Cory Marks can sometimes feel like an outsider, a North Bay, Ontario native, former hockey player (and lifelong fan) who dreamed of one day flying his own plane, before sitting behind a drum kit like his idol, fellow Canadian Rush’s Neil Peart. Marks is taking up his territory, equally divided between arena-rock and roots country. It’s a blend that’s proven to be a crowd-pleaser for Marks, joining together diverse metal/Americana audiences on tours with Toby Keith, Five Finger Death Punch, ZZ Top, Travis Tritt and Brantley Gilbert, while joining Nickelback on the main stage at the annual Boots and Hearts festival outside Toronto last summer. Over the last two years, his breakthrough country-rock fusion has paved the way for the success of Morgen Wallen, Zach Bryan, Hardy, and Bailey Zimmerman. Marks’ successful debut, Who I Am, included “Outlaws & Outsiders,” which went Top 10 at U.S. rock radio, eventually certified platinum in Canada, featuring Five Finger Death Punch’s Ivan Moody, Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars and country star Travis Tritt. That was followed by three EPs, including the latest, 2022’s six-song I Rise, which included “Burn It Up,” featured on Better Noise’s The Retaliators Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (where Marks also had an onscreen cameo). To date, Cory’s songs have garnered a total of more than 220 million global streams, and performance slots at over 25 major music festivals in Canada and the U.S. In early 2024, he will cross his native country for the seventh time on the “Liquored Up” tour, starting in Calgary with fellow Canadian country legend Aaron Pritchett, with whom he toured on the original “Outlaws & Outsiders” tour in 2015. “I love rock and I love country. I tried to sequence the new album as if it were a live show, interspersing the slower, acoustic songs in the middle, then build toward the climax, making them fit front to back.” 

“I ain’t the same old shit/I ride in my own lane/Didn’t come to lose/Didn’t come to play. I came to change the game. “change the game”.