Imagine being a Juno-nominated and critically respected singer with six albums to your credit, but one who is a little short on notoriety. Then entertain the idea of being offered a 20-date nationwide tour opening for fan favourites Blue Rodeo – your musical idols – that begins the very day your seventh effort hits record stores.

By any count, that’s pretty much a perfect scenario.

When we spoke with the receiver of said Midas touch – singer-songwriter Luke Doucet – just three days into his tour with Blue Rodeo, he was still learning about the pros and cons of his enviable position.

The pros? A nightly audience of roughly 3,000 and a sharp new record, Blood’s Too Rich, from which to draw. The cons? Bad press. Doucet’s trek with Blue Rodeo started Jan. 6 with a well-received concert in Grande Prairie, Alta. But later, following the first of two gigs at Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditorium, the Toronto resident found himself the target of a newspaper critic, who said Doucet’s set “fell squarely in the middle of the muddy road in the land of altcountry – a place that can be just as corny and pretentious as Music City hot country.”

“It was the worst thrashing I’ve ever received in my career,” Doucet says.

“You pretend that stuff ’s not going to bother you, because you don’t read your own reviews, right? But I made the mistake of doing so and realized, ‘Oh my god.’ ”

Having licked their wounds, Doucet and his band, the White Falcon, are up to speed.

“It didn’t make it any easier for me to get on stage,” he says. “I had to conjure up any sort of defiance that I could muster and that made it work.”

It was inevitable that Doucet would bounce back.

The 33-year-old, who got his professional start at 18, has plenty of experience under his belt, from extensive tours as a guitarist in Sarah McLachlan’s band to guest turns on studio recordings by Chantal Kreviazuk and Oh Susanna.

Doucet also sees regular work as a producer.

But once he steps out with his backing band, which includes his wife, singer Melissa McClelland, Doucet is hurtled from the comfy confines of an arena back to duespaying basics.

“It’s very common for me to play for audiences who don’t know my stuff, that’s sort of the nature of being an independent artist who doesn’t have a massive fan base. I refer to it as a constant state of auditioning.”

Blood’s Too Rich, which Doucet wrote last year during a six-month stay in Nashville, could perhaps be his final “audition.”

In recent years, Doucet says he struggled with being a “hired hand” for McLachlan, and went through a nasty breakup (he married McClelland in 2006).

But he found artistic happiness on Blood’s Too Rich, and found a renewed sense of purpose.

Doucet over-thought records in the past. And though he earned a 2006 Juno Award nomination for Broken (and other rogue states) – his breakup album, à la Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks – Blood’s Too Rich explodes emotionally like nothing in his back catalogue.

He delved deep into his family history on the record, and emerged with a batch of true-tolife tales.

With a red-hot crop of guest studio musicians, including his new wife and three members of Blue Rodeo, at his side, he put to tape Cleveland, one of the best tunes of his career. With a whopping running time of 7:23, it’s also one of his longest.

“I have censored my records a little bit because I’ve always thought (a song like Cleveland) was self-indulgent and people wouldn’t want to listen to it. But I didn’t want to always cram what I do into three-and-a-half minute sound bites. When I get on stage I’m inclined to stretch things out.”

If anything, Doucet says Blood’s Too Rich represents the perfect union between the stage and the studio.

“I’ve explored lots of styles in the past. There’s what I can do, which is a few things, and then there’s what’s necessary, and that’s a few things. When I find common overlap, I know it’s time to make that record.”