Mentoring was part of the game when Blake Shelton was a coach on "The Voice."
But when he was starting out in country music, artists weren't always bubbling with advice.
"I was given 20 minutes to perform in front of Jamie O'Neal, and I had about three feet of stage," Shelton remembers. "It was so terrible, but we were just glad to have the opportunity."
Likewise, Keith Urban.
"After years of just grinding and grinding it out, Kix Brooks was the first artist that came and saw me play at this crappy place with shag carpeting," Urban says. "We didn't have a record deal. We didn't have anything, but he was one of the first guys to put his money where his mouth was."
Charlie Daniels was there for Gretchen Wilson.
"He welcomed me like I was part of the family and, anytime I had an issue, he was somebody I could call on no matter what," Wilson says.
Now, all three are part of "The Road," a singing competition designed to find an opening act for Urban. Twelve singers compete each week to see who has what it takes.
Wilson says it often requires love with the new generation.
"You just gotta lace up them boots, get out there and make do with what you got," she says. "It comes from a place of love and experience and knowing that, sometimes, it just doesn't go the way you want it to go, but you still have to get out there and perform. Even a brain surgeon gets to call in sick. When you're a musician and the audience is counting on you, you've got to get out there and do that."
For Shelton, "The Road" was a dream come true.
"As much fun as I had being a coach on 'The Voice,' there's no way you can do a job for that long and not have ideas about it: 'If I was the boss, how would I do this?'" he said.
Songs written by the artists "we just never did (on "The Voice"), for whatever reason. What if you took these same artists that I'm coaching and they weren't in the TV studio with a prompted audience, and you put them in front of people who are really ready to see Keith Urban? They've been standing outside for six hours in the rain or 100-degree heat and they're having to watch these people they've never heard of before. How would these artists react?"
Shelton calls it an "old-school" approach, throwing musicians into a concert environment.
In "The Road," producers show what the artists are doing behind the scenes, between gigs. They reveal Urban's and Shelton's thoughts, too, and let Wilson act as the ultimate den mother.
"There's only one Gretchen Wilson, and she'll put us all in our place," Shelton says.
Wilson — who still considers herself an opening act — says the mentors' combined experiences helped immensely. "This is a lot more 'real-life' situation. (The contestants) have to tour across the country on a bus. … Sometimes you get to know a little more about each other than you really ever wanted to.
"It wasn't like they were dealing with somebody who hasn't been there," she says. "We were tough."
Shelton says his predecessors were, too, offering plenty of tips.
"Trace (Adkin's) advice would be, 'Come here, boy. Let me show you how to smoke a cigarette'; 'Let me show you have to threaten a promoter' — just inappropriate stuff," Shelton says.
While those tips aren't part of "The Road," there are pointers that could take one of the "The Road" warriors from opening act to headliner.
