Live Music: Mark Allen Atwood

From a teenager playing the Dallas-area songwriter hangouts in the early 80’s, to being tour support for dozens of national, major-label artists in the 90’s and 2010’s, and still performing from the southernmost tip of Texas, to all points north, Mark Allan Atwood has been spreading his stories and songs across the Lone Star State for over 40 years.

A four-time Texas Music Awards recipient (including Best Male Vocalist 2013 and Live Act of the Year 2014), Atwood has scored a handful of regional Texas radio successes from five full-length albums of original works, including the TMA award winning debut, How Country, in ’09, to the latest, Old Scars & Sandbars, from March of 2023. Both “Happy Thoughts” and “Pedal Down Life,” from Old Scars, were popular singles, reaching new radio and streaming numbers, in Texas and beyond, than previous releases.

A current resident of what he calls “Almost Mexico” (South Padre Island), since 2016, Atwood has played to thousands of island visitors, from all over the U.S. and the world. He’s been back on the big and small roadways of TX, playing more roadshows than home dates, since July 2022, performing stories of right and wrong, love and loss, and the occasional bit of poetry about bugs.