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UR014: Mark Bryan (Hootie and the Blowfish) [1996 MTV Unplugged]
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Double Diamond certified guitarist Mark Bryan (Hootie and the Blowfish) joins the show to discuss the band’s special homecoming of an Unplugged that was filmed on the University of South Carolina campus and aired just a day before the release of their second album (Fairweather Johnson) in 1996. As a bonus, I also talk to the recipient of the four-year Hootie and the Blowfish college scholarship that was partially funded by t-shirt sales at the Unplugged taping!
If you dig the show, want to share your own Unplugged memories, ask a question, request a show topic, or connect with the pod for any reason, there are a couple ways you can get in touch:
- You can email me at unpluggedrevisited@gmail.com,
- You can reach out on Bluesky at @willhodge.bsky.social,
- You can leave a voicemail (that’ll maybe get played on the show) by dialing 234-REVISIT (234-738-4748)
Recommended![UR013: "The Young-plugged Saga, Part Two" w/ Jon Vesey (Neil Young & MTV Unplugged) [1990, 1992, 1993] image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/66ea0b235fcf51d2c9a0b7cd/43cbefc3-777c-4d93-9915-92abd82876d2.jpg)
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Unplugged.
00:00:14
Speaker
Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Unplugged Revisited, the podcast that celebrates, critiques, and dives deep into the last three and a half decades of MTV Unplugged. I'm your host, music journalist, pop culture anthropologist, and Unplugged obsessive, Will Hodge.
00:00:29
Speaker
My guest this week is the Double Diamond Certified, and just to be clear, that's 20 million albums shipped of just one record in the U.S. alone. The Double Diamond Certified lead guitarist and co-founder of one of the most undeniably successful and inarguably polarizing bands of the entire 1990s. Hey, what's up, everybody? It's Mark Bryan from Hootie and the Blowfish, and you're listening to Unplugged
Hootie's MTV Unplugged Anniversary Discussion
00:00:53
Speaker
Revisited.
00:00:53
Speaker
That's right, Hootie and the Blowfish, whose 1996 MTV Unplugged was yet another curious, multilayered entry in a series of curious, multilayered milestones that this Columbia, South Carolina bar band turned bestsellers of all time quickly accumulated within a dynamically explosive period of popularity and backlash throughout the mid to late ninety s And if you're listening to this episode on the day it drops, yesterday, April 22nd, was the 29th anniversary of Hootie's Unplugged broadcast.
00:01:23
Speaker
And today, April 23rd, is the 29th anniversary of their second album, Fairweather Johnson. So yes, that means their Unplugged was positioned as a bit of a new album drops tomorrow quasi-listening party, which may have informed the overall vibe of the show, but more on that in a bit.
00:01:40
Speaker
No matter where you fall on the Hootie spectrum, love em, loathe em, or somewhere in between, I think today's episode will have some really fun stuff for you. Me personally, I was not the Hootie Target demo.
00:01:51
Speaker
I was only 14 when their debut album, Cracked Rear View, came out in the summer of 94. That was the same summer as Weezer's Blue album. Outkast Southern Playalistic, Offspring Smash, STP's Purple, Nas Illmatic, Oasis Definitely Maybe, Beastie's Ill Communication, singles like Juicy, Regulate, Stay I Missed You, and Fantastic Voyage, Nine Inch Nails and Green Day at an incredibly muddy Woodstock 94. You get the picture.
00:02:18
Speaker
Hootie had zero chance of getting through all that, at least to my 14-year-old self. just not in a very Hootie place right now. But while I wasn't amongst Hootie's mostly
Hootie's Cultural Impact and Success
00:02:27
Speaker
college-anchored, frat-heavy fanbase, I mean, I hadn't even started high school yet, the band does fascinate me from a pop culture anthropological standpoint.
00:02:35
Speaker
Plus, I do think they have a sonically attuned sixth sense for cover song selection and execution.
00:02:54
Speaker
So, as far as Hootie as a pop cultural entity, like, there's no two ways about it. Dig them or don't, they are quantifiably one of the best selling artists, not just of the 90s, but of all time.
00:03:05
Speaker
As of its most recent RIAA certification just last summer, Cracked Rear View has shipped over 22 million copies. The actual Double Diamond certification for 20 million happened back in like 2018.
00:03:18
Speaker
This most recent certification was for 22 times platinum. That places it within the top 10 best-selling albums of all time just on US sales alone and situates it somewhere above Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, certified 21 times platinum as of its last certification in the summer of 2023, and below Led Zeppelin IV, which was last certified 24 times platinum back in 2021.
00:03:43
Speaker
Now, for context, the only other album from the 1990s to appear in that top 10 list is Shania Twain's Come On Over from 97, which has been sitting at 20x platinum since 2004.
00:03:55
Speaker
However, if you expand out to the top 20 best-selling albums of all time, Again, based on U.S. sales, a handful of other 90s releases appear. Garth Brooks' No Fences from 1990 at 18x platinum, Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill from 95 at 17x platinum, and Metallica's self-titled aka Black Album from 91 at 16x platinum.
00:04:19
Speaker
All that to say, I would bet that if you asked 100 random people on the street, Family Feud style, to name the top 5 90s albums, not top 5 albums that were released in the 1990s, but all caps, zeitgeist encapsulating quote unquote 90s albums, I would venture to guess that only two of those records, Alanis and Hootie, would actually show up on the board, and probably for vastly different reasons, but that's a whole nother discussion for a whole nother time.
00:04:45
Speaker
For listeners that weren't plugged in to 90s US s mass media, or maybe weren't even born yet, back in the mid to late 90s, whether you were Hootie's biggest fan or loudest hater, you could maybe pro-con the merits of their massive successes or the nature of their musicality.
00:05:00
Speaker
But one thing there was absolutely zero debating or equivocating about was their mass pop cultural ubiquity. Especially during that 94-96 window, Hootie, more than just as a band, but as a cultural entity, was seemingly inescapable.
00:05:15
Speaker
They landed hits all over the radio dial across multiple genre formats. Top 40 Pop.
00:05:24
Speaker
Modern Rock. Adult Contemporary.
00:05:36
Speaker
The occasional classic rock crossover.
00:05:44
Speaker
and even some perennial presence on the stations that do that year-end format switch to 24-7 holiday music.
00:05:53
Speaker
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
00:05:58
Speaker
They had multiple music videos hit heavy rotation on MTV and VH1, appeared on some pretty popular compilations and soundtracks, won a couple Grammys, landed a Rolling Stone cover, played Letterman like four times in 95 alone, and even transcended outside the normal album cycle pop-ups to become reference points on some of the most popular, high-profile television shows of the era, like Saturday Night Live,
00:06:32
Speaker
And friends. You partied with Hootie and the Blowfish? Yes, apparently Stevie and Hootie are like this. Who gave you that hickey? That would be the work of a blowfish.
00:06:44
Speaker
um And of course, the reason we're even talking about them on today's episode is that they also filmed an episode of MTV Unplugged in 96, just shy of two years after the release of Cracked Rear View, and aired only a day before the release of their second album, Fairweather Johnson.
00:07:00
Speaker
Now, for a few different reasons I'll get into later, Hootie's episode ended up being an interestingly unconventional Unplugged, but I'll save that story for the intersection. Before we get into that, and my interview with Mark, and a bonus mini interview that provides a fun little button to the whole Hootie Unplugged story, let's first take care of a pair of announcements.
