Mark Wills to highlight Florida Seafood Festival

The 61st annual Florida Seafood Festival has announced country music artist Mark Wills, a member of the Grand Ole Opry, will take the stage Saturday evening, Nov. 2 as the featured entertainer.

Signed to Mercury Records between 1996 and 2003, he released five studio albums for the label – Mark Wills, Wish You Were Here, Permanently, Loving Every Minute, and And the Crowd Goes Wild – as well as a greatest hits package. 

In that same timespan, he charted 16 singles on the Billboard country charts, all of which made the top 40. After leaving Mercury in 2003, he signed to Equity Music Group and charted three more singles, two of which were later included on his sixth studio album, Familiar Stranger, released on the Tenacity label in 2008.

Of his albums, Wish You Were Here is the best-selling, with a platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America. This album’s title track and the late 2002-early 2003 release “19 Somethin'” both reached No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs charts. 

Besides these, six more of his singles have reached top 10 on the chart: his debut single “Jacob’s Ladder,” “Places I’ve Never Been,” “I Do (Cherish You),” “Don’t Laugh at Me,” “She’s in Love,” and a cover version of Brian McKnight’s “Back at One.”

Two songs originally recorded by Wills, “Somebody” and “What Hurts the Most” were later hit singles for Reba McEntire, Jo O’Meara, Rascal Flatts, and Cascada respectively.

On Dec. 21, 2018, Wills, 51, was invited by Vince Gill to become the 218th member of the Grand Ole Opry and was inducted Jan. 11, 2019.

Born in Blue Ridge, Georgia, Wills in his teenage years played in garage bands, taking inspiration from rock groups such as Bon Jovi. During his young adulthood, however, he began to take an interest in country music. He entered a local talent contest in Marietta, Georgia at age 17, and after winning the contest, began to perform locally.

In 1998, Wills received an Academy of Country Music award for Top New Male Vocalist.

2000–2003. In 2000, he voiced the character of Huckleberry Finn in MGM’s animated remake of Tom Sawyer, Wills’s only film role to date. Also for the film, Wills and Lee Ann Womack, who plays the singing voice of Becky in the film, sing the end title song “Never Ever and Forever” as a duet.

In 1996, Wills married his wife, Kelly, whom he met at Atlanta’s music club, Buckboard. They have two daughters, one of whom, Macey, was featured when in 2022 Wills re-recorded and released his hit “Don’t Laugh at Me” with the acapella recording group, Home Free.

He also has taken more than a dozen trips to entertain U.S. troops in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Korea, and Italy.