Hootie to heat up the Pavilion

By Brenda Neugent

Published: July 10, 2008

The members of Hootie & the Blowfish are obviously getting a little bit older.
It’s been more than a decade since their debut album, “Cracked Rear View,” soared up the music charts and sold more than 16 million copies, thanks in part to a plug from David Letterman, who told viewers on his late night show, “If you don’t have this album, there’s something wrong with you.”
And it’s been almost as long since the band performed on an episode during the second season of “Friends,” and the cultural landscape reflects those changes.
Hootie guitarist Mark Bryan recently confessed that he wore earplugs when he took his daughter and a friend to see the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana concert — not from the music being too loud, he says in an online diary entry on the band’s official Web site, “but from the screaming.”
But age has given members of Hootie & the Blowfish the experience and celebrity to explore new territory and shake things up a little bit, and that’s just what they’re doing.
Lead singer Darius Rucker has gone country on his latest solo venture, hitting the top of the charts with his first single, “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It.”
Bryan is celebrating the release of his second solo CD, “End of the Front,” and Jim Sonefeld is releasing a solo CD in July.
The band’s been playing some of the solo stuff on their current tour, along with hits like “Hold My Hand,” “Let Her Cry” and “Only Wanna Be With You,” and they’ve been well received, said Sonefeld in one of his diary entries.
And in a way, it takes the group back completely to its roots, when Bryan heard Rucker singing in the dorm showers at the University of South Carolina.
After playing covers at a few gigs, the two teamed up with Felber, a former school bandmate of Bryan’s, and later Sonefeld, who the three had met on campus.
The pop hybrid music the group produced proved popular with audiences along the East Coast, and by the time they landed their first record deal, they had a solid fan base that seemingly exploded with “Cracked Rear View” in 1994.
“It became dream-like,” Rucker recalled. “I’d wished for it, but I’m not sure I believed it, even as it was happening. We were on tour constantly; the whole thing is still kind of a blur.”
But the end of the year, the band has won two Grammy Awards, for Best New Artist and Song of the Year for “Let Her Cry,” along with MTV Video Music Award, a Billboard Music Award, a People’s Choice Award and more.
But all the while, Rucker — a longtime fan of Buck Owens and “Hee Haw,”  according to an interview on his Web site — was hoping he could be fronting a country band.
“I believe what we do with Hootie is not that far off from a lot of country music,” he said in the online interview. “I mean, when we first started out, I begged the guys in Hootie to be a
country band, and I just got outvoted.
“And I have always written country songs — in fact, a big joke in the band is that I write these country songs that they have to make rock,
he added. “ So for me, this is really just part of the natural evolution of my career — inevitable, really.”
He hopes to head back into the Nashville studio to record another country album, and says Hank Williams Jr.’s “Family Tradition” would be a dream to record.
“I’ve been in that little twangy rock cocoon for a while,” he said. “But now I get to come out and sing these songs. I plan to be doing this for a long time.”
But this summer, the focus is on Hootie, and the band is taking a break from family responsibilities (all members of Hootie & the Blowfish are husbands or fathers these days) to hit the road.
The group’s tour includes a handful of other Virginia stops before they play the Midwest, making stops in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota before returning to the East Coast for gigs in Greensville, S.C., Atlanta and Cherokee, N.C.
It’s exactly what band members always dreamed of, even during the decade before “Cracked Rear View”  and the followup “Fairweather Johnson” made Hootie & the Blowfish a household name.
“Even if we hadn’t had a hit, I know we’d still be making music today, because it’s exactly what we want to be doing,” Bryan said.
Hootie & the Blowfish will perform at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Carrington Pavilion.
Tickets are $20 and $35 and are available at http://www.etix.com.