Darius Rucker sees making music as just another day at the office.
The Hootie and the Blowfish frontman, 58, told Page Six that his upbringing has kept him grounded throughout his decades of success and rise to fame.
“My mom raised me right,” he explains, touting his partnership with As One Cru wines.
The “Wagon Wheel” singer says he loves his job, but at the end of the day, it’s still a “job.”
“I love it and it’s fun, but it’s a job,” he says.
Having sold more than 25 million records, Rucker doesn’t believe his career is “better than anyone else’s.”
“It’s easy to keep your feet on the ground,” he says. “You have to get up in the morning, put on your pants, answer the kids’ calls, clean your room and make your bed when you get home, and so on.”
He continues, “I don’t think I’ve done anything special because I’ve sold records, and I don’t think I need to be arrogant or anything. I just think what I do is good and I’m good at it.”
Rucker continues to have that same mindset in the studio: He thinks it’s “crazy” to think that the band’s debut album, Cracked Rear View, became “one of the best-selling records of all time.”
“You don’t dream about that when you’re making a record,” he says. “You don’t even think about it.”
“So when I hear that, I feel a sense of pride that we took an opportunity and made the most of it.”
But the country singer admits that he didn’t always have a calm outlook on his career, saying that in the band’s early days, he would “panic” when things didn’t go according to plan.
“Now we know the problem has to be solved,” he said.
That’s not the only thing that’s changed: The “Alright” singer is now on tour with his Grammy-winning band, but explains that life on the road looks a little different now that they’re all in their late 50s.
“We’re pretty laid back these days, so nothing too crazy,” he says, “but people are amazed at how much wine we drink because back in the day we used to drink whiskey and stuff… Now no one’s guzzling Jim Beans or anything. We want to sit down and have a glass of wine.”
Though things have changed for Rucker and his bandmates over the years, he says getting back on the road has been like “getting on a bike.”
“We’ve been doing this for 40 years,” he says. “Our last tour in 2019 was after 10 years off the road, and then we were right back on the road again. Because we’ve been doing it so long, there’s this feeling that everything just came right back together: the pecking order, the jokes, everything’s the same.”
While the group tends to steer clear of alcoholic drinks these days, Rucker said they usually end the night with a glass of As One Cru wine.
