Submitted by: Mount Baker Theatre
In the early 1980s, the genres of country and pop music could not have sounded more diverse. But Sawyer Brown managed to blend two genres into a new category and create a singular sound to lead future artists. Still delighting audiences with their high-energy live performances thirty years later, Sawyer Brown will stop at Mount Baker Theatre for one night, Saturday, September 16, at 7:30 p.m.
Bobby Randall, Jim Scholten, Gregg “Hobie” Hubbard and Mark Miller were the backup band for Don King. When the country music star retired from the road, the rest of the band stayed together. Originally known as “Savanna,” they quickly changed their name to Sawyer Brown in honor of the street where their rehearsal space was.
The band came into the national spotlight by winning Star Search in 1983. For the first decade of their career, the band was playing almost 300 live shows per year. “Live is where it all comes together for us,” says keyboardist Hubbard. “The audience brings its own energy, we bring our own energy and the music – and the combination of all that is what makes playing live music so unique.”
Somewhere amidst their nearly nonstop live shows, they managed to record twenty-three albums in the past thirty years. The awards they’ve gathered for their work include the Country Music Association Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards, Vocal Group of the Year, Vocal Band of the Year (six years in a row) and Video Group of the Year.
The lead singer, Mark Miller, is often mistaken as Sawyer Brown and has resigned himself to just answering to the name rather than correcting a fan. In addition to writing and co-writing a number of the band’s biggest hits, he also produced many of Sawyer Brown’s albums. Raised in the Pentecostal church, Miller’s Christian roots run deep in his lyrics and in his work outside the band. The music label he founded produced the album for the Christian rock band Casting Crowns which went on to win a Grammy.
Merging the worlds of country, pop and rock, Sawyer Brown certainly is not to be missed. Tickets are on sale now at MountBakerTheatre.com.
