Hootie Blow Up Again

They were the biggest band in the world, then a punchline. Now they’re back, staging a major summer tour

- David Browne

IN A LOCKER ROOM converted into a makeshift dressing room in North Augusta, South Carolina, the members of Hootie and the Blowfish are gathered in front of a TV, watching Tiger Woods tee off. It’s the beginning of Woods’ Master's comeback, and the band is invested — it played his wedding in 2004, and Woods and frontman Darius Rucker remain friends. The bandmates, golfers themselves, whoop and shout whenever Woods rolls in another birdie. Later, Rucker makes a connection between Woods’ career and the band’s. “It’s funny, the parallels in our lives and careers,” he says. “Neither of us was the pioneer that started it, but we did something really special. We haven’t done this in 11 years, and he hasn’t won a major tournament in 11 years.”

That’s all about to change. Tonight, Hootie is headlining a minor-league ballpark across the river from the Masters, a gig that serves as a warmup for the group’s first full-on tour in more than a decade. It’s the return of a band that was once one of the most ubiquitous on the planet: Hootie’s 1994 debut, Cracked Rear View, sold 10 million copies, with genial, surging Top 10 hits like “Hold My Hand,” “Only Wanna Be With You” and “Let Her Cry.” But then there was what Rucker calls “the backlash.” Their 1996 follow-up, Fairweather Johnson, sold a fraction of the first LP’s total. Saturday Night Live parodied their fratty following with a sketch imagining a million-man march of polo-shirt-wearing Hootie fans. By the time they stopped recording and touring in the late 2000s, Hootie and the Blowfish were a punchline. Rucker pivoted to a lucrative career in country, and the rest of the guys moved on, reuniting for a few charity shows a year.