Thomas Rhett gets his first starring role on Nutter Center stage this weekend

"It has been mind-boggling," Rhett said recently, speaking over the phone from his Nashville home. "It's scary the first time you jump in headfirst and say, 'Alright, we're going to go put our name on these billboards at these arenas and hope to God they sell enough tickets.' Before this, all we'd ever done is headline certain festivals and be the middle slot on a tour with Jason Aldean or Luke Bryan.

"You never really can get a read on who your fans are at those shows because they really are there to see the headliner," Rhett continued. "I pretty much got convinced by management and promoters that this is the year we try it out."

"The whole tour is pretty much sold out, which is unbelievable," Rhett said. "I'd never in my life put a date on sale with my name on it that did more than 3,000 tickets so you can understand where my fear came from. It has just blown me away and it's all due to how big of a year we had in 2016.

"The team picked great singles and I guess the last five years of playing shows and making fans on the way really has paid off," he continued. "It really has been the most fun I've ever had and it's early in the tour so I can't wait to see what happens."

"A lot of times we get into the process of a new record and we're trying to juggle touring, writing and recording and it gets pretty overwhelming," Rhett said. "We purposely didn't start the tour until the beginning of February so we could take the entire month of January to make the next record. It's not done but everything is recorded, which is nice. We hope to have a release later this year."