WASHINGTON — In 1994, the same year Hootie & The Blowfish burst onto the pop-rock charts, country star Alan Jackson issued a clarion call in “Gone Country,” welcoming artists of all genres to come join the Nashville ranks.
Little did we know that Hootie frontman Darius Rucker was listening, planting a seed that would blossom into one of the most successful crossovers of the new millennium (a reverse Taylor Swift).
Now, it’s your chance to hear Rucker’s signature sound as the country sensation hits Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia, on Friday night with his aptly named “Good for a Good Time” tour.
“We like to make our shows parties,” Rucker told WTOP. “Just have a good time, play some music that people want to hear. High energy. It’s all about trying to just get people to have fun and have a party for an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes, and then they can go home and go back to their lives.”
Can we expect a few Hootie songs sprinkled in among the country hits?
“Absolutely,” Rucker promised. “I think I’d be ripping people off if I didn’t play Hootie songs every night. So every night I play some of the bigger hits and a couple cool covers. Like I said, I just want to have a party, man. I just want to have fun. If it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.”
It’s been a crazy ride for Rucker since Hootie’s “Cracked Rear View” hit record stores on July 5, 1994.
“Before that, we were just playing clubs on the East Coast from New York down to Florida, just every six weeks playing the same clubs,” Rucker recalled. “We were doing well, just selling out everywhere we were going, and selling our little EP out of the back of our van, and doing well with that.”
But nothing could have prepared him for the success of “Cracked Rear View,” which landed four singles in the Top 15 of the Billboard Hot 100: “Hold My Hand” (No. 10), “Let Her Cry” (No. 9), “Only Wanna Be With You” (No. 6) and “Time” (No. 14, which also hit No. 1 on the Adult Top 40). A fifth single, “Drowning” placed No. 21 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart (more on that song later).
“We were lucky,” Rucker said. “We had each other and we had been a band eight or nine years at that time, so our career just grew so slowly that when [the success] actually hit, we just didn’t feel like it was anything different. We just felt like our career was taking the step it was supposed to take, and we didn’t really think about our record sales or anything, we were just seeing our shows were getting a lot bigger. That was really the way we saw it, so we just kept doing what we were doing.”
The album got a huge boost when the band performed “Let Her Cry” live on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” a favor the band later repaid during Letterman’s farewell run in 2015.
“Once the David Letterman show happened, it was like wow,” Rucker said. “It was just a rocket.”
Instantly, “Cracked Rear View” shot to No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart, ultimately going 16-times platinum to become not only the top-selling album of 1995 but also one of the top-selling albums of all time. To this day, it ranks 19th on the Recording Industry Association of America’s all-time albums list. If you remove novelty albums (Greatest Hits, soundtracks, live compilations), it rises to No. 13.
That’s right, it trails only Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Led Zeppelin’s “Led Zeppelin IV,” Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” Shania Twain’s “Come on Over,” The Beatles’ “White Album,” Guns N’ Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction,” Boston’s “Boston,” Garth Brooks’ “No Fences,” Alanis Morisette’s “Jagged Little Pill” and The Eagles’ “Hotel California.”
Not only was it a popular favorite, it was a critical darling as the accolades started rolling in. The band won Best New Artist at the 1996 Grammy Awards, beating out Alanis Morissette, while “Let Her Cry” won for Best Pop Performance by a Group, beating out massive hits like TLC’s “Waterfalls.”
Meanwhile at the American Music Awards, megastar Garth Brooks was voted Artist of the Year, but he refused to accept the honor, saying that he thought Hootie & The Blowfish deserved it more.
Rucker told Billboard magazine that Garth’s gesture still gives him chills: “Garth said it best. The retailers told him that we had helped keep the doors open. We were selling records, and bringing people in to buy other records, and he thought we deserved it. That was an amazing moment for us that someone that big and legendary would see what we were doing as that cool and wouldn’t accept that award because he thought we deserved it. That was one of the biggest moments in our career.”