00:07:20
Speaker
A heads up to my Australian listeners, I got a press release this week that an Australian supergroup named Monster are going to be putting on a pretty cool looking retrospective, sort of best of MTV Unplugged tribute show at Memo Music Hall in St. Kilda this August.
00:07:36
Speaker
On a few previous episodes, I have sung the praises of the 2018 MTV Unplugged Live in Melbourne series that gave us that phenomenal Courtney Barnett album, Amy Shark doing an awesome Unplugged cover of Weedis' Teenage Dirtbag, and a handful of other great moments.
00:07:52
Speaker
Cause I'm just teenage dirtbag, baby But this press release points the Unplugged lens a bit farther back and promises that the Australian foursome will be, quote, bringing to life the unforgettable hits by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Eagles, Alanis Morissette, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, and many more. I really dig the idea of building a concert around this sort of Unplugged's greatest hits framework.
00:08:16
Speaker
And apart from the Eagles being mentioned in the press release, as you may remember from my first episode, this is my biggest sticking point with the inaccurate corners of the collective memory around Unplugged. The Eagles Hell Freezes Over concert, an album from 1994, is in no way shape or form an MTV Unplugged project.
00:08:34
Speaker
Of course, this and the Bon Jovi-inspired Unplugged false myth are the twin load-bearing pillars of my uh-uh-plugged penalty box that I fashioned and filled in my first couple episodes.
00:08:45
Speaker
Okay, digression over. Where was I? Oh yes, the MTV Unplugged tribute show by the Australian supergroup Monster. Tickets are currently on sale now for the August 15th show, and fellas, there's still time to make sure you do not include any Eagle songs in the setlist, lest I have to make some room for y'all in the uh-uh plugged penalty box as well.
00:09:05
Speaker
Announcement 2 It's time to announce the winner of the Heart of Gold Vinyl giveaway contest that I've been running over the last two episodes. This is the new Neil Young tribute album from Kill Phonic that has some incredible Neil covers by such unplugged alumni as Fiona Apple, Eddie Vedder, Courtney Barnett, and Brandi Carlile, as well as a bunch of other really great artists.
00:09:27
Speaker
The winner of the limited edition Daisy White vinyl copy of Heart of Gold is Andrea Vanderhoek, who wrote, I love this episode. Neil Young is my all-time favorite. The Unplugged album was one of the core soundtracks of my childhood.
00:09:41
Speaker
Keep on being awesome and I can't wait for the next episode. Congratulations to Andrea, and your vinyl copy should be on its way to you shortly. Thank you to everyone else who entered and sent along your stories about your connections to Neil and his Unplugged episode and album.
00:09:55
Speaker
If you're interested in snagging your own copy of the limited edition Daisy White vinyl pressing, you can still pre-order it on Kill Phonic's site right now, store.killphonicwrites.com, and the album will officially be released this Friday, April 25th, as well.
Hootie's Early Days and Rise to Fame
00:10:11
Speaker
Alright everybody, hold my hand and let's hop on in to the Hootie Unplugged intersection.
00:10:19
Speaker
The story of Hootie and the Blowfish can be traced back to the mid-1980s and the University of South Carolina. Fellow USC undergrads Darius Rucker and Mark Bryan met up and first started performing as an acoustic covers duo called the Wolf Brothers before eventually adding in bassist Dean Felber and drummer Brantley Smith and changing their name to Hootie and the Blowfish.
00:10:39
Speaker
By 1989, Smith had left the band for other vocational pursuits and Jim Soni Sonnefeld took over on drums, and the Hootie lineup that still plays to this very day over 35 years later was locked in. In 1990, the foursome released a five-song self-titled demo cassette, which contained an early yet surprisingly almost there version of a little ditty you may be familiar with called Hold My Hand.
00:11:11
Speaker
The next year, they released another demo cassette, this one called Time, that contained two more early, yet surprisingly almost there, versions of a couple more little ditties you may be familiar with, called Time, Time,
00:11:26
Speaker
Why Punish Me? and Let Her Cry. sits alone by lamp, oh,
00:11:39
Speaker
Tryin' to find a thought that's escaped her mind. By 93, they had leveled up to putting out their first proper independently released EP, the regrettably titled Coochie Pop, which also contained early yet surprisingly almost there versions of even more little ditties you may be familiar with.
00:11:56
Speaker
A new recording of Hold My Hand,
00:12:02
Speaker
Only Wanna Be With You,
00:12:08
Speaker
and Old Man and Me, song that wouldn't get re-recorded for Cracked Rearview, but did pop back up as the lead single to their follow-up record, Fairweather Johnson. Well, I know that's said to me, in a voice filled with pain.
00:12:24
Speaker
So the Coochie Pop EP, and yes, that will be the last time I say that on this episode, is what earned the band their major label record deal with Atlantic Records. And they soon got to work with multi-platinum Grammy-nominated producer Don Gaiman.
00:12:36
Speaker
Most notable for his work on the 1976 Stephen Stills-Neil Young collaboration, Long May You Run, a multi-album string of John Mellencamp's most popular 80s albums, and most germane to my interest, my beloved REM's 1986 Life's Rich Pageant.
00:12:57
Speaker
Their major label debut, Cracked Review, and yes, that title was just as much of a cheeky entendre as the EP, was released on July 5th, 1994, and its lead single was an only slightly reworked but freshly re-recorded Hold My Hand.
00:13:12
Speaker
wanna love you the best at, the best that I can. While the radio-ready insta-sing-along did well for a debut single, top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and AC charts, top 5 on the modern rock charts, it was probably the accompanying Posi-Vibes-Only music video that most readily solidified the group's signature were just dudes in a band musical ethos.
00:13:37
Speaker
Within a popular music ecosystem that was not just reeling, but still in major what's next upheaval following the death of Kurt Cobain just three months prior, the band's hooky debut single, immediately identifiable vocalist, unassuming musical demeanor, and completely ridiculous yet unforgettable band name all combined to establish quite the first impression.
00:13:59
Speaker
The remainder of 94 proceeded in a respectable, upward yet measured trajectory. In September, they made their network TV debut on Letterman, Ladies and gentlemen, our next guests are one of my favorite new bands. Their debut album is entitled Cracked Rear View. i have a copy of it right here in the very popular CD format.
00:14:16
Speaker
Here now to perform a great song, are you boys ready? Is everyone ready? Is Hootie ready?
00:14:26
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, Hootie and the Blowfish. And I should note, I will mention Letterman a couple times in this episode, because not only was his show a consistently great platform for musical guests, like In the Realm of Arsenio and Conan and Light Years Beyond Leno, but also, the band has frequently mentioned the seismic impact Letterman had on their early career in multiple interviews over the years.
00:14:49
Speaker
Here's Darius talking to Larry King about it back in 2015. That was the moment that our career changed. we had we had We had been a band for eight years, played a lot, and we had put out a record and it was doing okay in the South, but grunge was king and nobody wanted to hear Hold My Hand it seemed like. And then Lederman, for some reason, ah ah one of the stations in New York played our our record and David heard heard it on the way home.
00:15:13
Speaker
And pulled the car over and called his booking agent and said, I want you to get me this band of Hootie Blowfish. That was a Tuesday, and that Friday we were on the show. And it was it was honestly, Larry, Thursday we were just another band trying to make it.
00:15:25
Speaker
And Saturday morning, everybody was trying to find the Hootie and Blowfish record. It was really of things Letterman made our career. And we could never thank him enough. Okay, back to the timeline.
00:15:36
Speaker
By November 94, Crackery Review was certified gold. And in December, they released their second single, Let Her Cry, which once again went top 10 across pop, modern rock, and AC charts.
