Darius Rucker shares how he stays grounded nearly 40 years into his career
Darius Rucker views making music as just another day in the office.
The Hootie & the Blowfish frontman, 58, tells Page Six that his upbringing has kept him grounded during his decades-long success and rise to fame.
“I mean, my mom raised me right,” he explains while promoting his As One Cru wine partnership with CEO Chris Radomski.
Although the “Wagon Wheel” singer loves what he does, he says that at the end of the day, it’s still “a job.”
“I love it and it’s fun, but it’s a job,” he tells us.
Rucker, who has sold well over 25 million records, doesn’t feel like his career path makes him “better than anybody” else.
“It’s easy to stay grounded,” he says. “You know, I still got to get up in the morning, put my pants on and answer the calls for my kids and you got home and kind of clean the room and make the bed and all that stuff.”
He continues, “I don’t look at it as because I sold records that I’ve done anything so special that I shouldn’t feel more arrogant or anything. I just feel like, you know, my job is good and I’m good at it.”
Rucker carries that same mindset into the studio. He thinks it’s “crazy” to think the band’s debut album, “Cracked Rear View,” has become “one of the biggest selling records of all time.”
“When you’re making a record, you don’t even dream that,” he says. “It’s not even a thought.”
“So when you hear that, you feel a sense of pride and knowing, you know, that we got our shot and we took advantage of it.”
However, the country crooner admits that he hasn’t always had such a level-headed outlook on his career. In the band’s early days, he says they would “freak out” when things didn’t go as planned.
“Now you just know problems are to be solved,” he says.
That’s not the only thing that has changed. The “Alright” singer is currently on tour with his Grammy-winning band and explains that life on the road looks a bit different now that everyone is in their late-50s.
“We’re tame these days so there’s nothing really that crazy,” he says. “But people would be surprised by the amount of wine we drink because back in the day it would be whiskey and all that stuff… Now nobody is really pounding back Jim Bean or anything. We want to sit down and have a glass of wine.”
While Rucker and his bandmates have changed over the years, he says going back on tour was just like “riding a bike.”
“We’ve been doing this for 40 years,” he says. “You know, our last tour in 2019, we hadn’t been on the road in ten years and we just fell right back into it. We have this sense of just falling right back into everything, the hierarchy, the jokes, all the stuff are the same thing because we’ve been doing it for so long.”
While the group tends to lay off the hard alcohol nowadays, Rucker says they typically end the night with a glass of As One Cru wine in their hand.
