Mark Bryan

Mark Bryan is the lead guitarist and a founding songwriter of Hootie & the Blowfish, the rock band he helped start while a student in South Carolina. Born in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1967, he worked first with his friend Darius Rucker, as an acoustic duo called the Wolf Brothers. When Dean Felber and Jim Sonefeld came on board, that partnership grew into the group that carried his songwriting to a national audience.

The breakthrough came with Cracked Rear View, the band's 1994 debut, which has been certified platinum sixteen times and ranks among the best-selling albums in the United States. It won Billboard's Band of the Year Award in 1996 and the RIAA's Diamond Award for sales of ten million units. The band has since moved apart, yet still performs together several times a year. Bryan is a regular at the Monday After the Masters Celebrity Pro-Am, whose proceeds go to the Hootie & the Blowfish Foundation, and he has released three solo albums: 30 on the Rail, End of the Front and Songs of the Fortnight.