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That's exactly what Brian Byrne did when he made his official onstage debut as the new singer of Canadian rock band I Mother Earth during Our Lady Peace's Summersault '98 music festival.
You'd think the 24-year-old must have nerves of steel, jumping in the deep end like that ...
"... but I was actually really, really nervous," Byrne recalls in a telephone interview. "I wasn't only doing my first shows with I Mother Earth. I was doing them in front of people who had seen them before with (former singer) Edwin; it was in front of 20,000 of those people; it was with a bunch of other bands that had seen the growth of I Mother Earth -- a lot of people that I admired.
"It was pretty heavy-duty."
Nowadays, the amiable Newfoundlander -- an IME fan long before joining the band -- is fully settled in with the musicians he used to idolize: Guitarist Jag Tanna, drummer Christian Tanna and bassist Bruce Gordon.
They play the MacEwan Hall Ballroom with opening act Finger Eleven Thursday.
Stability isn't something I Mother Earth has had in abundance over the past two years.
Despite releasing two well-received albums, 1993's Dig and 1996's Scenery and Fish, singer Edwin quit, or was fired, depending on whom you believe. The remaining trio then found new management, changed record labels and recruited Byrne after Jag heard a demo tape by the singer's heavy-metal outfit Klaven.
"We were in a weird situation," Byrne says of all the dramatic changes. "As silly as it sounds, the only thing we had were the fans who were believing the next album would be OK and us being happy with the actual setup."
In the end, the next album was OK.
Blue Green Orange, released in July, finds IME continuing to craft bombastic rock epics with exotic, world-beat touches. Byrne's dramatic, Bono-esque vocals fit in perfectly.
The future looks bright, so you won't find the members of I Mother Earth wallowing in the past and slinging mud at Edwin or his first solo album, Another Spin Around the Sun.
"I don't want to know what he's doing now," Byrne says. "I'm happy with my band. I'm happy with the album we've come up with.
I'm happy with the way things are going and with the fan response. Those are all things that matter. Everything else is inconsequential. It's soap-opera stuff."