If you’re an artist and you’re invited to perform onstage with the current ACM Entertainer of the Year Lainey Wilson, you will likely hear some pretty specific instructions from her people backstage before you take the stage.

Country newcomer Mae Estes stopped by Taste of Country Nights, and we asked what it was like getting to share the stage with Wilson recently in Las Vegas, at the MGM Grand National Finals Rodeo.

Estes admits she was super nervous because she was going to be singing Miranda Lambert‘s part of Wilson and Lambert’s duet, “Good Horses Come Home,”

“Right when we get to the show, they give me a packet and everything. There’s all kinds of things on Lainey’s stage — there’s steps, she’s got a truck she’s standing on top of, it’s theatrics,” she explains.

Estes also revealed something eye-opening from an opener’s point of view about the headliner.

“The part about getting to sing with the headliners is hilarious and I feel like nobody talks about it. Rarely do you ever get to rehearse it, and that’s how it was with Lainey,” she says.

“Her stage manager was like, ‘Okay, you’re gonna walk up these steps and just like, follow Lainey’s lead.”

Estes details how nerve-wracking it is to just hear from the stage manager to just “follow her lead,” as she had zero clue what Wilson would actually do on stage.

“Lainey takes off running at one point, and I’m just like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m gonna run? Okay.”

“I had no idea what Lainey was gonna do next, trying to remember the words … but we pulled it off. That’s what makes me nervous about those things,” the newcomer says.

Estes provided some good insight for any artists looking to make it in Nashville: Just be ready for anything. She feels like being able to perform in instances like this, where the stage manager basically tells you to just keep up, really prepares you for what it looks like to be a star.