In 1963, Mike fell in love with blue grass and set his musical roots accordingly. Besides the guitar, he also began playing the banjo, but when he learned he couldn't "move around and sing while playing the banjo," he quickly went back to playing the guitar. With his change of instrument it also led to a change in his music direction, with blue grass offering very limited opportunity, the O'Roark's turned their sights to country rock. The brothers classified their group as a show band. For Mitch it was always his primary business, "I never did anything else," he said, "Never had any other kind of job." And it would be hard to argue it wasn't succesful with the brothers sharing the stage with music greats such as Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Alabama, and Kenny Rogers.
The O'Roark brothers recorded with Jack Clement on February 18th, 1980 for Comstock Records in Nashville.
The O'Roarks made the feature picks with the song "You're Going Out Of My Mind", in Country Magazine.
Mike was declared an expert of Bluegrass Music, for all of the work he did for the Bluegrass Music Community.
Both Mike and Mitch were completely self-taught musicians, both starting at very young ages and learning entertainment was the field they were born for.
On June 9th 1980, the O'Roark brothers appeared on the annual Music City News Awards Show.
After the Awards Show, the O'Roark's were personally thanked by the host for their exceptional promotion of the event, as well as the crowd response post performance.