Tonight, I had the extreme pleasure of opening the show for my friends, Porter & Sayles, at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg, Pa. It was my first time inside that theater, let alone playing on the stage. And it’s a fine stage. Sound was wonderful, and the staff was great.
I appreciate everyone who came out to support my supporting slot. It’s not always easy, but that was a very cool audience and I think I did my job well.
The job of the opener is simple, get the audience ready to receive the headliner. I know it well, but each show is different. Each venue is different. It’s hard to read the audience because all you can see is the faces in the first two rows, if you’re lucky. You have about five seconds to figure it out. Saturday night’s show was wonderful. The audience was warm, and everything clicked.
For those who are paying attention, here’s the set list: Inside Out, Round and Round, Logic and the Heart, Atlantic City (Bruce Springsteen), Rosie (Bill Hall), Woman in Me. And of course, I spun my usual tales of the silly and the sublime.
In the course of story-weaving, I took the audience back to teenage years, (for some of us, that was a long time ago), and through the music, we went summer-day-tripping together. They laughed and clapped, and shouted out the names of their favorite beaches when I asked them to.
The man who bought one of my CDs had the quote of the night: “I like your stuff. You’re a rockin’ grandma.”
Ah yes, tomorrow’s another day.
DINA HALL 