Rick Monroe fuses country, folk, Texas swing, Southern roots rock, and an assortment of other idioms ranging from Celtic ballads to funky blues shuffles, resulting in a relaxed and accessible country-pop approach. Growing up in Florida, he absorbed the sounds of the Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, Jim Croce, Jimmy Reed, the Rolling Stones, and additional classic acts that provided the backdrop to his early years. He first entered the music scene through hard rock, serving as lead singer in a bar band of that style before picking up guitar and beginning to write songs, a shift that steered him toward a gentler, roots-oriented solo path aligned more closely with his own outlook. Monroe initially built his following on the coffeehouse circuit, later adding his own band and maintaining a demanding performance calendar that frequently exceeds one hundred shows annually. In that time he has supported Charlie Daniels, Dwight Yoakam, Montgomery Gentry, Marshall Tucker, Darryl Worley, Eric Church, Emerson Drive, Patty Loveless, Little Texas, BlackHawk, Chely Wright, Sammy Kershaw, and Billy Ray Cyrus, the last of these alongside Miley Cyrus, while also performing on stages around the world in Russia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Hungary, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, Germany, England, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Retaining full authority over his trajectory, he founded Divorce Records in 1996 and has issued five albums on the label: 1997’s Legend’s Diner, 1999’s Shame, 2005’s Against the Grain, 2012’s Crazy Not To, and 2018’s Smoke Out the Window.
