Mark Hembree Band

media release: Mark Hembree started his music career in Wisconsin in the 1970s, and before long he was hosting a live radio show from the Glenmore Opera House near Green Bay. After a couple of years in Denver with the Monroe Doctrine, he returned to Wisconsin briefly before an audition at a local festival netted a job with Country Music Hall of Fame legend Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass Music. He became a Blue Grass Boy in 1979 and worked with Monroe for five years, then was one of the founding members of the Nashville Bluegrass Band. While in Nashville he recorded with several well-known artists, including the all-star band Dreadful Snakes (with Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck, Roland White, Blaine Sprouse, and Pat Enright) and Peter Rowan (on the Grammy-nominated album “New Moon Rising”). He returned to Wisconsin in 1989, played with local bluegrass groups the Rounders and Nob Hill Boys, and Western swing bands the Western Box Turtles (including Asleep at the Wheel steel guitarist Eddie Rivers) and his own group, the Best Westerns.

As experienced journeymen of the WI bluegrass scene scene, Paul Kienitz, Michael Falk and Trent Cuthbert (New Pioneers, Nob Hill Boys, Sweet Grass, Squirrel Gravy, Dance Around Molly, etc.)…you can count on solid back-up, a unique blend of driving classics, original songs and masterly instrumentals that support the bands sound.