By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — This year’s Marshall County Blueberry Festival will welcome home a native son and highlight “…the hardest working band in country music.”
Little Texas’ style of rocking country music will hit the Blueberry main stage on Michigan Street at 8 p.m. on Saturday night.

The band got their reputation because it was not uncommon for the band to play over 300 shows a year, without a bus, without a driver, without tour support from a label. Their first radio release, “Some Guys Have All The Love,” became a top-10 hit, as did their next single, “First Time For Everything.”
After the album First Time For Everything was released, five singles reached the top of the charts. The second album, Big Time, spawned three number 1 singles with “What Might Have Been,” “God Blessed Texas” and “My Love,” capturing the very first CMT award, a Billboard award, a Radio & Records award and a Grammy nomination, and to date has sold over three million copies.
Sunday night at 6 p.m. sees the return of Denver Bierman and the Mile High Orchestra to Plymouth for the first time since their run on Fox’s reality show “The Next Great American Band.” Denver and fellow Plymouth band mate Adam Beck will also be honored as parade marshals.
“What exactly does a parade marshal do? I’m kind of worried about that. They aren’t going to make me carry a baton and whistle and wear a big hat are they?” asked Bierman on the phone jokingly from his home in Nashville, Tenn. “You know some of my favorite memories of Blueberry Festival were as the drum major in the band. You blow the whistle and they march. You blow the whistle and they stop. You blow the whistle and they play. Having 150 people do whatever you whistle for is pretty cool stuff when you’re in high school.”
And having a few days to just “chill” at home before starting a tour of the Northwest U.S. later this month, Bierman also remembers another great Blueberry Festival tradition he plans to indulge in.
“The food, man,” he said. “That’s one thing I’ve learned as I’ve traveled around is we Midwesterners know how to eat. Every year I have to have that rib-eye sandwich at the Blueberry Festival and I always bring home at least two huge bags of kettle corn to Tennessee every year. I give my wife a little bit of it, but that’s my corn.”
Denver and the band have spent the summer working on some new music that they also plan to showcase at the festival.
“We’re going to do a lot of our old favorites,” said Bierman. “But we’ve got some new stuff we’re pretty happy – with so we’ll have a fresh and exciting time.”