Being a country star isn’t all glitz and glamour.  It’s a lot of hard work, but Mark Wystrach of Midland knows that any day being a country star is better than his best day on some of his old jobs. “I grew up on a ranch, so we had to haul manure, clean the stalls twice a week in Arizona summer, which was 100 and some degrees. That was when we were about six or seven.  We had to do that every day.  As we got older, worked construction in the Arizona heat, also, in the hundreds.”

As miserable as those jobs sound, Mark says there was a worse one. “I’d have to say the worst job, my family owns a restaurant, live honky-tonk bar and saloon, and starting at about age 10 or 11 during Labor Day we had the rodeo and that’s when it was just crazy chaos. And my twin brother and I had to do the dish room and it was probably about 110 degrees, 100 percent humidity in there, and we did a double shift. It was 12 hours. The hardest work I’ve ever done, filthy, you can picture it.”

So anytime Mark starts to “Burn Out” (pun intended) on the road with Midland, he says, “I think about that stuff all the time, actually, before we’re going onstage stage. I think of all the different jobs I’ve had.  You constantly need to take perspective.  So it’s a hard road doing what we’re doing, but beats the hell out of dishwashing.”

Midland – Labor Day  1:05

Mark Wystrach – “I grew up on a ranch, so we had to haul manure, clean the stalls twice a week in Arizona summer, which was 100 and some degrees. That was when we were about six or seven.  We had to do that every day.  As we got older, worked construction in the Arizona heat, also, in the hundreds.  Then in college I was a repo man. I used to repo cars. People that would stop making payments. That was really interesting, and I did that with two of my best friends.

But I’d have to say the worst job, my family owns a restaurant, live honky-tonk bar and saloon, and starting at about age 10 or 11 during Labor Day we had the rodeo and that’s when it was just crazy chaos. And my twin brother and I had to do the dish room and it was probably about 110 degrees, 100 percent humidity in there, and we did a double shift. It was 12 hours. The hardest work I’ve ever done, filthy, you can picture it. So I think about that stuff all the time, actually, before we’re going onstage stage. I think of all the different jobs I’ve had.  You constantly need to take perspective.  So it’s a hard road doing what we’re doing, but beats the hell out of dishwashing.”