Suddenly, Hootie was a hot commodity. The band recorded a cover of “Hey, Hey What Can I Do” for the Led Zeppelin tribute album “Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin,” along with 4 Non Blondes’ “Misty Mountain Hop,” Stone Temple Pilots’ “Dancing Days,” Cracker’s “Good Times Bad Times” and Blind Melon’s “Out on the Tiles.” Hootie’s cover hit No. 15 on Billboard’s U.S. Mainstream Rock chart.
That same year, Hootie’s cover of “I Go Blind” by the Canadian band 54-40 was featured on the “Friends” sitcom soundtrack. The song hit No. 13 on Billboard’s U.S. Mainstream Rock chart, No. 22 on the Adult Contemporary chart, No. 3 on the Adult Top 40 and No. 13 on the Canadian chart.
“54-40 is a Canadian band that we fell in love with, and they put that on the ‘Friends’ soundtrack, and that song just took a mind of its own, too,” Rucker said, laughing with delight. “It went crazy!”
After these novelty singles, the band got back into the recording booth to cut its much anticipated second studio album. “Fairweather Johnson” (1996) debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart and launched a pair of hits with “Old Man & Me (When I Get to Heaven),” which reached No. 13 in the U.S. and No. 1 in Canada, and “Tucker’s Town,” which reached No. 38 in the U.S. and No. 2 in Canada.
Such airplay would have been deemed a solid success for most groups, but “Fairweather Johnson” could never match the dominance of “Cracked Rear View.” The lack of another big followup caused Pitchfork to place “Fairweather Johnson” on its list of the Ten Career-Killing Albums of the ’90s.
After three more Blowfish studio albums — the platinum-selling “Musical Chairs” (1998), “Hootie & The Blowfish” (2003) and “Looking for Lucky” (2005) — Rucker went solo to cut a one-off R&B album initially called “The Return of Mongo Slade” but ultimately released as “Back to Then” (2002). Still, deep down, Rucker considered the country leap, pondering his roots in Charleston, South Carolina.
“When I was young, it was Kenny Rogers, Buck Owens and ‘Hee Haw,'” Rucker said. “When I got older, I discovered bands like Nanci Griffith, New Grass Revival, Dwight Yoakam and Foster & Lloyd; those bands just blew my mind and made me go, ‘Man, I wanna make a country record one day.'”
In 2008, that’s exactly what he did. Signing with Capitol Records Nashville, Rucker recorded his debut country album “Learn to Live.” Initially, there was skepticism from country insiders.
“Everybody’s calling you ‘carpetbagger,'” Rucker said, laughing. “A lot of people who are friends of mine now said, ‘I never thought I’d play your music.’ It’s pretty open, but they’d look at you with skeptical eyes like, ‘Why are coming over to country music? Why do you wanna be over here?'”
Rucker silenced the doubters when his debut country single “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It” shot to No. 1, making him the first black solo artist to top the country charts since Charley Pride in 1983 (Ray Charles also did it with his 1985 duet with Willie Nelson on “Seven Spanish Angels”).
If Pride was the Jackie Robinson, Rucker’s breakthrough came in the historic presidential year of 2008, marking a huge shift since Hootie’s “Drowning” criticized the Confederate flag: “Why is there a rebel flag hanging from the statehouse walls? Tired of hearin’ this s*** about heritage not hate. Time to make the world a better place.” That flag has since been removed — by a Republican governor.
If you thought you were witnessing history in the making, you were absolutely right. The same album’s “History in the Making” reached No. 3 on the country charts, while the nostalgic “It Won’t Be Like This for Long” and the upbeat “Alright” both went all the way to No. 1. As a result, the Country Music Association named Rucker the Best New Artist of the Year at the 2009 CMA Awards.
“I was first shocked that I got a record deal,” Rucker said. “I just wanted to make a good enough record that they let me make another one. And when ‘Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It’ went to No. 1, it was like, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’ Then two other songs went to No. 1 and ‘History’ got in the Top 5, and it was just like, ‘Wow this is working. They’ll definitely let me make another.”
