Casey James will be one of the artists in the big spotlight this weekend for CMT’s Big new Music Weekend that kicks off this Friday.  Casey will be doing his live performance of “Crying on a Suitcase” a song from his debut album.  Casey told Sony Music Nashville  that — for him — learning how to be a performer was a valuable and ongoing trial by fire.

“There’s no better way to learn any information than to learn it in the heat of the moment, you know? Learn it when you have to know it, and I think that the lessons that I’ve learned, musically, I was always in a club, in a restaurant, in a bar, at a private party or a church. Wherever I was, I had to be on it. I had to be performing. I had to learn these things. And I had to know that, ‘Oh, I need to do this here, and I need to do that there.’ And maybe you don’t know it, but you learn it, and you learn it because you have to learn it. And if you don’t learn it, you might not get to play at that place again, or maybe you won’t get hired again, or…. You learn it in the heat of the moment, and you learn it because you have to make it right. And they…that information’s gonna stick with you. Trust me.”