00:15:49
Speaker
She says there's the one I love the most. But time's not far behind.
00:16:01
Speaker
Now, while I've already said that I have never been able to count myself amongst the Hootie Target demo, I must admit that I had a brief yet intriguing dalliance with Let Her Cry. And who's to say just how much of that had to do with the hometown divining rods of the song's quasi-homage to the Black Crows' She Talks to Angels and the always-welcome lyrical shout-out to Michael Stipe.
00:16:21
Speaker
But either way, if you ever find me in a Hootie karaoke fever dream, you can bet the house this one's coming out. Also, bonus baller points to Hootie for managing to sneak the name of their first hit song into the lyrics of their second hit song.
00:16:42
Speaker
Okay, on to 1995, an indelible year for a soon-to-be inescapable band. Building on the measured momentum of the prior year, the band's 95 started by immediately kicking into another higher gear.
00:16:54
Speaker
In January, Crack Rear View was certified platinum. In February, they were invited back to Letterman. And in March, Cracked Rear View was certified double platinum, and they appeared on that killer alt-rock heavy Led Zeppelin tribute album called Encomium alongside acts like STP, Four Non Blondes, Sheryl Crow, Rollins Band, Duran Duran, Tori Amos, and many others.
00:17:17
Speaker
Wanna tell you about this girl I love, whom I should look so fine. May of 95 ended up being a significantly huge month for the band as well. First making a third trip back to Letterman, then having Cracked Rear View get certified triple and quadruple platinum just a couple weeks apart, and then seeing Cracked Rear View spend its first of four consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
00:17:42
Speaker
That summer provided another pivotal escalation point for the band following the mid-July release of their third single, Only Wanna Be With You. Ain't nobody so cool
00:17:54
Speaker
The song itself turned out to be the biggest radio hit of their career, peaking at number 6 on the Hot 100, number 3 on the AC chart, and number 2 on the Modern Rock chart. It even went all the way to number 1 in Canada.
00:18:08
Speaker
But I think the song is perhaps more notable for a couple ways it underscored and solidified some foundational characteristics of the band that had been subtly present up to this point, but not yet fully set.
00:18:19
Speaker
First, Only Wanna Be With You was the third consecutive hooty hit to be popular enough to land top 10 across three major charts without any of them reaching number one or achieving individual platinum or gold status, while the album itself was still achieving impressive multi-platinum sales.
00:18:36
Speaker
While many rock bands say that they would rather be known for crafting cohesive album statements rather than just scoring one or two standalone hit singles, Hootie perfectly struck that balance like few other bands have, generating one of the best-selling albums of all time that doesn't actually contain any platinum-selling chart-topping singles.
00:18:54
Speaker
Second, the music video for Only Wanna to Be With You not only ratcheted up the good time having fun-loving dude-bro vibes to maximum levels, I mean Darius is just straight up doing the cabbage patch with his guitar at one point, but it also firmly brought their sports-obsessed passions front and center.
00:19:11
Speaker
Sure, Darius had worn a Miami Dolphins hat on their first Letterman appearance, but now this SportsCenter Cranked to 11 music video found the frontman wearing a full-on Rucker-emblazin' Dolphins jersey while playing catch with Dan Marino on an actual football field.
00:19:25
Speaker
They also played 4-on-4 half-court basketball against real-life and NBA players like Alonzo Mourning and Muggsy Bogues and goofed around while playing golf. Lots and lots of golf.
00:19:36
Speaker
The whole video was even bookended by legit ESPN sportscasters Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, and Chris Berman. as you can see the world of sports taking a decided downswing in the last few days you can't stop hooty you can only hope to contain them The Only Wanna Be With You music video was most certainly the dividing line between Hootie's college rock influences and their frat rock realities.
00:19:57
Speaker
And I don't mean that disparagingly. While they may have lost a few folks who were casually trying to figure out just exactly what kind of band Hootie was going to be, they were simultaneously amassing a massive like-minded fan base on hundreds of college campuses across the country and continued selling millions of copies of Cracked Rear View every month or two.
00:20:15
Speaker
The month after Only Want to Be With You was released as a single, Cracked Rearview was certified 6x Platinum, and the band got a lauded Rolling Stone cover piece with the appropriately hootified headline, Sex, Golf, and Rock and Roll.
00:20:28
Speaker
The month after that, Sheryl Crow and Lenny Kravitz presented them with the Best New Artist award at the MTV VMAs. And the winner is...
00:20:39
Speaker
Hootie and the Blowfish. Mid-October 95 may have been the exact point of peak Hootie popularity, as this was the moment where in the span of just a single week, Cracked Review was certified diamond for 10 million albums shipped, the band's concert became a multi-scene plot point runner on the massively popular television show Friends. Hey Chandler, what is in that envelope?
00:21:04
Speaker
By the way, this didn't seem so dorky out in the hall. Come on. um Why, it's six tickets to Hootie and the Blowfish! And two nights later, a sketch centered around both the band and their overly-charicaturized frat bro fan base opened up the David Schwimmer-Natalie Merchant episode of Saturday Night Live.
00:21:23
Speaker
Chug a beer, satisfied. Live from New York is Saturday night, yeah.
Hootie's Achievements and Legacy
00:21:33
Speaker
After that seismic pop culture apex point, Hootie closed out the remainder of 95 by having their cover of Canadian alt-rockers 5440's I Go Blind appear alongside R.E.M., Katie Lang, Toad the Wet Sprocket, The Pretenders, and more on the Friends compilation CD.
00:21:50
Speaker
Here is!
00:21:54
Speaker
Releasing Time as the 4th single from Cracked Rear View, which went top 20 on the Hot 100, top 5 on the AC chart, and garnered them a second Canadian number 1.
00:22:10
Speaker
Releasing Drowning as the 5th single from Cracked Rear View, which didn't chart on the Hot 100, landed just outside the Modern Rock top 20, and remains notable for possibly being the only song to reference both Public Enemy and Nancy Griffith.
00:22:27
Speaker
Seeing cracked rear view get certified 11 times platinum? And perhaps most surprisingly, considering the average age of the rest of the artist, was invited to perform The Lady is a Tramp at Frank Sinatra's 80 Years My Way birthday special that aired in mid-December 1994. That's why the lady is tramp.
00:22:49
Speaker
Much as they did in 95, Hootie started off 96 on another impressive tear. In January, they received another platinum certification for Cracked Review, bringing the count up to 12, and netted five nominations at the American Music Awards, bringing home a win for Favorite Pop Rock New Artist.
00:23:07
Speaker
In February, they had quite a night at the 96 Grammys, performing I'm Going Home during the ceremony and winning both Grammys for which they were nominated. Best Pop Performance by a duo or group and one of the celebrated Big Four, Best New Artist, which was presented to them by Tupac Shakur and a recently reunited Kiss, who were wearing their iconic 70s era makeup and costumes for the first time in 15 years.
00:23:32
Speaker
Tupac, Kiss, and Hootie made for quite the scene. And the Grammy goes to... Oh, my other homeboys, Hootie and the Blowfish.
00:23:42
Speaker
Hard to know if it was the infamous Grammys bump or just the album's continuing runaway success, but two weeks after the broadcast, Cracked Rear View passed another platinum mile marker, bringing their total to 13 platinum certifications in roughly just a 15-month window.
00:23:58
Speaker
And that brings us to April 96 and Hootie's intersection with MTV Unplugged. Hi, I'm Alison Stewart. Welcome back to Hootie Come Home, an MTV News Visit coming to you from the University of South Carolina here in Columbia, where Hootie and the Blowfish will perform on MTV Unplugged in about 20 minutes.