Needless to say, Rucker was allowed to make another album with “Charleston, SC 1966” (2010), which spawned three more country radio hits with “This,” “I Got Nothin'” and “Come Back Song,” which offered a delicious double meaning for a comeback hit as he begs his ex-lover to “come back.”
“It was the perfect double entendre,” Rucker said.” I wrote that with Chris Stapleton and Casey Beathard … the last song we wrote for the record. I remember that session so well. We wrote it and didn’t think it was going to be on the record, but decided to cut it and it was the first single.”
Rucker’s third country album “True Believers” (2013) proved his staying power on country radio, featuring hits like “Radio” and “Miss You.” But its biggest hit was his cover of “Wagon Wheel,” originally written and recorded by Bob Dylan and later expanded by Old Crow Medicine Show.
“It was crazy,” Rucker said. “I decided to cover it one night when I heard it at my daughter’s high school talent show. The teachers had started playing it and they were playing it really country. I had never really thought about cutting it ’cause I love the song and I’m a huge Old Crow fan, but I just thought it was so bluegrass, I never thought about making it a country song until I heard it that way.”
Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel” rendition hit No. 1, went three-times platinum and won the Grammy Award for Best Country Solo Performance, his first Grammy since the Hootie & The Blowfish days in 1996.
“Even after we cut it … I didn’t think it was going to be a single and then it was and it just got a life of its own. That song took off and it was a shocker. Like yesterday, I was in a restaurant and it played. So I was like, ‘This is crazy. It’s still getting played a lot.’ I definitely didn’t expect it to be as big as it was.”
His fourth country album, “Southern Style” (2015), featured the hit “Homegrown Honey,” which hit No. 6 on the country charts, as well as the title track “Southern Style” which hit No. 38.
These days, he’s working on his fifth country album. Its lead single “If I Told You” was released in July, reaching the Top 25 on the country charts, but the album’s release date is still to be determined.
“Later this year or early next year, we’re still debating when it’s going to come out. I’ve gotta finish it first!” Rucker joked. “This record is going to be a little different. I’ve changed producers and stuff. You try to be a little different on every record, but on this one it seems, even the song ‘If I Told You,’ I don’t think I’d ever done a song like that before and it was cool getting it out and seeing what it would do.”
Expect an early taste of that album this Friday at Jiffy Lube Live, as well as Rucker’s previous country hits and a few of his Hootie favorites. Every now and then, he reunites with Hootie bandmates Dean Felber, Jim “Soni” Sonefeld and Mark Bryan, a Maryland native from Seneca Valley High School.
“We play every year,” Rucker said. “We’ve got charity shows that we do every year here. We’re still a band. Someday we’ll get back together and do a tour, but we’re going to do it when it’s right.”
Yes, it seems like yesterday that Hootie was dominating the mainstream music charts, which makes it even harder to believe that it’s been a solid eight years since he arrived on the country scene.
“It doesn’t seem like eight years at all!” Rucker said. “Early on, not knowing what was going to happen. … Now, eight years later, being a member of the Opry and all the great stuff and just being a part of country music, it feels great. It feels like exactly where I’m supposed to be, and I’m having a blast.”
As he talks, you can imagine that signature smile — a smile that’ll grow even wider when football season returns. It’s no secret Rucker is a huge South Carolina Gamecocks and Miami Dolphins fan.
“I’m so ready for football season. I was talking to my son about that last night. He’s a Packers fan,” Rucker said. “There’s two times of year for me: there’s football season and waiting for football season. So I’m about done waiting for football season. I’m ready to watch some football.”
But the big question, as he admitted in “Only Wanna Be With You,” do the Dolphins still make him cry?
“Not after that 1-15 season!” Rucker joked, referencing Miami’s disastrous 2007 campaign. “After that season, I decided I’m not gonna cry over the Dolphins anymore!”
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