MARK WILLS – Country Musician
Call A to Z Entertainment, Inc. today for free information about how to hire or book the country musician and singer Mark Wills. We are your best booking agent and top talent agency for Mark Wills! We book or help you hire any live professional entertainment you want, to include – country musicians, country singers, and country cover and tribute bands.
Million-selling country star Mark Wills is rekindling his career with new found passion, energy, joy and abandon.
“When people come to my shows, what I want them to see is a country boy having a lot of fun,” says the chart-topping performer. “More than anything else, people want to be entertained. It doesn’t have to sound perfect and sterilized. I’ve tried my best to make my show something that people leave feeling happy.
“And that was the philosophy I wanted to take into the recording studio this time. I wanted aggressive players and a ‘live’ sound. I wanted it to feel like a real band, having fun. That’s the one thing I want people to know about this album. This is me and the band in the studio, doing it live, the way nobody records anymore. We rehearsed, and then we just rolled the tape. And you can hear the difference.”
The robust new Mark Wills sound is on full display in the hurricane-strength party rocker “Panama City.” You can also find it in the unusual lyric of “Hank,” which is built on the premise that the music of Hank Williams can bring us all together, no matter what our cultural or political differences.
Elsewhere on his Equity debut, Wills takes a joy ride in the guitar rocker “Days of Thunder,” shouts through the energetic “Rednecks Anonymous” and roars to the rafters on the stomping “Crazy White Boy.” The gospel-flavored “Jesus and Jesse James” shows that the star hasn’t lost his touch with message songs. Guitars wail and percussion pumps through tracks like “I’m Not Sorry” and the collection’s other deep-fried rockers.
Even the ballads have a powerful, full-bodied sound. And when he slows the tempo down, he turns to strikingly creative lyrics. The superb “Entertaining Angels” is as powerful a story as he has ever sung. In “Her Kiss” he wants to remember a romance with a tattoo of her lips. “Take It All Out on Me” marries a sexy groove with a lyric about a darkened room and a bottle of wine. ”What Are You Doing the Rest of My Life,” “How Beautiful” and “The Likes of You” are all performed in his electrifying, soaring tenor vocal range.
Mark Wills has made a name for himself as the gifted interpreter of such tender sentiments as “Wish You Were Here” and “Don’t Laugh at Me.” The Academy of Country Music’s Top New Male Vocalist of 1999 has also carved out a niche for himself by reinterpreting such r&b love songs as “Back at One” and “Almost Doesn’t Count.” His hit-packed catalog includes the ballads “Places I’ve Never Been,” “I Do (Cherish You)” and “She’s in Love.”
“I still love all those songs, and they are a true representation of me, to a certain degree,” Wills comments. “They’re great songs, and I’m not ashamed of any of them by any means. But if you’re a guy who listens to the radio and all you heard from me was ballad-ballad-ballad, that’s probably going to be your perception of who I am. What gets lost is the fact that I love to rock it up, too. Now I’m putting out a record that I think is a more well-rounded portrait of me as an artist.
“This music is going to take my live show up a notch, too. We’re going to have a lot more uptempo songs and have more opportunities to make the show more entertaining. It’s going to be fun, and it’s going to be energetic.”
Playing live for the people has always been his top priority. Born in 1973, Daryl Mark Williams was raised in Blue Ridge, GA. As a boy he was a fan of country stars like Alabama and Ronnie Milsap, as well as of the hard-rock acts of the day such as Poison, Bon Jovi and Motley Crue. After winning local talent contests, at age 17 Mark announced to his parents that he was moving to the big city of Atlanta to follow his dream.
Mark Wills found both personal and professional success in Georgia’s capital city. He adopted his stage name because there was another country-singing “Williams” in Atlanta, then he became the “house” entertainer for five years at the famed Buckboard nightclub. He met his wife Kelly in an Atlanta nightspot. They married in 1996, the same year that the upbeat “Jacob’s Ladder” jump started his country career. That single was followed by a string of top-10 smashes. His 2000 album Permanently became a Gold Record. Wish You Were Here (1998) went Platinum.
With its heartfelt message of tolerance and charity, “Don’t Laugh at Me” garnered nominations from the Country Music Association for Single, Song and Video of the Year in 1998. Again, career success dovetailed with personal happiness. That is also the year that Mark and Kelly’s daughter Mally was born.
Wills took home the Academy of Country Music’s trophy for Top New Male Vocalist in 1999. A year later he was tapped as the voice of Huck Finn in the animated feature film Tom Sawyer. Two of his musical performances also appeared on the soundtrack.
In the new millennium, his career heated up again. In 2002, his bopping, fun-loving single “19 Somethin’” spent six weeks at No. 1 on the charts. At year’s end, both Billboard and Radio & Records named it the top country hit of the year. In 2003, the family welcomed second daughter Macey. Later that year, Mark Wills signed up to entertain the troops in Iraq, and he has returned each year since then.
In 2004 Wills sang “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” on the tribute CD Southern Rock Country Style. He issued his first live album in 2005. Then came a surprise: a No. 1 iTunes downloaded track in 2006. It was his version of “What Hurts the Most” from his three-year-old CD And the Crowd Goes Wild. When fans went in search of the chart-topping remake by Rascal Flatts, they discovered Wills’ original recording of the song. The time was right for his return to disc.
“This all came about when I started listening to songs, looking for something different,” Wills relates. “Sometimes you get pigeon-holed as to what you can do or what is expected of you. So I was looking to showcase the other side of who I am. Well, when I was listening, I heard several things that were unique sounding. I looked and Brett James was the writer on all of them. Then I found out that he was the producer on them, too. I basically went to him and groveled: ‘Dude, I love this sound! This is the band sound I grew up with.’ And I asked him to work with me.
“When Brett and I started talking, I said, ‘I want players who aren’t afraid to step outside of the normal studio pattern. I want them to listen. I want them to feel it. I want them to have fun with it. I want them to have a sense of ownership about this sound.’
“Then I went around to the record labels explaining our philosophy of recording live in the studio. They went, ‘No way. People don’t record like that anymore.’ Then I got to Equity. At my very first meeting, every single department head was there. I was blown away. They flew out to California to see my live show. They have something a lot of the record companies don’t have, and that’s passion. There are places that you can go to on Music Row where the people are there just because it’s their job. They don’t care, and it’s sad. I’ve found someplace where the philosophy is, ‘Let’s all get together, have input from everybody and all get on the same page.’ That’s been so refreshing to me.
“Getting this record out and ‘reinventing’ myself is going to be a great experience. We have lots of songs that people already know, plus this new energy. I’m looking forward to getting back on the road and putting this new music out there. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’m a guy who just loves to sing and loves to travel.”
Travels from: Texas
We can help you book and hire any live country music bands and country singers. We’re your best agent and agency for booking and hiring country music singer Mark Wills, so call 888-655-4575 to check for available dates. We are not the exclusive agency for any live entertainers on this site.
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