00:24:15
Speaker
By 96, Unplugged was in a really interesting position. Tony Bennett's widely well-received Unplugged had just won two Grammys at the 95 ceremony, including Album of the Year, the show's second such honor after Eric Clapton's win two years prior.
00:24:30
Speaker
And the show had just come off a phenomenal 95 season that featured some truly amazing episodes from the likes of Sheryl Crow, Hole, The Cranberries, Melissa Etheridge, Live, and others.
00:24:41
Speaker
But it was a season that seemed a bit marked by restraint, possibly aimed at appeasing the rumbling accusations of oversaturating the market, as only one of the season's US-based episodes, Kiss, got an actual album release.
Hootie's MTV Unplugged Episode Analysis
00:24:54
Speaker
So as the Unplugged crew started prepping for their seventh season in early 96, an interesting opportunity started unfolding with a proposed Hootie episode. Now, from a timing perspective, I should note that while Hootie's Unplugged ended up being the season opener, it was not the first 96 episode to actually be filmed.
00:25:12
Speaker
That honor would go to a trio of stunners, Seal, Alice in Chains, and Tori Amos, which were all filmed back to back to back at the gorgeous Brooklyn Academy of Music between April 9th and April 11th.
00:25:24
Speaker
But just a week and a day after wrapping on that conventionally intimate and indoor three-episode filming session, The Unplugged crew found themselves setting up shop on the University of South Carolina's historic horseshoe and brainstorming how to navigate some rainy weather and a rowdy audience of a couple thousand USC students to film the very first Outdoor Unplugged.
00:25:46
Speaker
Now, Unplugged wasn't necessarily averse to creative experimentation. They had hip-hop groups play with live acoustic instrumentation, did a couple spoken word poetry episodes, had a stand-up comedian, and the Hootie Unplugged kind of feels in that same vein of let's tweak the formula a bit and see what happens.
00:26:03
Speaker
The two main ways they did that was to A. Have the performance be outdoors with a bigger, more concert-like audience, though they still had a few rows of fans on stage behind the band to evoke a bit of that in-the-round vibe, and B. Have the performance be framed around the release of a brand new album, as Hootie was set to release their second album, Fairweather Johnson, the day after their Unplugged was broadcast.
00:26:28
Speaker
which itself was only filmed a couple days prior. Also a tweak to the normal formula as that only gave like a two-day editing window. Of those two major tweaks, being outdoors and built around a brand new album release, I actually think the second one might have been more impactful to the overall unconventionality of the show than the first.
00:26:46
Speaker
Meaning, sure, from within the Unplugged aesthetic, it was a little visually jarring to see the band on an outdoor stage with a typical concert-style audience. But I think more potentially disorienting was that from within the Unplugged ethos, it was a little odd for the first impressions of a new album to be experienced through its acoustic variations.
00:27:06
Speaker
To me, that's one of the important foundational elements of the whole Unplugged experience, being able to reframe familiar songs via an alternate acoustic context. But this was a curious tweak to that. It was introducing brand new songs via an alternate acoustic context, which is an unconventional method for promoting a brand new album coming out the next day.
00:27:27
Speaker
Now, don't get me wrong, I completely understand that a version of this happens all the time with morning radio promo tours. where a couple band members promote a new album by playing a casual, low-stakes acoustic version of its lead single, whose electric version is probably already familiar to listeners because it's been playing on the station for a couple weeks by then.
00:27:46
Speaker
But Unplugged, the television show, was not that at all. To that point... Hootie's unplugged broadcast smartly didn't feature an acoustic version of Fairweather Johnson's current lead single, Old Man and Me, which I think was an intentional move to not take away from its in-progress success on radio, as the single ended up going top 10 on the modern rock chart and top 20 the Hot 100 and charts.
00:28:15
Speaker
In fact, even more evidence to the intentionality of not doing acoustic versions of Fairweather singles, their unplugged broadcast also didn't include an acoustic version of the album's eventual second single, Tuckerstown, even though it wouldn't even be released for another couple months.
00:28:30
Speaker
All of this may sound like I'm saying that Hootie's Unplugged wasn't successful, which I'm not. There are a lot of notable positives, which I'll get into in just a second. And I should also note that Hootie fans seem to really view their Unplugged as a standout show and have been clamoring for years to hopefully one day see it get a proper release.
00:28:48
Speaker
And to be sure, it's extremely, quintessentially Hootie homecoming, even down to it taking place on the USC campus, then bringing out original Hootie drummer Brantley Smith to play cello on a couple songs, and Darius wearing a Gamecocks hat and dropping in a few jabs at their in-state rivals, Clemson University.
00:29:06
Speaker
We got one up on Clemson now, they got the Panthers on. At one point, I think he even sang a few bars of the school's alma mater. Kill thee, Carolina, uh-uh-duh-duh.
00:29:19
Speaker
Another cool Hootie-esque side note about the show is that around this time, the band had decided to start Hootie and the Blowfish four-year scholarship at USC, and they ended up selling a special limited edition Hootie Unplugged t-shirt at the taping, with the proceeds going straight into that scholarship fund.
00:29:36
Speaker
And, uh, make sure you stick around to the end of my interview with Mark to hear a cool little button on that particular story loop. Getting into the actual high points of Hootie's Unplugged, here are a couple of the notable things that I think are worth checking out, even if you don't consider yourself amongst the Hootie fandom.
00:29:53
Speaker
And I should note, even though they didn't release this as an album, the episode is available to view if you're a Paramount Plus subscriber. Okay, first, the reworked originals. While I'm personally still of the mind that introducing fans to the new Fairweather Johnson songs through alternate acoustic versions was a tricky gamble, I will say that the acoustic cracked rear view songs they did sounded pretty cool, especially its big radio singles.
00:30:16
Speaker
They bookended the show with a laid-back, drumless version of Time that featured Sony playing a djembe and a boisterous all-skate sing-along version of Hold My Hand that probably made its way into a couple USC recruitment videos.
00:30:29
Speaker
Somewhere in the middle of all that, they also beautifully augmented Let Her Cry with a string quartet. Settle on my lampposts
00:30:49
Speaker
home my
00:30:52
Speaker
Second, their special guests. The band also brought along some incredible special guests for the night. First, as far as artists, they had the amazing singer-songwriter Nancy Griffith and Toad the Wet's Sprocket frontman Glenn Phillips both appear on quite a few songs, old and new.
00:31:08
Speaker
Nancy and Glenn both sang on a pair of tracks each on the actual Fairweather album, but they ended up both hanging around for a substantial amount of the Unplugged set. I can't be
00:31:26
Speaker
The band also invited along violinist Lily Hayden, who not only added quite a few fiery moments to Running From An Angel and Hold My Hand, but who also helped arrange the larger string ensemble on a couple songs.
00:31:38
Speaker
Also notable mention goes to Peter Hulsapel, who was an integral multi-instrumentalist in their touring band, playing piano, accordion, guitar, and mandolin during the taping, and who was also making his second unplugged appearance after playing guitar, bass, and Hammond organ during R.E.M.' 's first unplugged back in 1991.
00:31:56
Speaker
Third, my favorite element of the whole performance are their cover songs. As I already said, I think one thing Hootie does really well is cover songs, both in the way they pick them and play them.
00:32:07
Speaker
During their unplugged taping, they knocked out two incredible covers. First, a full band run-through of Gravity of the Situation by the legendary Athens singer-songwriter Vic Chestnut.
