His first country album in six years features 14 tracks, eleven of them co-written by Darius Rucker. He’s excited about the quality of songs from noted songwriters Ed Sheeran, HARDY, Ross Copperman, Ashley Gorley, and others.
“I’m such a song guy and I love great songs,” Rucker says. “That’s what I try to do with every record, try to pick the best songs and hopefully people will hear that.”
The album includes the upbeat, heartfelt “Southern Comfort” with lyrics painting vivid images of familiar southern traditions and the joy of shared moments and sweet memories.
There’s Rucker’s latest No. 1 hit “Beers and Sunshine” and his “Ol Church Hymn” featuring country trio Chapel Hart. And it includes “Fires Don’t Start Themselves” with a compelling video that features Rucker doing some acting. He plays a detective trying to track down a couple whose passionate love is setting their town ablaze literally and figuratively.
The full album is out today, and Rucker can’t wait for people to hear it.
“There are a lot of personal songs on this record, a lot of songs I’m glad I got to write because a lot of time writing is my therapy, you know? And I think this record represents where I am in my life right now.”
It’s Rucker’s fifth country album since launching his career as a solo country artist and follows his many years as lead singer of the rock group Hootie & the Blowfish. Extremely successful with both, he’s a three-time GRAMMY-winner whose Cracked Rear View debut album with Hootie is still one of the top selling rock studio albums of all time. And as a country artist, has had 10 No. 1 hits, with his rendition of “Wagon Wheel” ranking as one of the Top 5 country songs of all time.
Rucker downplays the accolades, saying “I’m just a kid from South Carolina who got lucky twice.”
And yet, Rucker, who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina as the second youngest of six children, attributes much of that luck to the love, support, and guidance from his mother, Carolyn. She was a struggling single mother who worked as a nurse and while trying to balance her job, her family, and all it entailed, she was always positive and as Rucker says, “let me be me.”
“She was always so encouraging. If I had a mom who told me to ‘turn off that white boy music’ like my cousins would say, or told me anything negative, I don’t think I’d be here. I remember telling her I was dropping out of college to play in a band thinking she was going to kill me, and she just said, ‘Okay, if that’s what you want to do. It was awesome to have that kind of support.”
She didn’t live to see his success in music, and he wanted to honor “the greatest woman I’ve ever known” for laying the groundwork all those years ago.
“I was in the studio having a bad mental health day and I said to myself, at the end of the day, I’m just my mom’s boy. I’m just Carolyn’s boy. And a calmness came over me. She still influences me every day in so many things I do.”
While Carolyn Rucker has played a major role in her son becoming a lifelong philanthropist through his campaign to build a new children’s hospital in Charleston, and using his music and celebrity status to raise millions of dollars through concerts and golf tournaments for a host of different charities, Rucker wanted to pay tribute in a more notable, more physical way. He wanted to include her name and photo on the cover of his new album.
“The thing I love is seeing her picture. She’s 25 in that photo and it’s my favorite picture of her. Having my record named after her, and having her photo all over social media, I love it. I know she’s somewhere laughing and saying, “Boy, stop!”
As he celebrates the release of the album, it’s been a big week for Rucker.
He gained a star on the Music City Walk of Fame in downtown Nashville joining the ranks of iconic musicians like Elvis, Dolly, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, and others. And as he did, fans in the crowd waved advance copies of that new album featuring that photo, almost as though his mom was looking on, and right there with him.
Carolyn’s boy has done okay. She’d be proud of him for the music, and so much more.
“I do the things she would have wanted me to do because that’s what she taught me. So, I think she lives on in me that way.”
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