Watch the Being On Stage online guitar lesson by Livingston Taylor from The Stage Performance Playbook

Here we are in the Boch Center and the boss of this entire place happens to be an old and a dear friend of mine. His name is Joe Spalding. Joe, would you come out here, because what I want to do now is demonstrate something for you. Joe, I'm assuming you've seen a few shows in your time.

Just a few. Okay, good. I'm gonna pretend that you are here. I'm off stage and I want you to bring me up. Just sit and please welcome to the Boch Center, Livingston Taylor, Contain and because there’s some things that you can do as you're coming on stage that tell an audience that you are with them. You've got them. You're in the moment. So here we go. “Welcome to the show tonight. We're so thrilled that you're here and we have a very, very special treat for you. The one, the only Mr. Livingston Taylor.”

Okay. And now there's applause. That applause starts. Now you're walking out and you want to acknowledge the audience, but not yet acknowledged first the person who brought you on. So “Please welcome Livingston Taylor.” There's the applause. But I'm coming right here, and I speak to Joe at this point.

The audience can't hear me because I'd be off mic. But what I say is, Joe, “Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. Really a pleasure to be back here.” All right, great. Boom, that's done. Pow. Now I'm on to the audience. But what did it say to that audience that I came to the person who introduced me and greeted him or her. And what it says is that I'm gracious. I'm aware of what's going on. Great, that'll be great when your career gets here.

Now what about early in your career when you are showing up and it's open mic night, you're one of seven on the bill, Everybody else is there to see somebody else, and it's your turn to walk on stage. First off, you're not going to get very good treatment. You're not going to get what they call star treatment because you're not a star yet. But what does that mean? It doesn't mean that you're not a beautiful person or you don't have value.

What it means is that you don't have enough of an audience base to be able to generate enough revenue so people will treat you like a star. It's okay. They still like you. Oh, and by the way, you will get that audience base.

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