Rising stars

Lawrence musician adjusts to role with 'next big thing'

Tonight, musicians Teddy Geiger and Justin Hosek will play a set during Acoustic Open Mic Night to friends and family and whoever else wanders into Lawrence’s Jazzhaus.

Thursday night, the pair will perform to a sold-out Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo.

“The sound that 15,000 12-year-old girls emit all together screaming is ear-shattering,” Hosek says. “It’s so loud it’s ridiculous.”

Singer-songwriter Geiger and his bassist Hosek, a Lawrence native, should know. They’ve spent the last month on the road as the opening act for teen star Hilary Duff on her “Still Most Wanted Tour.”

“Going into it, I figured (the young kids in the audience) were going to be playing with something, or their moms were going to be like, ‘Hey, sit down,'” Geiger says of the potentially thankless job of being Duff’s opener.

“But everyone is way into it,” Hosek adds. “It’s cool how much people pay attention. …The girls get really obsessed with Teddy. They ‘fall asleep in those eyes.'”

Lawrence musician Justin Hosek, right, has joined the band of 16-year-old solo artist Teddy Geiger. The group is coming through town to open for pop idol Hilary Duff at Kemper Arena on Thursday but will also perform an acoustic set tonight at the Jazzhaus, 926 1/2 Mass.

It’s all been quite an eye-opening experience for the photogenic Geiger, who recently signed to Columbia Records and is awaiting the February release of his solo debut, “Underage Thinking.”

Of course, a lot of things are new to the musician: He’s only 16.

“This is the first time I’ve been to Kansas. This is the first time I’ve been to a lot of places,” says Geiger, who tagged along with Hosek to the bassist’s hometown for a few days prior to the Kemper show, thus triggering their impromptu acoustic gig at The Jazzhaus, 926 1/2 Mass.

Geiger has seemingly been cast overnight into the role of a pop-rock star, but he is certainly no stranger to music. He’s been writing and arranging on the piano since he was 8. He’s also been playing guitar for more than four years, and his compositional skill with the instruments is apparent to anyone who listens to his advance EP, “Step Ladder.”

While most people don’t have a realistic clue what kind of career path they want to pursue until after they’ve graduated college, Geiger (who just finished his junior year of high school in Rochester, N.Y.) is already gearing up for a long stint in the music world.

“Personally, I’m a huge commitment-issue guy,” he says. “I’ll decide, ‘I’m going to build a fort in my backyard.’ I’d get it, and I’d have it half-done. It would be nearly awesome. Then I’d go, ‘I don’t like forts anymore; I’m going to go do something else.’

“But music is the one thing that I really have stuck by and continue to work at. Pretty much everything else commitmentwise that I dropped was so I could just go play music.”

A new act

It was on a different manner of stage where Geiger got his first taste of the spotlight.

The singer earned a shot as a finalist on 2004’s “In Search of the Partridge Family,” a reality show that aired on VH1. He was auditioning for the lead role of Keith, popularized by former teen idol David Cassidy.

“My mom made me do that,” he says. “I actually got kicked off the show. I was happy I did it because I got to perform. I’d done all I wanted to do, anyway – I didn’t actually want to be on the show.”

Lawrence musician Justin Hosek, top, performs with Teddy Geiger, a new artist signed to Columbia Records. Geiger's band is opening for Hilary Duff Thursday at Kemper Arena.

He says his young age was a deciding factor for his dismissal, as was his inexperience at acting.

“At the time I was really nervous about it, and I was really bad,” Geiger admits.

Fortunately, the show proved his big break.

One of the people in the studio happened to be record producer Billy Mann (Pink, Jessica Simpson), who came onboard to ice the deal with Columbia.

Oddly enough, Geiger did land other acting jobs out of the short-lived program’s exposure.

He recently finished shooting “Love Monkey,” a CBS television pilot based on the novel by Kyle Smith. The series stars Thomas Cavanaugh (“Ed”), Jason Priestley (“Beverly Hills, 90210”) and Larenz Tate (“Ray”), and will air on the network in September.

Geiger’s role? A rising young pop star.

Road warriors

Hosek first hooked up with Geiger because of an unlikely Lawrence connection.

“I met (Billy Mann) at The Jayhawker bar in New York,” the 23-year-old musician recalls. “I became friends with the tour manager of Art Garfunkel – who is a big Kansas fan. One night he introduced me to the piano player (Mike Bellar) for Art Garfunkel, who is also music director for Teddy. He was like, ‘I need a bass player in two days. Can you audition tomorrow morning?'”

Because the Free State High School graduate’s past connections with jazz bands and country acts have taken him on tours all over Europe, he’s been happy to tutor Geiger in the ways of how to survive on the road.

“Everyone in the band has contributed to helping me,” Geiger says. “It’s totally an environment they’ve been in more than I have.”

So far, the whirlwind traveling has been the hardest thing for the novice performer to adjust to – whether it’s the lack of sleeping in the same spot more than twice or playing before a constant stream of packed arenas where the audiences have never heard of him before.

But he’s gradually getting used to it.

“We were saying it’s starting to feel weird when things don’t feel weird now,” Geiger says. “As soon as things are not weird, we’re like, ‘What’s going on?'”