Mark Selby

Although based in Nashville, where he penned or co-penned material for prominent country-pop performers, Mark Selby pursued a solo path centered on blues-rock and roots rock as an earthy, gritty singer/songwriter and guitarist. Born and raised in Oklahoma, he spent time in Kansas, earning a music composition degree from Fort Hays State University, before relocating to Nashville during the 1990s. Once settled there, Selby secured a publishing agreement and contributed songs to artists such as Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna Judd, and the Dixie Chicks, among them the trio’s chart-topping country single “There’s Your Trouble.” His most extensive work, however, came with blues-rocker Kenny Wayne Shepherd, for whom he supplied or co-supplied eight tracks on the Live On album. Selby entered a solo contract with Vanguard in 2000 and recorded his first album, More Storms Comin’, under Brent Maher’s production. Dirt arrived in 2003. For his next release, the acoustic Mark Otis Selby...and the Horse He Rode in On, he moved to the ZYX/Pepper Cake imprint in 2006. Nine Pound Hammer followed in 2008 and Blue Highway in 2013. Selby succumbed to cancer in Nashville on September 18, 2017.