Opening Acts Quotes

Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and I were the first female headliners, where we would book our own opening acts. Before that, it was a standing joke that it was more like we had 'pretty little girl singers' opening for a male headliner.

Later, when I was at Caesar's Palace, and [Joe and Gil Cates] were trying to get me to have opening acts for the show, they gave me a list of people, and Rosie O'Donnell was one of them. I said, "I don't really need any opening acts. I have funny stuff in the show, and I do a lot of comedy and stuff."

My opening acts are always really strong because I need a guy who can take on a big, big crowd. Which is not that easy to do.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they're part of a family, not just a tour.

We opened for the Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Guess Who, Chuck Berry, Sha Na Na. We opened for Cheech and Chong - I opened for Cheech, and Don opened for Chong.

Opening acts are hard, really hard. There's more politics involved than music, sometimes.

We've played every dirty rock-and-roll club in America, and we've been opening acts for everyone.

I was in Screaming Trees - I wasn't really interested in playing quiet music in a live setting. But I would get asked quite often to do a show or open for somebody, and I always said no. Finally, I was asked if I would open for Johnny Cash, and Johnny Cash was one of my dad's favorite heroes. So that's why I started doing solo shows.

But by us doing a lot on the road, we were able to afford things like videos on the tours, cartoons that we'd open up the shows with. We were doing that way back when and now it's the hippest thing to do. We're just coming back around, I guess trying to play catch-up.

I'm always a little leery about doing shows where I'm not the headliner because when I first started playing in 1982 I opened for Missing Persons and got pelted for 45 minutes. After that, I made the decision to headline no matter what, even if I was playing to seven people. I wanted people to be there to see me.