Our story starts back in April 1997 when we went to a bar to watch Kim's brothers (Mark and Chris Mancini) play in a band called Shawn Nelson and the Mountain Access. The guys did the customary bar thing that every aspiring musician must do to get into the country music business, you know, pay your dues! Put in the long hours for little pay; anyway, this went on for nearly a year when a very young girl who was nearly13 years of age approached the band and asked if she could audition for them, she needed a back up band. The young girl's name was Robyn Pauhl, she became a special guest of the band until the bands break up in May of 1998. Mark and Chris jumped over to a band called the Bareback Riders and Robyn followed. The new Bareback Riders went through some member changes until the present group of guys (Chris Mancini, Mark Mancini, Colin Connors, Joe Allain and Kurk Bernard) became the full time band members of today.

  While all this was happening I started to dabble in the computer age, first doing the customary thing; a guy buys a high powered computer for, no not work, for playing GAMES with of course. This kept me occupied for a week or so until I thought I would put the computer to better use (to play a joke on Robyn). Robyn had just finished getting back from Nashville with her six song demo. I made up a mock CD insert with pics and all the inner covers to kid around and bug Robyn with. It back fired on me, not only did Robyn love it but she wanted me to make them for her! You see I guess you need a large quantity of CD's or the printer wants a kings ransom to do just a few. I printed up the first 150 CD jackets for Robyn, thus it was time to get them professionally done. 

  I soon realized I wanted to help Robyn further, I told her her present web site was good but had no sound. She needed to have Mp3 clips on it, not known to Robyn I was already playing around with web designs. I informed Robyn to check out her new Mp3 site on the web. Again Robyn fell in love with the site, to my surprise she wanted me to do her Official Web Site.  I was honoured!. I designed and built her site and took it up to the point where she was getting 10,000 visitors a month. We became really close, good friends with Robyn and her mom Wendy but circumstances beyond all of our control made it no longer possible to continue this stage of development, and although we still cared about Robyn we knew it was time to move on.

  Some people say you can't learn anything from a teenage girl, but we did! We learned how hard it was to get into the music business and how much work and strong determination  an up and coming artist goes through, and how often their dreams are shattered due to lack of promotion or people who just care about "how much can you pay". We knew we would not be content with helping only one artists we wanted to help all of them so on February 28 1999 Opry North was born. All we can promise is that we will support new independent and signed country music artists to the best of our abilities. We believe whole heartily that if we work together we will change the country music scene in Canada forever.

We at Opry North would like to thank the artists who believed in us early on in the start... Robyn Pauhl, John Landry, Diane Chase, Jamie Warren, Bill McCartney, and The Bareback Riders, Kim Remus, and Victoria Shaw, you guys will always be in our prayers.  A special thanks to all our web site visitors, without you this would never happen.

Thanks again.

Wayne Tozzi- Opry North