00:32:17
Speaker
you
00:32:38
Speaker
Their version features Darius and Nancy's impeccable dual vocals, and a studio version of it can be found on the alt-rock-centric Sweet Relief 2 compilation that came out just a few months later, which featured all Vic Chestnut covers done by bands like R.E.M., Garbage, Indigo Girls, Smashing Pumpkins, Soul Asylum, and perhaps surprising to, well, just about everyone, Madonna.
00:33:02
Speaker
Fun unplugged side note, the year prior, the band Live also covered a Vic Chestnut song, Supernatural, during their Unplugged, and that exact version can also be found on the Sweet Relief 2 album.
00:33:29
Speaker
The second equally beautiful cover they did that night was a bare bones, one guitar, one voice version of Tom Waits' I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You, featuring just Darius and Mark.
00:33:40
Speaker
Tom Waits is one of my all-time favorite artists, and he has such a unique musical vision that not all covers of his songs hit the mark. This one kind of nails it, though. I really dig it. Well, I turn around looking.
00:33:56
Speaker
Wish I had the guts to bump one but we never met And I hope that I don't fall in love with you So, a few post-unplugged Hootie notes, since the episode was so closely tied to the Fairweather Johnson album release.
00:34:17
Speaker
After their unplugged performance, the Fairweather Johnson album had a brief window of commercial success. In May, the album spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, replacing Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire and being replaced by the Fugees' The Score.
00:34:33
Speaker
In June, the album was certified double platinum, and Tuckerstown was released as the second single. But it barely cracked the top 40, only peaking at number 38, which ended up being the last of the band's singles to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.
00:34:56
Speaker
And this is kind of where the Fairweather Johnson album stalls out, but without exactly taking the band down with it. In many respects, Hootie, and especially Cracked Review, remained pretty firmly ensconced in the pop cultural consciousness.
00:35:10
Speaker
Throughout the rest of the decade, the band that was equally praised and pilloried for the audacity of their normalcy continued to experience some pretty high-profile successes and potshots.
00:35:20
Speaker
For example, they released their third album, Musical Chairs, in the fall of 98, and it went platinum about a month and a half after release, though that ended up being the album's only commercial milestone.
00:35:35
Speaker
Fairweather Johnson got its three times platinum certification around the same time, which ended up being that album's last commercial milestone as well. All while Cracked Rear View continued selling like crazy, hitting platinum in 97 and platinum in 99.
00:35:52
Speaker
And throughout all that, or more accurately, in direct response to it, you'd also see things like Trent Reznor in Rolling Stone when trying to make a point about the lack of inherent rebellion and danger in rock music, summing up his entire argument by saying, Death to Hootie and the Blowfish, you know?
00:36:09
Speaker
Instead, Hootie, and most certainly Cracked Review, seems to have achieved some measure of pop-cultural immortality. Cracked Review entered the 2000s at 16x platinum, was certified double diamond in 2018, and again just last year crossed over into twenty two times platinum.
00:36:27
Speaker
And who knows, maybe with next year marking the 30th anniversary of Fairweather Johnson, their 96 Unplugged show might achieve a little longevity of life by finally getting a proper standalone album release.
Mark Bryan's Insights on MTV Unplugged
00:36:38
Speaker
As you'll hear in my interview with Mark, that at least seems to be a potential option as the band looks to next year's anniversary activities. So speaking of my interview with Mark, let's go ahead and get into it.
00:36:48
Speaker
And again, make sure you stay through to the end for a nice little bonus story about that Hootie and the Blowfish college scholarship I mentioned earlier. So here's my Unplugged Revisited chat with Mark Bryan of Hootie and the Blowfish.
00:37:01
Speaker
For today's show, I've got the good fortune of talking to Double Diamond certified rock star Mark Bryan of Hootie and the Blowfish, one of the most ubiquitously popular bands of the 90s and among the best-selling artists of all time.
00:37:14
Speaker
My immense thanks for joining the show today to talk MTV Unplugged with me, Mark. Thank you so much for having me. Awesome. Well, before we get into any questions about getting to play your own MTV Unplugged in 96, I was curious to know your thoughts about Unplugged in the years leading up to that. Like, were you a fan of the show or had any of the album releases from that early to mid ninety s period?
00:37:36
Speaker
I was a big fan of the show. i did not have any album releases from it, but I well i remember watching several of them you know and being blown away by it. you know The big ones were like Clapton and Nirvana and stuff, but there's so many cool ones.
00:37:49
Speaker
Oh, I remember ah the STP one was really cool. Right. that one was That one stood out to me. Yeah. It was like you got to see these grunge songs broken down as real, so real song like singer songwriter songs.
00:38:02
Speaker
I thought that was really cool. Yeah, that one that one is always a standout for me. It was ah a super cool to see Scott singing from a rocking chair, which was kind of wild. And then you really got to hear Robert's bass lines as well. Sometimes the bass lines get buried. So I'm a big Robert fan too. So like he's fantastic. So good. That's a great fan.
00:38:20
Speaker
exactly Right, right. Yeah. So once it was official that you guys were going to be doing your own unplugged, what kind of creative discussions were going on as far as how y'all did and did not want to approach it?
00:38:32
Speaker
It was really cool a time for us because we had a bunch of new music with Fairweather Johnson coming out right in that moment. In fact, the Unplugged itself was or was scheduled around the release of the record. So we knew we were going to be doing a bunch of those new songs.
00:38:51
Speaker
um acoustic. And then we were in, we had Nancy Griffith sing on the record and we had Glenn Phillips from Toad, the Wet Sprockets sing on the record. So and we invited both of them to sing their parts on the new songs, which I think was super cool for the show and for us as being big fans of both.
00:39:11
Speaker
so it was a really exciting moment with all of our new music in that moment and getting to share it with those guests. And then we did the coolest thing. we We had our original drummer, Brantley Smith, play cello.
00:39:23
Speaker
And we had a four piece string quartet arranged by Lily Hayden, who's a pretty renowned violin player from LL, who who played on Running From An Angel and on the album and everything.
00:39:35
Speaker
So we had her arrange the strings and we brought in our original drummer, Brantley, to play cello in the string quartet, which I just thought was just so cool. So ah we had all five members of Jimmy and the Blowfish on stage at the same time.
00:39:49
Speaker
Right. If playing in South Carolina wasn't a homecoming enough, having original drummer on stage again. Yeah. On national TV. So, I mean, just, just spectacular. And then Darius had the idea of, you know, Hey Mark, learn, ah learn this song by Tom Waits. And then that was the first time we ever did a hope that I don't fall in love with you was um Really? Yeah. I learned it for that show. And in fact, the first time we went through, I kind of stumbled over the finger picking and ah they I was like, hey, is it cool if we do it again? They were like, yeah. Right. We did two takes.
00:40:21
Speaker
Oh, wow. That sort of brilliantly bare, just one voice, one guitar. It sounded like had been playing that for decades. That's one of the absolute standout moments. It's so beautiful. It is a fun, fun little moment. but Great memory for me. I remember being really nervous, but like being so in love with that song and and it was a cool moment for sure.
00:40:40
Speaker
Do you remember kind of what inspired Darius to even ask you to learn it in the first place? was No, it's just one of those songs that he had been listening to. you Like we all, whoever was driving the van got to pick the music back in those days, in the early days.
