Hell does not have to freeze over for Hootie & the Blowfish to get together and play music — as it’s doing this summer on its first tour in five years.
“The fact we’re still Hootie & the Blowfish — that’s all it takes,” guitarist Mark Bryan explains via Zoom from his home in South Carolina, where the band formed in 1986. “I mean, you can hear it in the music. We have a special connection, and it only happens when it’s the four of us together. Not only is that a musical thing, but the friendships run deep. It’s the kind of stuff you can’t make up. It’s all real.
“When we get together, we give each other hugs. ‘Hey, haven’t seen you in a while, but after that, it’s just like it was five minutes ago, y’know?'”
Those relationships date back to the frontman Bryan and frontman Darius Rucker’s days at the University of Southern Carolina — where the guitarist heard Rucker singing in the dorm shower. They started as the Wolf Brothers, turning into Hootie & the Blowfish — named after friends, not band members — after bassist Dean Felber joined. Drummer Jim “Soni” Sonefeld replaced the original drummer, and after years of bar gigs and frat parties, the group released an EP, “Koochypop,” in 1993 that led to a deal with Atlantic Records later that year.
Nobody could predict what came next, however.
The band’s debut album “Cracked Rear View” came out in July 1994 and became a generational sensation on the back of hit singles such as “Hold My Hand,” “Let Her Cry,” “Only Wanna Be With You” and “Time.” Thirty years later, it’s been certified 21-times platinum and ranks among the top-selling albums of all time — and the reason the Hootie crew can operate on its own terms ever since.
“I look at it now as anomalous. It’s one of those things that you can never foresee,” says Bryan, 57. “It’s unexplainable, and the more time goes by, the more I can see how special it was and what an impact our music had at the time — and still does.”
That was not the case at the time, of course. “We were so green; how could you possibly get your head around something that massive when you’re first coming into the business,” the guitarist says. “We thought if we were able to sell 200,000 records, that would be respectable. We were putting ourselves in the category of the Jayhawks, maybe John Hiatt, some of the other Americana acts that were out at the time, thinking we would fall somewhere in there.” Hootie’s first indication of lift-off, he adds, came during the band’s first appearance on “Late Show with David Letterman.”
“There’s never one thing,” Bryan says, “but (Letterman) held the CD up on the camera and said, ‘If you don’t own this album, something’s wrong with you.’ We went from selling 3,000 or 5,000 copies of ‘Cracked Rear View’ a week to the next week selling 17,000 and the momentum picking up from there. And that went on for the next year.”
“Cracked Rear View” also includes a songwriting credit for Bob Dylan on “Only Want to Be With You,” which is not a pleasant memory for the group.
The song’s third lyric references Dylan and lyrics from his 1975 songs “Idiot Wind” and “Tangled Up in Blue.” The rights were cleared for the “Kootchypop” EP, but when the song, re-recorded for “Cracked Rear View,” became a Top 10 hit, Dylan’s camp came knocking for both credit and money.
“We didn’t realize we had to go back and get clearance again because it was a new recording,” Bryan recalls, “so they got us on that technicality … even though the version is no different than the one we did on ‘Kootchypop,’ just a different (recording). You would think that the first clearance would have technically spilled over to the second recording, but that’s not how the music industry works. So there was an out-of-court settlement.”
Hootie & the Blowfish remained a full-time concern through four more studio albums and 14 more years before going on hiatus in 2008. The band members began a variety of solo projects — Rucker’s the most successful as an award-winning country artist, while he and Sonefeld both wrote memoirs. The group came back together in 2019 for a tour and its first new album in 14 years, “Imperfect Circle.”
This year, the group has recorded a cover of the Buffalo Springfield protest song “For What It’s Worth,” which Bryan says is “a song we all absolutely love from childhood. What a great song, and it’s still so meaningful now.”
Future Blowfish recording is up in the air for now, however. The solo work continues; Rucker had a new album, “Carolyn’s Boy,” out last year and received the Country Music Association Foundation’s Humanitarian Award. Sonefeld’s latest collection of spiritual music, “Remember Tomorrow,” came out in 2022, and Bryan recently released a new song, “Coastin’,” from his upcoming album “Popped,” which he calls “just fun and fresh, my best solo album yet.”
“It’s got to be right for four people,” Sonefeld, whose father lives in Saginaw, says of the rigors of getting the band together. “Darius has the busiest schedule, so working around that is the biggest thing. It’s not easy, but … the good thing is we all still want to do it when we can.”
Bryan, meanwhile, holds out hope that there will be more from the Blowfish at some point. “I wish there was gonna be a bunch of new Hootie music, but unfortunately it looks like we’re slated for more solo projects — and fortunately, ’cause I think we’re all making really good music on our own,” he says. “But I’d love to be doing it (together) forever. We still feel really blessed to get to do this.
“We’ve been a band for a long time now. We’ve had a wonderful career — and it’s ongoing.”
Hootie & the Blowfish, Collective Soul and Edwin McCain perform at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 6, at Pine Knob Music Theatre, 33 Bob Seger Drive, Independence Township. 313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com.
