UPDATE:  The Tim Sample performance at the LHEPAC scheduled for Thursday, May 16, 2013 has been canceled. The rescheduled date is Saturday, July 6, 2013.

FRYEBURG — Experience the comic genius of comedian

at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 16, at the Leura Hill Eastman Performing Arts Center. Sample is widely acknowledged to be New England’s premier native humorist. Novelist Stephen King has likened Sample’s work to that of Mark Twain, and Charles Kuralt called him “Maine’s humorist laureate.”

Sample’s books, albums and videos (including four albums and a video for the Bert and I company) have sold well over a million copies. For 11 years he was a correspondent for CBS News and a regular essayist on the Emmy award-winning television show CBS News Sunday Morning, hosted by veteran newsman Charles Osgood.

Sample was born and raised in Maine and has never lived (or for that matter wanted to live) anywhere other than the Pine Tree State. Sample’s first album of downeast humor was recorded in 1979 and produced by Noel Paul Stookey, “Paul” of Peter, Paul, and Mary with liner notes by the late humorist Marshall Dodge, who along with his partner Rev. Robert Bryan, created the world-famous Bert and I recordings back in the 1950s.

After Dodge’s death in 1982, Sample recorded four albums and a video for the Bert and I company. Sample and Bryan have collaborated on a number of projects, including several TV specials, the popular recording How to Talk Yankee, and the TV specials Out of Season and Maine Humor Behind the Barn.

Sample has also written and/or illustrated over a dozen books, including regional bestsellers “Saturday Night at Moody’s Diner” and his most recent “Maine Curiosities” second edition, co-authored by Stephen Bither, published in 2006 by The Globe Pequot Press. Sample’s national TV appearances include The Today Show and Good Morning America, and he has narrated award-winning films and books on tape, including Robert McCloskey’s children’s classic “Bert Dow Deep Water Man” and Stephen King’s “The Sun Dog.”

Over the years, Sample has performed thousands of shows in venues as diverse as the Los Angeles Convention Center, the Mall of America, the New York Yacht Club and the Caribou Performing Arts Center. For more information about Sample, visit www.timsample.com.

Tickets are $15 in advance and $18 at the door. Proceeds from will benefit the Molly Ockett Middle School Odyssey of the Mind Team’s trip to Michigan for the OM World Tournament. Tickets may be purchased at the box office by calling 207-935-9232 or online at www.fryeburgacademy.org/pac. Group discounts are available to parties of 10 or more. The theater is at 18 Bradley Street, Fryeburg Academy. Parking is free.

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