00:40:54
Speaker
And Tom Waits was just one of those, especially Closing Time, was one of those albums that would be in his rotation. And so we all kind of, we would all fall in love with each other's music through, yeah hearing it but that was one of, one of his that would pop, like it would, Bonnie Raitt would always pop up with him. Rodney Foster would always pop up.
00:41:13
Speaker
Don Dixon. Nice. And, and that time and closing time was, was often in the rotation. And so it wasn't surprising to, you know, and I guess I already knew the song from that.
00:41:24
Speaker
had never played it until the, until the unplug. So that was exciting. Oh, wow. Well, if that if that was your first time playing that in concert, man, you you knocked it out. It took two days, but thank you. Well, um another amazing thing about Y'all's Unplugged was this was also the first one that was filmed outdoors. So I was curious, where did that idea to actually play on the University of South Carolina campus originally come from?
00:41:47
Speaker
It may have been Darius. I can't remember. That sounds like something he would say, let's do it on the horseshoe. And, uh, and I guess he was right or or whoever came up with it. but It might've been something where we approached the university and they, they said, well, Hey, we'd love to showcase the horseshoe. You know, can't remember it to be honest with you.
00:42:03
Speaker
Okay. But it was the right idea for sure. And the way it was lit and, and arranged and laid out was spectacular. Yeah, yeah. I was reading some old newspaper articles and I read that it was like super rainy that day, but luckily it just kind of like stopped enough before the show that it ended up being okay. Yeah, that sounds right.
00:42:21
Speaker
That sounds right. I was also curious, did MTV, you know, once once that idea was floated to do it outdoors, did MTV give any pushback on how that might alter the, you know, unplugged precedent of the small studio intimate audience? Yeah, I think there there was, you know, the we were ah surprised and excited that they agreed to do it outdoors. outside of it. And I remember there being some talk around that, like, Hey, we don't, this, it might've been the first one they did outside the studio. Yeah, it was. Yeah, for sure. There you go. You know, that wasn't something they were used to doing.
00:42:50
Speaker
And, um and I think part of it was just the fact that it was around our second album release as well. It made it such a big event that it, it, it sort of, I think for them was like, it's okay to step outside of our yeah normal thing. Cause if this is for an album release or whatever.
00:43:04
Speaker
um So I, I would be, I'd like to hear their side of it now, but yeah, I remember being you know like excited that they were open to to doing that because I think it worked out great. I mean, the look of it was tremendous and it sounded great. And I think it made a lot of people take notice.
00:43:22
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's ah let's talk a little bit about the set list. So the broadcast was like 10 songs, but I was reading the reports of that night. You you guys actually did about 15 to 17 songs, something like that. Does that sound about right?
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah. So of those 10 that aired, just to sort of set some context, let's start with the four that were broadcast from Cracker Review. The broadcast featured three of the album's four big hits, but you tweaked them all like in some really cool ways. So first, tell us about that sort of chilled out, no drums version of Time that you guys kicked off the show with.
00:43:55
Speaker
um I believe it was like djembe that Tony used to play on that. And it's just a way to hit the kick drum and the snare hit, but just on one drum, just a boom, gaoonon kapoon yeah and um it was a way to do like an acoustic version of time and still had that groove going. yeah He was, if I remember correctly, it was the djembe.
00:44:16
Speaker
And, you know, that's what it comes down to for any song. Can you establish the groove? Yeah. and And we just found different instruments to do it with. Yeah, yeah. and And, you know, and I just um played everything the same on acoustic as I would on electric. And I and i just, i think I added my little Tube Screamer pedal to the acoustic for leads just to have some sustain on them, you know, on the leads. Oh, nice. yeah Yeah. I think Cobain does the same thing. and Right, yeah. You can tell where he's hitting pedals and shit, you know.
00:44:42
Speaker
Yeah. So it's just, it's... ah that I think that was it. It was pretty stripped down. Other than that, I was playing just some, just my J 100 acoustic, you know, a little mandolin too. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. You did play mandolin. I remember seeing that. Cold of dawn or whatever. Yeah.
00:44:57
Speaker
And we had Peter Holzapple, uh, you know, he was still, uh, pretty new with us at the time. And he had done some show, a bunch of shows with us already, but you know, it was within the first year of playing with Peter.
00:45:09
Speaker
Oh, nice. He was it was a, you know, big part of, of the show. Yeah. Yeah. He was on like piano, accordion and acoustic guitar. Like he was just, it seems like every song he was hopping around. Yeah. yeah He was always to be always like the second part that would, you know, where, where we would play in the studio that you couldn't play a lot. He, would he could do it no matter what the instrument was. He's a,
00:45:30
Speaker
incredible yeah yeah and i had one of my listeners just actually tell me recently that um that that was actually peter's uh second time on unplugged i knew peter had played on the 91 rem on plugged but i hadn't registered that he played with you guys as well so that was that was pretty cool the other two songs the the ones from cracked review the big hits y'all augmented let her cry and hold my hand with a really cool sounding string quartet had y'all played with a string ensemble before No, i mean ah I mean, I can't say never, but like not yeah never for a full show like that, you know, where we had full arrangements. Like I said, we had Lily do arrangements for the songs and and then we we had Brantley come in, play cello. And then um ah the the second violin, too, was an old buddy of ours, Dan Cook from the band Lake Wyatt, a while in Columbia.
00:46:17
Speaker
And So he he was part of that. was just cool having old friends you know in the actual string quartet. um and And I think it allowed us to do unique versions. yeah Hey, we're in an acoustic setting anyway. We might as well add these beautiful stringed instruments to these arrangements and see what happens. And Lily did a really nice job with the with the string arrangements. And then we we had a rehearsal beforehand to make sure everybody's on the same page. And I thought it was great.
00:46:44
Speaker
That's awesome. And then for the four new songs that made the broadcast from Fairweather Johnson, which came out like the next day after the broadcast, I thought that's also one of the cool things is I think you guys recorded it on April 19th and it aired on the 22nd, like three days later, which was absolutely the quickest turnaround time for an unplugged, which was cool. But was there any worry or back and forth um about introducing these new songs in a different sonic context than what listeners might hear on the album?
00:47:13
Speaker
Interesting. Well put. like It's a great question. um we ah We weren't too worried about it just because ah nobody even really knew the songs yet to begin with. um you know i think and then and we I think we chose songs that lent themselves to being more acoustic based anywhere in that set. We weren't doing the harder rock tracks maybe.
00:47:36
Speaker
um And then also Alex from MTV was super cool about that. about just like it was it was We kept it about the choreography and the and the arrangements of that night, like a good live show should be. you know Yeah, yeah.
00:47:50
Speaker
I was curious. I think I remember um Old Man and Me was the the radio single at the time, and that was a pretty big, upbeat song. Did you guys, yeah it wasn't in the broadcast, but did you guys even play it that night acoustically or just? Good question. I don't know. I'd have to see that list, you know. I think it was, even if y'all did play it, I think it was interesting to not have it on the broadcast, especially with that one being on the radio at the time.
00:48:10
Speaker
It's interesting that, yeah, and that's probably why we didn't is like, hey, that's the single that's out there and let's do some songs that are more catered to the acoustic vibe. And, you know, that's why you had her stopped. And I think we did So Strange.
00:48:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. yeah Yeah, that one had the string quartet on it too. Yeah, that worked really well with the strings, yeah. Perfect. Of the two phenomenal cover songs y'all did, we've already talked a little bit about, hope that I don't fall in love with you, but let's also talk about the unplugged version of Vic Chestnut's Gravity of the Situation, which a studio version of that actually came out a few months later on that Sweet Relief compilation. Tell us how that beautiful duet version between Nancy and Darius, you know, kind of came to be.
