James Otto, ready to break out of 'opening act'
Country music fans might have noticed that, over the past six months, several of the major concert bills booked in our area have boasted the same name in the supporting act small print.
These fans might also have noted — if they got to the venue on time, bought their T-shirt, grabbed a beer or two and found their seat before the lights went down for the first time — that this opening act wasn’t acting like an opening act at all.
Tradition suggests that the least-famous performer on the bill is to be tolerated, at best, booed and bullied at worst. The opener is a minor inconvenience to be endured while waiting for the main attraction to appear. Most of us would probably rather there was no opening act at all.
It might have come as a surprise, then, when the annual WYRK Taste of Country hit Dunn Tire Park in late June, and James Otto’s performance early in the evening became, by show’s end, the one to beat. The then relatively little-known Otto was supporting the likes of Rodney Atkins and Dierks Bentley, both of whom command large and extremely vocal audiences as a matter of course. Both of whom should have, by rights, made their opening act’s show a distant memory by the time they’d finished their respective sets.
This didn’t happen, though. Otto and his band kicked out a steaming blend of country, soul and guitar-heavy Southern rock, performing most of Otto’s current album, “Sunset Man,” and tossing in a torrid cover of Bob Seger’s classic rock evergreen “Night Moves” to boot. When Otto and Company first took the stage that day, the response was a few steps north of polite, but by set’s end, the assembled were decidedly into it. Certainly, the show earned Otto some new fans.
Less than two months later, Otto was back in Western New York, once again as an opening act. This time he was at the bottom of the bill on the 2008 Erie County Fair’s biggest show, the sold-out appearance by superstar Taylor Swift. Once again, Otto turned some heads.
On Saturday, Otto will make his third appearance since June on a major Buffalo-area concert lineup, when he arrives to support an HSBC Arena bill that includes Trace Adkins and is headlined by Alan Jackson.
This flurry of regional activity suggests two things. First, Otto has got to be tired, considering that it’s not just Buffalo he has been hitting repeatedly since “Sunset Man” was released back in April of this year. In fact, he has toured with the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Big & Rich during this period as well. “Down time” is not something the singer is familiar with, it seems.
Secondly, it is beginning to appear that, concert billing-wise, Otto is always a bridesmaid, never a bride.
“That’s true, in a way,” Otto laughs during a phone interview with The News last week. “But the thing is, I look at this as an extremely positive occurrence, not something to complain about. Between opening slots, club gigs where we headline and some solo appearances for radio stations and that sort of thing, we’ve done, oh, 300 or so shows over the past year. I feel nothing but thankful for the opportunity.”
A rough road
These are tough gigs, let it be said. When you’re touring nonstop as an opener, you get used to the fact that many of the folks you’re playing for night to night didn’t necessarily come to the show to see you. Odds are, they’re itching for their hero or heroine to take the stage, an eventuality your appearance is delaying.
“That’s part of the challenge,” says Otto, who further suggests that all of these high-pressure, short and fast opening shows — “lightning sets,” in musician parlance — have made him a much better performer and his band a confident, well-oiled machine.
So what is he learning from all of this?
“I’ve learned how to hit the stage running, to realize that I’m there to earn the attention and appreciation of people who’ve come out for the night, to get people psyched up for the headliner, at the same time that I’m making sure they won’t forget me after they’ve seen me live,” he says.
“That can be a tall order, but I tell ya’, we’ve gotten pretty good at it,” he adds with a laugh. “The thing I’ve learned is, passion breeds passion. If your audience can see and feel you giving everything you have to your performance, they’re much more likely to give it back.
“Just as importantly, at this point, I feel like my band has completely got my back, that they can be counted on 100 percent, which frees me to concentrate on giving everything I’ve got to the audience. I’m very lucky.”
Serious soul
All the luck in the world isn’t worth too much if you haven’t got the goods, of course. Otto does, on a number of fronts. He’s unusual in modern country music in that he has got some serious soul chops as a singer, a quality born of years spent listening to and studying the stylings of the king of them all, Otis Redding.
Further, he knows how to get down and dirty, guitar-wise, which puts him more in line with roughneck Southern rockers in the mold of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Outlaws, the Charlie Daniels Band and Hank Williams Jr.
“Those are all heroes of mine, so I’m happy you’re hearing them all in there,” says Otto, who credits a lifetime spent moving from place to place, north to south and back again, with exposing him to a diverse array of styles and sounds, many of which he has managed to assimilate into his own gig.
“When I moved from Washington State to Alabama, I was a real rock ‘n’ roll kid, who loved Led Zeppelin and wanted to be Eddie Van Halen,” Otto says. “When I got down south, I realized that the music all the kids my age were listening to was Skynyrd, Alabama, Hank Williams Jr., Charlie Daniels Band. I’d always thought country music was for old people, that it wasn’t really cool at all. But what happened as a result of hearing this music in a different context was, I realized that I was not talented enough to ever really be an Eddie Van Halen (laughs) and that my talent was better suited to writing songs, and concentrating on being a singer who could draw from all of my influences.”
The hybrid Otto has perfected, coupled with ceaseless touring, has paid off. Since his Buffalo appearance in June, Otto has gone on to claim a No. 1 single on the U. S. country chart, with “Just Got Started Lovin’ You” helping to propel “Sunset Man” to No. 2 on the U. S. country album chart and No. 3 on the U. S. Top 200 pop chart. Clearly, something is clicking.
Otto seems to be following a model that is a bit of an anomaly in modern country, where massive promotional budgets, glitzy music videos and high-profile television appearances often take the place of consistent touring in both primary and secondary markets — something more commonly associated with rock music, though even that genre is finding fewer and fewer artists breaking the “old fashioned” way.
“I’m really glad that we’ve had time to develop and to prove ourselves on the road,” Otto says. “When I was growing up and falling in love with music, it seemed clear to me that the album was one thing, the song on the radio was one thing, and then the live performance was something else, something additional to the record — and sometimes, something even better, and more powerful.
“That’s what we’re shooting for.”
