Crossing over into country music can come with a lot of controversy, which is something former Hootie & the Blowfish singer Darius Rucker learned in real time while making his transition into country music in the late 2000s. Some assumed he would be entitled because his former rock band was so famous. Others wondered if he was just trying to capitalize on a schtick for a quick buck.
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But according to Rucker himself, he knew he wanted to be a country singer years before his first solo country album, first solo R&B album, and even before the first time he ever met his future Hootie & the Blowfish bandmates while going to college in South Carolina.
Darius Rucker Knew He Wanted To Be a Country Singer in 1992
Darius Rucker, Mark Bryan, Dean Felber, and Jim Sonefeld founded Hootie & the Blowfish in the mid-1980s while the first two musicians were studying at the University of South Carolina. The rock band went on to release decade-defining hits of the 1990s, including “Only Wanna Be with You” and “Hold My Hand.” Their debut album, Cracked Rear View, was wildly successful, earning the title of one of the best-selling albums of all time in the U.S. Yet, all the while, Rucker was secretly longing for a different musical world: country.
Rucker’s transition to country music wouldn’t come until a little over a decade after he reached international stardom with Hootie. But according to the “Wagon Wheel” singer, his love of country music started in 1992 with the release of Radney Foster’s Del Rio, TX 1959. “When I heard that record, all I wanted to do was sing country music,” Rucker said in a 2025 interview with Clint Black.
“I was like, ‘This guy just took me to a whole new level.’ I’d say that to the guys [in Hootie], like, you know, ‘Let’s try to play some country.’ And you know, they didn’t want to. We put a couple of songs on the record, but nobody wanted to really. So, we went and did the rock and roll thing. But I always said I was going to do a country record if I ever got a chance. And one day, I got a chance.”
That chance came in early 2008 when Rucker landed a record deal with Capitol Records Nashville and released his first solo country single, “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It.” This song, along with the two subsequent singles from his first country album, Learn to Live, all hit No. 1 on the charts.
The Hootie Singer Wasn’t Afraid To Pay His Dues
Darius Rucker was no spring chicken when he first embarked on a country music career. He had been in one of the most popular rock bands of the 1990s. He had millions of record sales under his belt. The only thing that was different about his career shift in the late 2000s was the genre. Still, Rucker wasn’t afraid to pay his dues as the “new kid” in the country music world. “We were in a meeting, the very first meeting about the record,” Rucker recalled. “When I was finishing it up, I said, ‘So, what do you do if you’re the low guy? What do you do if you’re the new guy?’ And they were like, ‘Well, you do a radio tour. But, you know, we didn’t think you would do that.’”
Rucker told his team to line up the press tour, and he diligently sat down for interviews with country radio stations around the country to introduce himself as a new artist, separate from his Hootie & the Blowfish past. “For me, it was, ‘If we’re going to do it on this level, I was going to give it all I had. And I knew the best way I could do that was to let everybody…know that I know I’m not anything in this genre. I’m just trying to get on the radio like everybody else.”
In the end, all of his hard work and humility paid off in droves. Rucker is now an incredibly accomplished country singer, just like he dreamed about being when he was singing “Only Wanna Be With You” for the millionth time with Hootie & the Blowfish back in 1995.
Photo by Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock
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