Ever since Jon McLaughlin can remember, he has always wanted to be a piano man.

“It was like they were playing Billy Joel in the delivery room,” McLaughlin jokes.

The 24 year old pianist released his album, Indiana in early May. He describes his latest release as “a pop-rock album with big sound that is fully piano driven.” McLaughlin has released two music videos, “Industry” and “Beautiful Disaster” and is now promoting his album by doing a tour with Jonny Lang.

With the release of his new album, McLaughlin has been making promotional stops all over.

“I’m one of those people where the weather totally affects their mood, when it gets more towards the summer time everything is going to be fine,” McLaughlin says. “When I’m in that mindset it doesn’t matter how many records I sell.”

McLaughlin sets the stage for Jonny Lang this Tuesday at the King Center of Performing Arts. It is vital to get to the show early or else you might just miss McLaughlin’s performance.

Even though he’s the opener, Lang and McLaughlin have not even met, let alone see how the other one performs.

“We’ve never met. I’ve never seen his show and vice versa.” McLaughlin says. “Maybe we’ll play together and have a great time. But as for now, we don’t know each other.”

From SunFest this past May, it was observed that Lang has a much older fan base then what was to be expected. Both acts are under 30 and can draw crowds that are significantly older then themselves.

“My fan base seems to be really diverse. One thing I love is going to play at a college.But, I also love playing a random club in a random town with the majority of people being somewhat older then myself,” McLaughlin says. “There’s something about connecting with an older crowd, it makes you feel like you bridged the age gap.”

He started to play the piano when he was four. His father played the piano, which made him feel right at home with the idea of playing.

“I didn’t play in high school. In junior high I got burnt out – I had been playing 9-10 years, and at that point I wanted to play sports. I didn’t want to have anything to do with music,” McLaughlin remembers. “It was really hard to get over that. At that point, music was just not an interest to me anymore.”

As if not being interested wasn’t enough, McLaughlin got into a rollerblading accident and broke both of his arms.

“I couldn’t play the piano any more – It was kind of a good thing. So I just never went back to it all through high school, towards the end I got back into it but I really started to write and study music in college.”

“I started to record an album when I was a sophomore in college. It helped me get a feel for the how a label runs and how things work.”

Even with breaking both of his arms, he still managed to get back up, and record an album.

“The whole experience was priceless” Says McLaughlin.

Places to check him out: His Myspace On tour with Jonny Lang The Today Show on June 27, 2007Disney Movie Enchanted coming out later this year

For tickets to the show on June 5, 2007 visit Ticketmaster.com The King Center for the Performing Arts is approx one hour North of the Treasure Coast Campus.

“Beautiful Disaster” Music Video