There is so much talent in this story that I almost don’t know where to begin.
But I think the best place to start would be where the tune was born: in the songwriters’ session.
That’s where Chris Stapleton and Jim Beavers penned this brand new country song called “Hold On.”
And then somehow, the song made its way to Darius Rucker when he was getting ready to release new music from the first band that made him famous, Hootie & the Blowfish. Since Rucker took a break from that insanely successful band and launched his country solo career in 2008, he hasn’t really released new music — and certainly nothing country — from that band in the last 14 years.
But the instantly infectious song is one of the recently released singles from the band’s Imperfect Circle album due out Nov. 1.
And Rucker claims that even some of the band’s earliest songs from 1994 could’ve been called country, in their own way. “I truly believe that ‘Let Her Cry’ is the first country song I ever wrote. What we’re doing now and the music we made in our earliest days, even what I’ve done in my solo career — the lines are all so blurred that it’s hard to define genres today. It’s really exciting for me to be back on the country charts, now with my Hootie & the Blowfish bandmates,” Rucker said in a press release, “and to know that at the end of the day people are still connecting with our music all these years later.”
Hootie & the Blowfish — Rucker, plus guitarist Mark Bryan, bassist Dean Felber and drummer Jim “Soni” Sonefeld — famously met at the University of South Carolina where they played fraternity house and bar gigs and the ultimate Charleston music destination, the Windjammer. The now-iconic bar sits on Front Beach on the Isle of Palms, just 13 miles east of the peninsula of Charleston.
The place has been around for 46 years, and holds a special place in Rucker’s heart. So much so that earlier this year, he played a private birthday concert there for 300 friends and family, including his one of his daughters who joined him on stage for “You’ve Got a Friend” during his James Taylor covers set.
