Mark Leadon

Mark has been performing extensively in the north Florida region as a solo performer and with the Mark Leadon Band, mainly in the Tallahassee and Gainesville areas. He has 2 albums of original songs and recording a 3rd album of original songs.

Mark Leadon was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota but grew up in San Diego, California, and later in Gainesville, Florida where he graduated from the University of Florida. His older brothers Bernie Leadon and Tom Leadon taught him guitar and banjo and greatly influenced his musical education and direction.

 Bernie is best known as an original member of the Eagles, and played in the Flying Burrito Brothers, Dillard & Clark, with Linda Ronstadt, Gram Parsons, Emmy Lou Harris, and many others. Tom played with Tom Petty and Mike Campbell in a Gainesville band called Mudcrutch, then played with Johnny Rivers, Linda Ronstadt, Silver, and others in L.A.

Mark began playing and recording with bands in Gainesville. After he finished college, he moved to Tallahassee to do engineering work and spent most of his free time playing music in country-rock and bluegrass bands and writing songs.

He released his first CD of original songs, mark leadon blue & lonesome in 2001 featuring bluegrass band Blue & Lonesome. Mark released his second solo CD of original music, Borderlines, in April 2004. Borderlines features Mark on guitar, banjo, dobro, bass and vocals on tracks mixing bluegrass, country, rock, and blues influences. Bernie, Tom, and sister Monica appear on the CD as well as several other guest musicians. The CD was mixed and mastered in Nashville by Grammy-winning engineer Bert Battaglia (Bela Fleck, others).

Following almost 10 years playing straight-ahead bluegrass with Blue and Lonesome, Mark played country-rock/roots etc. with Mountain Road, and briefly with the Recliners, for about 5 years. More recently Mark has performed extensively as a solo artist mixing folk-bluegrass-blues-country-rock originals and covers, as well as, played a number of shows and concerts of exclusively original songs with sister Monica Cooper and supporting band in north Florida and south Georgia.