Mitchel Musso's Sunshine Stadium Tour  

November 14, 2009

Saturday 6:00pm

Detail:

Mitchel Musso's Sunshine Stadium Tour

 

Having proven yourself as a successful television actor, and then having to prove yourself all over again as a musician might be frustrating for some performers.

But Mitchel Musso’s psyched about it.

“It’s an opportunity,” says the upbeat Musso, known to tweens and their parents as Oliver “Smokin’” Oken, the male pal to Miley Cyrus on Disney’s Hannah Montana series. “(Fans) get to learn about me, Mitchel, instead of Oliver.”

What visitors to Jupiter’s Roger Dean Stadium will learn on Thursday is that the 18-year-old is as dedicated to his music as he is to his acting. There, he makes the second stop in his “Sunshine Stadium” tour, visiting three Florida baseball stadiums including Port Charlotte’s Charlotte Sports Park and the Baseball Grounds at Jacksonville.

Musso, who released his self-titled debut album this past June, has had three hits already — a cover of Bill Withers’ Lean On Me, If I Didn’t Have You, and the sweet, ’80s-reminiscent The In Crowd. But he’s not a bored TV star who decided to make music just because it was the next thing to do, he says.

“I’ve always been a musician, since I was 6 years old. I was on the grand piano then, and the guitar at 10, and then my first drum set,” he explains. “It was more about learning the instruments. I did write songs then, but it was more about learning rhythm and tempo. I’m not a sports fan — I don’t run very fast. Music has just always been in my blood.”

Musso means that literally — one of his brothers, Mason, is the lead singer of the band Metro Station, known for its catchy single Shake It. (The other brother, Marc, is an actor with whom Mitchel appeared in Secondhand Lions with Haley Joel Osment.)

Musso has played on bills with his brother’s band, and the siblings recently did a single, Shout It, together. “Last night, I sang it with him. It was phenomenal,” he says. “Now I’m getting a chance to do this on my own.”

And that has meant a lot of touring, “a whole lot. But I love it. It’s been very cool,” says Musso, who also does the voice of Jeremy Johnson in Disney’s animated series, Phineas and Ferb.

Musso did a stint recently on a Disney Cruise with other stars of the House of Mouse, and a whole lot of fans.

“You know that the people are on there, and it’s cool. You get to be with your family and go to the Bahamas. We went jet-skiing, which is one of the most fun things to do in the world,” he says. “The whole point is that (fans) get to see some of their favorite Disney stars. It’s like a meet and greet all day long. But all of the kids are so nice, so it’s easy.”

Besides meeting and greeting, one of Musso’s favorite parts of touring is getting to do so in a completely different format than on TV. He did a stint of appearances at Six Flags parks and a few different House of Blues venues, at which “we’ve blown the roof off.”

Part of what keeps music new for Musso is that there’s so much of it to experience and experiment with. An admitted fan of “everything from Elton John to Lil’ Wayne to the Three Six Mafia and Billy Joel,” he dreams of collaborating with a rapper one day, or maybe Aerosmith.

“Music is my life. I wanna play everything, I wanna hear everything,” he says.

Mostly, he’s just enjoying this moment of exploring who he is as a musician, when he gets to introduce himself, as himself.

“Being an actor, you’re playing a character,” he says. “You have a call time and a script. Now for the first time, I get to make my own call time, to make my own script. I get to be Mitchel.