My career in Nashville started on April 4, 1988 at a quarter to one in the morning at Douglas Corner cafe. I had shown up at 6:00 pm, was the first to sign up for the show and the last to play. The featured guest brought her 17 friends. I always started my three song set with a song called "The Grand Opening" a funny song about a guy playing onstage getting all kinds of notes up and thinking he is getting song requests.:

"Do you know your fly is standing open?
"Do you know your zipper is undone"
"As you might have guessed, those were my first requests,
"And I'd never even heard of either one!"

I finished my three songs and a guy came over to me and asked for a copy of my funny songs. He was not in the music business.
But six months later, I would see him out and he would tell me they had been trying to find me over at Tree, the biggest publisher in Nashville at that time.
His roomate had been working in the tape room at Tree and started playing my songs up the ladder. While playing them on the stereo in the vice president's office, and a producer, Billy Sherril, who discovered Tammy Wynette and George Jones was walking by and ended up cutting one of my other songs on Shelby Lynne's first album. That was my first cut.
Now, if I had not had a "door" opener song, about something silly, and then backed it up with a dozen well written, well recorded songs, I might have just languashed around with all of the other writers doing their whiney stuff.
The door opener does just that, opens relationships, makes people want to know you. I strongly suggest it.

MAB