The story of Hootie & the Blowfish began right here in the Carolinas. More specifically, it started in a bathroom. Darius Rucker and Mark Bryan met in Columbia, South Carolina, when they were both freshmen at the University of South Carolina in the mid-1980s. As legend has it, Bryan, a guitar player, heard Rucker singing in the showers of the dorm they shared and was impressed. They teamed up as a two-man cover band and called themselves the Wolf Brothers.
Eventually, Darius Rucker and Mark Bryan brought in bassist Dean Felber, a former high school band mate of Bryan’s, and Brantley Smith, a drummer. In 1986, they adopted the name Hootie & the Blowfish, which was a joining together of nicknames of two of their college friends. Rucker is not now, nor has he ever been, “Hootie.”
Brantley Smith left the group after finishing college to pursue a career in music ministry, but he has made occasional guest appearances with Hootie & the Blowfish. Most notably, he played cello on the band’s MTV Unplugged performance in 1996. Smith was replaced by Jim “Soni” Sonefeld on drums. Rucker, Bryan, Felber, and Sonefeld have been the lineup ever since, even through their 2008-2018 hiatus when Darius went country.
Since 1994, Hootie & the Blowfish have released six studio albums which yielded 16 singles on various Billboard charts. Thirty years later, the band’s debut album, Cracked Rear View, is still their biggest. It was the best-selling album of 1994 and, according to Business Insider, it remains one of the best-selling albums of all time in the United States. My junior year roommate in college played it on a loop!
In 1993, Hootie & the Blowfish recorded a five-song EP called Kootchypop at Reflection Sound Studios (1969-2014) in Charlotte. Two of the songs from that EP would find their way onto the Cracked Rear View album. For this edition of the Throwback Threesome, let’s look back at the band’s earliest videos.
Throwback Threesome: Hootie & The Blowfish