00:48:49
Speaker
It's a we were in studio making Fairweather and um I think Nancy had been asked to be on the Vic Chestnut compilation record.
00:49:01
Speaker
Hmm. that was to go out and and benefit musicians that needed care, needed you know insurance and medical care. And it was it was a big compilation that was being put together for that purpose.
00:49:12
Speaker
And when Nancy was asked to do it, she that was, I think, her idea of like, hey, I would love to do this as a duet with Darius. And it just so happened that we were in the studio making Fairweather at the time.
00:49:24
Speaker
And so she came in to do that. And then we had her sing on Earth Stop Cold at Dawn on our album. So it was ah it was a double whammy. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a nice combo to have. That's a good day in the studio right there. yeah and both Both of those songs appeared on the Unplugged, you know?
00:49:38
Speaker
Oh, I love it. As I'm born and raised in Georgia, you know, Vic Chestnut is somebody that I pull into the fold, even though he was Athens, I pull him into the fold as a hometown hero. But um as a fun little trivia question, just to ask you, did you know that there was actually another band who covered Vic Chestnut during their Unplugged session? Did you ever catch the the band live there Unplugged from the year prior?
00:50:00
Speaker
I probably saw it back in the day. i mean, I was a fan of them as well. Yeah, they did Supernatural um on their Unplugged as well. So it's kind of cool having those two. I was like, all right, Unplugged, man. People are pulling out incredible covers. He's a good artist for that, right? Because his songs are deep and you know they're for they're good for that setting and that moment.
00:50:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um Well, big question here. Hootie fans will be utterly incensed if I didn't ask you, but do you think we'll ever see an official MTV Unplugged album release from you guys next year would be the
Hootie's Scholarship Program and Impact
00:50:30
Speaker
30th? Yeah, it's funny that you should say that because we're talking about what we might do for the 30th anniversary of Fairweather Johnson.
00:50:36
Speaker
And we just had the 30th anniversary of Cracked Review last year while we were on tour. And so we started saying, hey, wait, good what what are we going to do for Fairweather? And so I think that that Unplugged would be a good piece of that. Nice.
00:50:48
Speaker
For sure. you know yeah we've we've talked We've been talking about what to do and and been fine and you know digging up some archives. um We've got some cool unreleased tracks that from that time.
00:51:00
Speaker
Oh, nice. Several. And and ah so that you know there's ah there's a potential collection there. And I think that Unplugged would be a really cool part of it. ah that That would be so great. I tell you, um it feels like more and more artists are kind of like last year, 10,000 Maniacs finally put their Unplugged out on vinyl for the first time. Eric Clapton is doing like an extended reissue that's coming out in May of of his full show. And, you know, they just did the Paramount Plus drop so folks can see the Hootie Unplugged on Paramount Plus.
00:51:29
Speaker
Oh, cool. That would look cool as a vinyl. It's not something we've ever really talked about, but yeah that would be a nice vinyl piece for sure. And you do it in partnership with with MTV and have the logo and everything. It's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even if they're a full release or even if you guys do it for Record Store Day, a couple of bands have been putting their unplugs out for Record Store Day.
00:51:49
Speaker
and So that's a really cool idea. And it definitely goes with the 30th anniversary of Fairweather since we released it around that to begin with. Right. Yeah. All right. Well, everybody, you heard it here first. Fingers crossed that that i we'll be looking for that next year. That's great. but Okay. Let me pause the interview here for just a quick second to set up the little present day postscript about that Hootie and the Blowfish college scholarship fund.
00:52:12
Speaker
Quick backstory. While I was doing some research for this episode, I came across an old newspaper article from 1996 about how the band had started this whole Hootie and the Blowfish scholarship and about the t-shirts being sold at the unplugged taping to help fund it.
00:52:26
Speaker
And the article actually mentioned the name of the incoming USC freshman who had won the four-year Hootie and the Blowfish scholarship. So I did a little internet sleuthing, and it turns out there's a fun little ironic twist at the end of this story. And well, just here, I'll just play the tape. My name is Gloria Cass, and in 1996, I was awarded Hootie and the Blowfish Scholarship.
00:52:48
Speaker
Amazing. Ah, it's so great to get to talk to you today. I really appreciate you responding to my completely random shot in the dark email. And thank you so much for being here. Well, it's a pleasure to speak to you. And I'm just honored that somebody remembers that event. It seems like so long ago. Right.
00:53:06
Speaker
Yeah. This is a reminder to all of y'all, you know, everything is digitized nowadays, but I found her through an old newspaper article. So physical media matters. It does. It really does. So, ah so 1996, you were a high school senior.
00:53:20
Speaker
Give us a little bit of the timeline and backstory behind your memories of like first hearing about the scholarship, applying for it, finding out you won, all that sort of stuff. Well, I have to say, i feel like I cheated a little because i actually didn't apply for it.
00:53:34
Speaker
i was put in the running for it by a family friend's daughter who worked at the financial aid office. so And I didn't know that's how I got it until ah many years later after I had already graduated college. Yeah.
00:53:52
Speaker
Of course, I still had to earn the award, but she had put my name in the running to be considered because it was originally for a nursing student.
00:54:03
Speaker
Darius Rucker's mother never had the opportunity to go to college and she wanted to be a nurse. So they had made it in her honor and they wanted it to go to preferably a nursing student, which I wasn't. I was a business student, but I guess I must have. um They must have liked me. So they gave it to me.
00:54:21
Speaker
Awesome. Very cool. Okay. Yeah, I should say that that's a great point you're making about Darius's mother, because I think technically the scholarship was Hootie and the Blowfish slash Carolyn Rucker scholarship. So they put her name in there, too. So that that makes sense.
00:54:34
Speaker
How about your overall musical taste circa 96, especially living in South Carolina? Were you a hometown Hootie fan at all? I would like to say that I was, but to be honest, my musical tastes were ah typical teenager all over the place.
00:54:50
Speaker
yeah and So they were in my radar, but I was not um exclusively a ah fan of their music. I liked Green Day a lot at the time. there's a great deal of teenage angst involved with that, I believe.
00:55:05
Speaker
I also really just was into old school 60s, 70s rock because that's what I grew up listening to. Pre-internet days, you learned about music through the people you knew. and my father was very much into that old, I call it old. It's not old.
00:55:22
Speaker
ah Now I'm old. It was his music. And I grew up listening to a lot of cream and Rolling Stones and even some 50s music and my grandmother's old school country.
00:55:37
Speaker
So I would say my musical tastes really just run the gamut. Awesome. Okay. I love that. I love that. i I was very curious. I know you said you didn't actually fill out the application yourself, but I was curious if that was one of the questions on the application. How big of a Hootie fan are you? that That's their ah you know secret deciding factor.
00:55:55
Speaker
How did you end up even finding out that you won? Was it just you know letter in the mail kind of thing or how did that happen? Yeah, literally a letter in the mail from the university. And ah again, this was pre-internet and we didn't have cable because I grew up in the country.
00:56:10
Speaker
And so i didn't have MTV either. was a bit sheltered when it came to that. And I got this letter in the mail that said, you have received a scholarship from Hootie and the Blowfish. And I thought, what?
00:56:22
Speaker
It was very confused. I thought it was fake at first. I thought, ah this is not real. What is this? And then I found out that it was. And of course I was excited, but honestly, it was just a big surprise all around.
