Rick Monroe

Singer and songwriter Rick Monroe blends country, folk, Texas swing, Southern roots rock, and anything else he can get his hands on, from Celtic ballads to funky blues shuffles, into an easy, approachable country-pop style. It all seems like a natural progression, since the Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, Jim Croce, Jimmy Reed, the Rolling Stones, and other classic artists formed the soundtrack to Monroe's childhood as a boy growing up in Florida. His music career started with hard rock, and he was the lead singer for a hard rock bar band before learning guitar and songwriting, which sent him off in a mellower, more rootsy solo direction that was closer to his personal vision. Monroe started working the coffeehouse circuits, but expanded things with his own band over time, and his relentless touring schedule (regularly over 100 dates a year) has seen him open for the likes of Charlie Daniels, Dwight Yoakam, Montgomery Gentry, Marshall Tucker, Darryl Worley, Eric Church, Emerson Drive, Patty Loveless, Little Texas, BlackHawk, Chely Wright, Sammy Kershaw, and Billy Ray Cyrus (as well as Miley Cyrus), among others, and he has played shows across the planet, from Russia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Hungary to Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, Germany, England, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Firmly in control of his own career, he established his own record label, Divorce Records, in 1996, and has released four albums on the imprint, 1997's Legend's Diner, 1999's Shame, 2005's Against the Grain, and 2012's Crazy Not To.