Mark Searcy Band, Blues, Resonator, and Slide Guitar

Based out of San Antonio Texas, the Mark Searcy Band's passion is the Blues. Ranging from West Coast Swing to Chicago and Texas Blues and everything in between, the band is led by 2007 Texas Musician of the Year Finalist, Mark Searcy, whose influences include Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Freddy King, Sue Foley, and Kirby Kelley. Mark is joined by featured sideman 2011 Texas Musician of the Year Finalist Rick Boss who has some 40+ years experience of blowing some of the best blues harp on either side of the Mississippi. The majority of the vocals are handled by the lovely and smooth Kori Hubbard with Texas natives Louis Real and Carlos Escobedo rounding out a groovin' rythem section on bass and drums, respectively. Mark Searcy Middleton was born in Benton, Arkansas and played guitar during his teenage years for 5 years before putting it down to raise a family. His favorite music of the day was Carlos Santana, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix, the Doobie Brothers and Black Sabbath. After damaging the fingers on his left hand from a work related accident, he picked up an acoustic guitar to rehab his hand and play at his local church. After having spent much time in Chicago, Memphis, and Austin, he found a calling to the blues and spent a decade studying early electric blues, Chicago Blues, and particularly pre-war blues after introduction to slide guitarist Kirby Kelley of Muenster, Texas. His primary influences are Kirby Kelley, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Kenny Sultan, Mike Dowling, T-Bone Walker, Freddy King, B.B. King, Sean Costello, Sue Foley, Debbie Davies, Chris Duarte, Smokin' Joe Kubek, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Ronnie Earl, Duke Robillard, Elmore James, Derek Trucks, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Steve James, Rory Block, Corey Harris, David Hamburger, David Kampmann, Seth Austin, Blind Blake, John Mississippi Hurt, Tampa Red, Mance Lipscomb, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Ry Cooder, Jack Pearson, Johnny Winter, Tony Iommi, Tonk Edwards, and Matt Schofield. Mark has performed on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, Club Ebony, the oldest juke joint in Mississippi, the Historic Victory Grill, the oldest blues club in Austin, Texas, and Telluride Colorado as a Top 5 national finalist in the Acoustic Blues Challenge. In 2007, Mark was a top 5 finalist for Texas Music Awards - Texas Musician of the Year for the guitar work on a solo, acoustic guitar CD entitled "Blindman's Blues". - 2012 Texas Music Awards - "Producer of the Year" Finalist - 2008 International Blues Challenge - Semi-Finalist - 2007 Telluride Acoustic Blues Competition - Finalist - 2007 San Antonio Guitar Wars - Winner Best Acoustic Performance - 2007 Texas Music Awards - "Musician of the Year" Finalist - 2007 International Blues Challenge - Semi-Finalist - 2006 TBS Blues Challenge - Winner Solo/Duo - 2005 San Antonio Guitar Wars - Winner Best Acoustic Performance Discography Mark Searcy Band - Roadworthy (2011) Mark Searcy - Bullseye (2010) Mark Searcy Band - Wild Night In Texas (2010) Mark Searcy - Slideaway (2007) Mark Searcy - Blindman's Blues (2006) Mark Searcy - Like Father, Like Son (2005)
	Kori grabbed a Fisher Price microphone at age 3 singing along with a static laced AM radio and has never looked back. In her early years, she vocalized chorally for her school and as a late teen sang at Longhorn Cafe in San Antonio for over 5 years. From there, she moved into her first real country band called "Texas Honey" performing locally all over the Texas Hill Country. From there, Kori expanded her vocal prowess into rock, blues, and pop while performing with the progressive Brother Fork and the Spooners and made her debut with them as the opening host band for the annual San Antonio Guitar Wars competition. In the fall of 2008, she joined forces with Mark Searcy as the core of the band and has been humming along every since.
Rick started playing harmonica at age 6 in Hayward, California. At age 10, he debuted at Rocky's Pizza in Hayward with a piano and a banjo and by age 15 was performing regularly with a band. His first big public splash came as the opening act for the Battle of the Bands in 1976 at the San Diego Sports Arena. In the late 70s and early 80s, Rick performed on his first single with the Out of the Blue Band where they entered the charts of local San Diego Radio, while grabbing up local and statewide gigs for the likes of Jim Plunkett, the Oakland Raiders, CMS, and the Sacramento State Fair. From there, he performed with Deacon Jones and the Bucket of Blues Band, where John Lee Hooker would sit in quite often. In the late 80s, while with the Badlands Meanie Band, he opened shows at the San Jose Cabaret for Molly Hatchet, Little Feet, Elvin Bishop, Robin Trower, Pat Travers, Edgar Winter, and Rick Derringer. By the late 90's Rick was performing back in the Bay area with John Lee Hooker Junior and moved to Las Vegas in the early 2000s where he performed and recorded with the Blackwater 5 Band playing at the Roxy and other clubs on the booming Las Vegas strip. Boss moved to Texas in 2007 to check out the music scene performing with a variety of Texas artists including Billy Bob Thornton. On the chill of an early fall evening at Fredericksburg's Silvercreek, his harmonica first collided with Searcy's guitar starting the two's history and leading up to the release of “Wild Night In Texas” in 2009. Rick was named 2011 Texas Musician of the Year Finalist for his harmonica work on Mark Searcy Band's Wild Night In Texas recording.
Louis Real, born and raised on the Real Ranch in Kerrville, Texas has been singing and playing for 40 something years. He took piano lessons for 8 years and reverted to guitar so he could perform at the parties. Louis was never without his guitar. One time he and a friend were plowing a field at the ranch. Louis was on the tractor wheel well playing his guitar and writing. He wrote a song called "Come Over To my Side" that afternoon. His friend's father said that it was a site to behold. He writes his songs about experiences on the ranch and the ladies in his life. In high school he was a member of the all state choir 4 years in a row. Louis won the Songwriters contest at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 1978. He has a song called "Little Butterfly" on the 1979 Kerrville Festival Album. He was recently the recipient of the best musician in the hill country award. He has a belief that he lives by, "If you don't put 100% of your soul into your music you shouldn't perform at all". He believes that you should be totally worn out when you finish a concert or you didn't give your all.
Carlos Escobedo grew up on the King Ranch near Kingsville Texas where his parents worked. Carlos was 9 years old when he found his passion for playing drums. He would sit on the edge of his bed with two makeshift drums sticks, made out of wooden hangers, banging out a beat on his mattress. His parents could stand this for just so long and decided to buy him a drum set. This was the beginning of Carlos' musical career. As he got a little older he started playing with area bands. Smokestack, a well known band in the area, was one of the first bands he played with. He would sit in with the band doing vocals and occasionally playing the drums. He finally put together a three piece band called Medusa, where he sang lead vocals and played drums. In 1975 Carlos married his life long friend, Norma. Together they have three children and nine grandchildren. Carlos and Norma reside in Kerrville, TX Carlos was inspired by musicians such as Bonham and Don Brewer from Grand Funk. Carlos has played with numerous bands over the years. He has played with such as Blind Image, Sol Patch, Rock Trip, John Allen, Wes Creech, Cedar Fever, and Rex Foster. Carlos was voted Drummer of the Year in the reader's choice awards in 2007 and still holds the title today. Carlos has performed many types of music, and loves the Blues.