When Luke Bryan announced that he'd be adding stadiums and ballparks to his What Makes You Country tour, he also added some opening acts.

And I asked one of them -- Jon Pardi -- how that works. Like do Bryan's people call Pardi's people? Maybe it's like that in other genres, but in country, where all the artists seem like one big happy family, it can be a very simple invitation. A phone call, even. But in Pardi's case, it was just a text message.

"Luke just sent me a text. It was just, 'Man, you wanna go on tour?' I was like, 'Yeah,'" Pardi told me. "Everybody's really excited. Because me and Luke, we go way back. We're buddies. I met Luke in 2011, when we were playing little 1,000-1,500 seat theaters."

She Ain't In It by Jon Pardi on VEVO.

"And then he put 'Country Girl (Shake It For Me)' out, and I never saw him again," he joked. "When you've got history like we do, though, it's fun to be like, 'Hey, look at us. We're still here. And we're on tour together."

Before Pardi joins Bryan on the road on May for 30 stops on that tour, he will continue to open for Miranda Lambert through the end of March.

"Miranda's so great. She just has such a different way of looking at things, because she's a female and because she's a headliner. She's the only female headliner we've ever opened for, and I respect her for that," Pardi said. "And I think she's so badass.

"Her songwriting and everything else about her. She does it all from the way she looks at things," he said of Lambert, "and she just puts it all out on the table."