The Big Opener. Every performing artist on the scene gets a chance at one at some point in their career. The Big Opener is when you land an opening slot for a larger, more well-known artist, thus providing an opportunity for wider exposure and CD sales. It’s not necessarily a make-or-break gig, but you’d be foolish to treat it as such.

The scruffy guy on the right is Josh Kelley, who’s touring in support of his Hollywood Records release For The Ride Home. I’m opening for Josh at Neumo’s on April 18th.

This show will probably sell out. Oh man.

What this means is that for one day next month, I get to step out of the comfortable world of cozy coffeehouses and open mics and into the shadowy, smoke-and-sawdust world of the live rock show. It’s a place I haven’t been in a long while, and due to a random exchange of business cards on the plane, I’m being catapulted headlong back into it for a brief moment.

Ask anyone who’s done a string of Big Openers and you’ll probably find that they’re not at all uncommon and maybe even anticlimactic. And now that I’ve wistfully blogged it here, I fully expect to see the show cancelled or to get booted from the bill for some reason. (The Mature Artist does not pin his or her hopes to any one Big Opener) But I want to mark this moment down, my first Big Opener, and this being my second trip down the DIY rock star trail, and I want to savor it just a bit more this time around. This is a weblog, after all.

Previously: Mraz-ification!

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