For Darius Rucker, lightning struck twice

Q38:11Darius Rucker on Hootie & the Blowfish and his new country record

Hootie & the Blowfish — one of the best-selling bands of all time — started by accident, when founding guitarist Mark Bryan overheard Darius Rucker singing in the shower at their college dorm.

"It was like nine in the morning," Rucker recalls in a conversation with Q's Tom Power. "I didn't think anybody was in the hall, so I'm belting it, I'm Carnegie Hall-ing it, I'm giving it all I got." The young guitarist waited in the hallway to find out who owned the powerful voice, and when Rucker emerged, Bryan invited him to hang out and play some music together. "That night," Rucker remembers, "Hootie & the Blowfish started."

Today, Rucker — who just released his latest solo album, Carolyn's Boy, in the fall — is a household name. What's even more rare is that he's a star twice over; first, as frontman of the roots rock band that ruled the radio in the 1990s, and then again as a country hitmaker for the past decade or so. In each instance, he's found success against all expectations.  

When Hootie & the Blowfish began releasing music independently in the early 1990s, "grunge was king," Rucker says. "Nobody was looking for this little pop rock band from South Carolina." But the upstarts sold 65,000 copies of their 1993 release Kootchypop out of the back of their van and through mom and pop record shops.

The labels couldn't help but take notice.

Still, there were naysayers. "There were people at the label that said, 'If you put out Cracked Rear View [the band's debut studio record], Atlantic would be the laughingstock of the music business," Rucker tells Power. "Everybody was looking for their Nirvana. Nobody was looking for Hootie & the Blowfish."

Their smash debut, however, would win the band multiple Grammys and become certified platinum 21 times over in the U.S., topping the charts in Canada, too. "If you told us we were going to do that, no one [would] believe it," Rucker says. "The record was at the right place at the right time. And people still love it."

WATCH | Darius Rucker's interview with Tom Power:

Though the band wouldn't reach such heights again, they continued releasing music and touring successfully for another decade, until one day, Rucker — who was always "trying to get the guys to do a country record" — decided to go to Nashville himself. 

"When I got a record deal, I was shocked because I just didn't think I could get a record deal," he says. "Who was going to give the Black pop singer who's had a great run … who's going to give him a country record deal?"

Still, it was hurdle after hurdle. Radio programmers — people Rucker considers "real good friends" — told him they weren't sure their audiences would ever "accept" a Black country singer. "They all said the same thing, 'I love the record, going to play the record; I just don't know if it's going to work' … "I was like, 'OK, let's see who will play the record and I'll get on the road. Let's see what happens.'" That first year, he remembers, he was on the road for nearly 200 days. 

"Once the radio stations started playing it they realized that nobody cared," says Rucker. "We didn't pull a Charley Pride and say it wasn't me or anything. I was in the video … I was on the cover of the record. It was obvious that it was an African-American guy singing these songs. But most people just didn't care. It was a good song, and they liked it, and that's what ended up happening."

The album single Don't Think I Don't Think About It would reach No. 1 on Billboard's country chart, making Rucker the first Black artist with a chart-topping country hit since 1983.  

WATCH | Official video for Don't Think I Don't Think About It:

For more, check out the full interview with Darius Rucker, available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Darius Rucker produced by Glory Omotayo.