Despite having one of the silliest names in rock (and that’s saying a hell of a lot), there was a period of time in which Hootie & the Blowfish were one of the biggest and most inescapable bands in America. Not bad for a band who formed because Darius Rucker liked singing in the shower. The band formed in 1986, when all four members met each other as freshmen at the University of South Carolina. Rucker and lead guitarist Mark Ryan shared the same dorm, and after Ryan heard Rucker singing in the shower, the two young men decided to start playing music together, covering a number of songs as The Wolf Brothers. Before long they teamed up with fellow freshmen Dean Felber and Brentley Smith on bass and drums respectively, and took a combination of two nicknames of their friends from university as their name. The first incarnation of Hootie & the Blowfish had formed.
However, that incarnation of the band wouldn’t last, as Smith left the group on good terms in 1989. Jim Sonefield joined as his replacement and by 1991, the band had released their first of two demo tapes, the second of which was released a year later. With five years of preparation behind them the demos were an astonishing success, leading to the band having to independently press 50’000 copies of their debut EP “Kootchypop” in 1993 to meet demand. The EP’s success lead to a major label record deal with Atlantic Records, and even though the band were riding a huge wave of hype, nobody could have predicted what happened next. Their debut album, “Cracked Rear View”, was released in July 1995, and was the kind of success that seemed reserved for Led Zeppelin at their prime.
It sold ten and half million copies in its first year of release, making it the highest selling album of its year by a mile, and would later go on to sell a further five and a half million copies by the end of the decade. It stands to this day as the joint 16th best selling album of all time in the United States, and four of its singles were huge hits on the pop charts. Only such a mind-boggling debut could make a follow up selling four million copies with a top 15 hit single seem like a disappointment, but Hootie & the Blowfish had nothing left to prove. They spent the rest of the 90’s and most of the 2000’s as one of the biggest draws in rock, selling out arenas wherever they went, until after a further three albums they went on semi-hiatus in 2008. To this day, they reunite for sporadic live shows, most notably a yearly set of shows at South Carolina’s Family Circle Cup Stadium, and remain a live band to be reckoned with. As one of the true legends of rock music in the 90’s, Hootie & the Blowfish come highly recommended.
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