Sam Rosenbaum’s recent experience of what he called divine intervention brought his words and music to a show about the supernatural.
Almost 20 years ago, the Toronto jeweller’s father, who had died seven years earlier, came to him in a dream.
“We were sitting in this beautiful garden. We didn’t speak. We looked at each other,” he said. “It was really an incredible feeling.”
When he woke up in the middle of the night, he ran down to his basement and wrote a song called Why Did You Leave Me Now?
A singer he was managing at the time, Liz Rodrigues, recorded the song. Nothing big came of it – until this summer, when Rosenbaum, 61, got a call from Gary Calamar, musical director of the popular HBO show True Blood.
Apparently, the producers had been searching for him for a long time. They somehow got a hold of the song, and wanted to use it during the credits of the penultimate episode of the season.
“It was one of those bizarre things in life,” Rosenbaum said, adding that at first he was wary, wondering how they could have found his song. But he did some research and realized it was the real thing.
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True Blood is known for its ending credit music. The title of the song each week becomes the name of the episode. Calamar told the Toronto Star that it was the title of the song that attracted the producers after they found it on iTunes.
Rosenbaum described watching the episode as very surreal.
“Even until the last second, I wasn’t sure it would be on. I’ve had so many disappointments in the music business,” he said, explaining that he had hoped to make it big in the industry, but it never worked out.
Hearing it on TV, Rosenbaum said it felt like a gift from, and a tribute to, his father – and it’s also been nice to have validation of his work.
“I’ve loved all the comments I’ve been getting,” he said. “When you go on YouTube and read the comments, a lot of people relate to the song. A lot of people said it made them cry or it puts them in a good place. It makes them feel good.”
He said people have been downloading the song on iTunes, and tens of thousands of listens have been logged on sites like YouTube.
“One of the lines is, ‘Why did you leave me now just when they said you are fine?’” he said. “Everyone can relate, everyone has had a loss of some kind.”