Link: http://www.myhometownnews.net/index.php?id=63521

By Mitch Kloorfain

FORT PIERCE — Hometown News -Jo Dee Messina is not the first performer to perform unplugged, use Twitter or invite audience members onstage, but to the patrons of her one-night only show at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce it might have been a first for them.

Ms. Messina is a multi-award winning country music artist who debuted her first album in 1996 with two top-10 hits.

Her interaction with her fans on the Treasure Coast started several days before she arrived in Fort Pierce. Broadcasting through the social networking phenomenon Twitter, Ms. Messina broadcast tweets, such as “Did Jo Dee ever release a video for ‘Heaven Was Needing A Hero?’ First to answer and can be at the show wins!” or “Head to Sentiments on Orange Avenue for 2 tix to see Jo Dee Messina live 10/23 @sunrisetheatre.”

Follow up:

Thirty minutes later, Ashley Crouch and her friend were on a hunt to claim the tickets at Sentiment. Using Twitter to drum up interest and hype with trivia and scavenger hunts to sell tickets for a performance is cutting edge.

Ms Messina sends these tweets out herself, updating fans about her rehearsals and sharing thoughts as her tour bus travels to the next town on the itinerary.
Flash forward to the evening of the show on Friday, Oct. 23, where Ms. Messina met with several lucky winners of her Twitter contests, fielding questions ranging from her music to her hair color.

Later, the curtain of the Sunrise Theatre is drawn back. Instead of an array of electric guitars, keyboards and fancy lights, we are voyeurs to a living room set with three comfortably dressed musicians sitting on couches and stools ready to perform.

Ms. Messina strolls out, looking no different than the woman sitting at the next table wherever you had dinner before the show. Casually, like she just came from another room in the house, she announced that this show will be a little different than what we were used to seeing. Through the sponsorship of Ethan Allen Furniture Centers the stage was designed to recreate her music room back home.

Ms. Messina opened with a few songs showcasing how polished her voice sounded accompanied by two acoustic guitars and a Cajon for percussion. The songs ended. The house lights go on over the audience and Ms. Messina is not only offering a monolog regarding he meaning of a song, but she is seeking a dialog with the audience in their seats.

One woman stands up and in front of 1,000 plus people shares how a certain song helped her through a tough time in her life. These two women were chatting like there was only a small round table and two cups of coffee between them.

A few songs and a few dialogs later, a woman stood up to share how her son, Lucas, was with her at another show in another state in an earlier decade and that he expressed his love for her at age 4. A very different Lucas McGinnis of Port St. Lucie stood his 6-foot 1-inch self up with a photo of the two of them when he was 4. Ms. Messina came down from the stage and met Lucas for a hug in the aisle about 20 rows back into the theater. She took the photo back to the stage with her and wrote, “I- l-o-v-e y-o-u -t-o-o Lu- c-a-s” and sent it backto a beaming Lucas.

Keeping with the theme of audience participation, Sherri Jones of Stuart and Britton Fuller, 17, of Port St. Lucie were chosen from the audience to sit on the onstage couch during two songs for an up-close-and personal perspective of the evening’s performance.

After ending with a standing ovation, Ms. Messina spent an hour in the Sunrise Theatre’s new Black Box Theatre with a select group of nearly 30 people chosen through a phone-in contest to meet with her for a live video Web cast.

Fans made their way to the Web cam setup to appear with Ms. Messina to ask questions about her music and the show they just witnessed to be broadcast for the rest of the world.

With the advent of new technologies and creating new ways to use them, audience members left the event feeling like they got to know Ms. Messina just a bit better than the rest, and they’d be right.

Photo Credit:Mitch Kloorfain