WORKSHOP FEE: $25
3:PM - 4:30PM
How to be an Opening Act… and nail it!
Hosted by Jaimee Harris
For Whom: All are welcome!
Picture this: you get a call to open a tour for one of your musical heroes. You’ve been playing your own headling shows in your hometown for years, so you think a thirty-minute opening set will be a breeze. Finally, the first big gig night comes. You step onto the stage, do your best, and walk off feeling like something went very, very wrong. Maybe it was just a weird night. The next night, same thing. You begin to question whether or not you should leave the tour immediately. Perhaps you should go back to your desk job, take all of your music off of the internet, and make your website disappear. Has this ever happened to you? It happened to me.
In 2018, after eighteen years of playing live, I finally quit my day job and went on the road. Over the last five years, I’ve played in dozens of countries and hundreds of cities opening for Mary Gauthier. Despite all my years of experience, I quickly learned that being an opening act is a whole other art form.
In this workshop, I will teach you what I learned, in real-time, about how to succeed in front of an audience that has no idea who you are. You’ll learn that being an opening act is a coveted job, but it’s anything but easy. I will share with you my understanding of how to succeed as an opening act on and off stage.
ABOUT JAIMEE HARRIS
Jaimee Harris turned 30 during the pandemic. It’s a milestone that is a rite of passage even during normal times. But for this Texas-born singer-songwriter, it came in the midst of one of the strangest and most tumultuous periods in American history. When the world stopped during lockdown, Harris, like many others, found herself gazing back into the past, ruminating on the nature of her hometown and family origins, and reckoning with their imprint on her. The term ‘nostalgia’ derives from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain), and if Harris’s Boomerang Town can be regarded as a nostalgic album, it is only nostalgic in the sense that the longing for home is a desire to return to the past and heal old wounds.