00:56:37
Speaker
and how about at least from like a timing perspective, did you actually get to go to that Hootie Unplugged taping at USC? Yeah. I did not. it was after the fact. They took the proceeds from the concert and they put them towards the scholarship to establish it.
00:56:54
Speaker
And I believe I was the first recipient. Awesome. From what I understand. So, yeah, I did get a T-shirt though. And I got to um later when I was attending USC, think it was my senior year, I was at a tailgate and I got to say hello to Darius and thank him personally.
00:57:15
Speaker
But yeah, I didn't get to see the concert up close. Oh, okay. That's so cool that you got a face-to-face. That's amazing. And I, you know, i have to ask, do you still have the shirt or is it lost to the sands of time?
00:57:27
Speaker
Oh, you know, after you reached out to me, actually went to look for it and I couldn't find it. I have kept it though over the years. And when I eventually do my spring cleaning in my closet, I'm going to look for it again to see if I can find it.
00:57:40
Speaker
Right. There you go. I haven't looked yet, but maybe after our conversation, I'll see on eBay, maybe if anyone has out there, see how much they're going for these days. That would be great.
00:57:51
Speaker
Right. Well, um the USC Clemson rivalry, I know is a big deal there in South Carolina. Darius even mentions it at the beginning of the unplugged taping and he's wearing a USC hat during the show.
00:58:03
Speaker
So is it a big deal that you are a USC alumni who is actually now working for Clemson or is that like a common thing? Right. that area? Oh, I would say it's pretty common. There's a lot of people that I work with that are USC graduates and Clemson graduates alike. And then it's a friendly rivalry, we'll put it that way.
00:58:22
Speaker
that's Serious, yes but friendly rivalry. i like to take pride in the fact that I have a point of connection with both of those institutions. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
00:58:33
Speaker
So on game day, are your loyalties divided or does one lean over the other? I will admit i will support USC over Clemson when it comes to football. I just can't help it. That's where my heart lies in that regard. Yeah, yeah.
00:58:48
Speaker
Well, that's good. they'll They'll love to hear that because, you know, that's one of the things about this story that cracks me up is it feels like that Clemson getting a USC grad that got the Hootie scholarship to get them through USC. It just it seems like that, you know, you you kind of helped Clemson get the last laugh on that. So I think that's that's fantastic.
00:59:04
Speaker
There was one other thing I just wanted to add, circling back to the scholarship originally being for Darius Rucker's mother. at the time, like I said, my degree is in business.
00:59:16
Speaker
I feel like life has a way of circling around because... My current trajectory in my work is I was working for grant funded programs that reach out to the community and I'm currently working in grants administration and a lot of the grants and the faculty I support, even though they work for Clemson, they are public health and nursing. And so i feel like maybe things come full circle, you know, I'm still supporting that cause and helping to um support that original intent. Oh, that's amazing. I love that. First of all, thank you for the work that you're doing, but also that really does feel like a quite apropos closing of the circle. That's incredible.
00:59:55
Speaker
Thank you so much for talking with me today, Loria. This interesting little button on the story brings me so much joy and I really appreciate your time and being such a good sport talking with me about it today. All right. Thank you so much, Will. It was a pleasure. Awesome. Have a good one. And go Gamecocks, right? Yes.
01:00:11
Speaker
Hilarious,
USC and Clemson Rivalry Discussion
01:00:12
Speaker
right? What a fun little story. Okay. Let's finish up my chat with Mark. Last question. Um, or really this one's just more of sort of a funny, ironic story to bring it back to the present day.
01:00:23
Speaker
Do you remember that at the unplugged gig, you guys were selling limited edition t-shirts and the money went to a Hootie and the Blowfish scholarship to be paid out to an incoming USC freshman that fall? I had forgotten that, but that sounds exactly like something we would have done at the time. And that sounds like a really good idea.
01:00:40
Speaker
Okay. Well, something that is very cool about this story, just to bring it to the present day, is I looked up the winner of who won that four-year scholarship. Nice. And I found out that she is now a manager and grants administrator. And dramatic drum roll, she's at Clemson University.
01:00:57
Speaker
Oh, there is. ah So even though Darius started the unplugged gig by saying we got one up on Clemson, it looks like Clemson actually cleverly returned the favor by professionally benefiting from a USC graduate who was assisted by Hootie the Blowfish's college scholarship funded by T-shirt sales from that unplugged gig. That's That's great. Well, you know, if you know anything about South Carolina, you know that Clemson and the Gamecocks are inextricably like just there's no way around it. we're we're it's ah It's a love-hate relationship of all time.
01:01:28
Speaker
um yeah You have people with bumper stickers on their cars that say house divided and it's like half garnet and half orange. ah kind i it's just It's just part of our state and it runs right down the middle of the state. And it's kind of cool living in Charleston because neither of the colleges are here.
01:01:44
Speaker
Right. So yeah yeah, if you're in Columbia, you're Gamecock. If you're upstate, you're Clemson, you know, so down in Charleston. all the, I only moved here, what, 25 years ago, Charleston, but I didn't grow up here. But I, what I noticed as soon as I moved here is that most Charleston people are kind of neutral about it.
01:02:01
Speaker
ah like We love them both. You know, we hope they both win that kind of thing, you know, right. Right. you Get away with around the rest of the state. So exactly. But I'm game cock through and through. And, uh, you know, it's just so everybody in our band is obviously. And, uh,
01:02:15
Speaker
And you you hate Clemson, but you've got to have respect for the success they've had. And, you know, you you play them every year, so you've got to be sportsmanlike about it. And and ah it's a lot of fun. lot of good natured ribbing goes on in this state every year. Right.
01:02:29
Speaker
Well, that's even one more element. If you do end up a vinyl version, you can press it on garnet and black colors. So to go a step further. You it here first, folks. You heard it here first.
Conclusion and Contact Information
01:02:39
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:02:40
Speaker
Well, Mark, thank you again so much for being on the show today and taking us back almost 30 years to talk Unplugged. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me. so It's fun to talk about that. Nice and nostalgic. I enjoy it. So thanks, man.
01:02:52
Speaker
And there we go. My thanks to Mark for taking some time to chat with me in the midst of a really crazy day for him. And also thanks to Loria for answering the random email of a stranger with a podcast.
01:03:03
Speaker
And I'll just say, much like my last two episodes on the trio of Neil Young Unplugged performances, it would be super cool if these conversations and episodes could contribute in any way to maybe getting some new Unplugged album releases.
01:03:15
Speaker
I'll for sure keep you posted if I hear any future chatter to that effect. Okay, another Unplugged Revisited in the books. If you want to connect with the show for any questions, corrections, or anything else, you can email me, unpluggedrevisited at gmail.com, or leave a voicemail by calling 234-REVISIT, or reach out on social media.
01:03:35
Speaker
As always, please take a moment to follow the pod on your platform of choice so that it'll automatically pop into your feed when it goes live. As far as a little teaser for my next episode, it'll be another artist interview with someone who also played Unplugged in 96, and it also has a tiny little Friends connection.
01:03:52
Speaker
And well, I'll just say, in a nutshell, unless you're down in a hole, Friends don't let Friends miss the next episode. No excuses. Until then, my friends, be kind to yourself and look out for each other.
01:04:06
Speaker
Unplugged Revisited is a Son of a Butch production. The show is written and hosted by me, Will Hodge. The show is edited by Amanda Hodge and myself. Podcast artwork is by Jordan Ullam, and you can find more of their incredible work at jordanullam.design.
01:04:20
Speaker
That's J-O-R-D-A-N-U-L-L-O-M.design.