dad – who worked as a unit publicist on
countless features, like Black Swan, The
Sandlot, and Air Force One -- played in the
X Ambassadors story. He practically grew
up on movie sets, he reveals, and he even
flew to Malta on a school break for a
Gladiator shoot, where he appeared as a
crowd-scene extra and got to hang around
with director Ridley Scott and star Russell
Crowe. So – much more than most youngsters his age – he had a knowledge of the
vast outside world that spurred him on.
“Being on set with my dad was a real eyeopening experience,” he says. “Wanting to
be an artist, I was able to see that that was
a viable career, and that people can really
make a living out of forms of entertainment. And that’s a really special and
unique position to be put in when you’re a
kid.”
The rest of Harris’ story flickers past
like some feel-good, hometown-hero
Frank Capra flick from the '40s, with
Harris in the traditional Jimmy Stewar