UPDATED 6/11 11:23 a.m.
Music is the keeper of inarticulate memories. Moments that exist outside of time and float around in your brain; just a feeling that something once happened and it mattered. The moments that came and passed in the blink of an eye. Moments you forgot to remember, that is, until a certain song comes on.
When I hear a Hootie and The Blowfish song, I’m suddenly six years old riding in the backseat with my mom singing and the windows down. I’m eight and dancing around the kitchen with bare feet. Everything is sunny and warm. I cut my teeth on songs from Hootie and The Blowfish’s 1994 debut album, Cracked Rearview, despite the fact that it hit the airwaves before I was born.
RELATED: Photos of Hootie and the Blowfish and Barenaked Ladies playing Tampa.
Fast-forward to Sunday night, 25 years after the release of that iconic album, and while it’s warm, the thunder and lightning overhead make it far from sunny. I’m packed into the MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre along with nearly 20,000 other fans eager to see the band performing together for the first time in almost 15 years.
In their T-shirts and blue jeans, Darius Rucker, Mark Bryan, Dean Felber and Jim Sonefeld made us feel as if the hiatus had never happened. Well, almost. There were a few songs pulled from Rucker’s solo career, but that just added to the fun.
Opened by ‘90s Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies, the Tampa leg of the “Group Therapy Tour” took off at 7:30 p.m. with spotlights beaming into the crowd and anxious concert-goers (many of whom had been camping out on the lawn all day) rushing back to their seats with Bud Lite tall boys and french fries in hand.
Barenaked Ladies played its part to perfection, and looked like it was having a blast doing it. The band riled up the crowd by dancing around the stage, cracking jokes about their age, tricking the crowd into believing Sarah McLaughlin was coming out (she most certainly did not) and belting out the iconic, rapid-fire crowd-pleaser “One Week.”
“We’ve been doing this since you had to rewind your tape with a pencil,” frontman Ed Robertson joked, “That’s how long we’ve been rockin’… That’s not a euphemism, that was a real way to rewind a cassette.”
After a number of sick guitar and stand-up bass solos, Bakenaked Ladies played out of their hour-long set with “Another One Bites the Dust,” and turned the stage over for the main event.
With a major nod to ‘90s culture, Rucker and the band opened the set by playing a sample from Pulp Fiction where Samuel L. Jackson recites a part of the bible verse Ezekiel 25:17.
"The path of the righteous band is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men…" the PA announced with a booming voice before the band dove into “Hannah Jane.”
From the pit to the lawn, where the rain was pouring, the entire crowd was on its feet, swaying along to the classic melodies and tambourine shakes Hootie and The Blowfish fans know and love.
The band’s energy was a little lackluster early on in the set, but once Barenaked Ladies joined them on the stage for a cover of The Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the show lit up.
Classic hits like “Hold My Hand”, “Alright” and “Time” had couples dancing in the aisles and the crowd clapping and singing along, while the band’s more emotional songs like “Let Her Cry” and “Goodbye,” highlighted Rucker’s ability to push his soulful, gravely vibrato to the limit.
The band paid (and played) homage to a variety of artists, enlisting the banjo for Led Zeppelín’s “Hey Hey What Can I Do” and singing “by and by” from “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” along with the crowd. One artist in particular, Rucker said, changed the way the members of Hootie and The Blowfish lived their lives, honoring R.E.M. with its rad, plucky rendition of “Losing My Religion.”
Throughout the show, the band was backed by a screen showing hand-scrawled fliers, polaroids, road footage, photos of band, members’ high schools and other nostalgic footage.
Some of the most high-energy performances of the night came when Rucker broke into his more recent solo singles, but he got a good laugh out of the irony. According to Rucker, one of the guys behind Lady Antebellum threatened to punch him in the throat if he didn’t perform his rendition of “Wagon Wheel” at the show. He didn’t want to get throat-punched, and the crowd was happy to oblige, jumping up and down and screaming at Rucker’s mid-song interjection, “Who loves country music out here?”
When the lights went out and the band left the stage singing “Goodbye,” no one budged. No one chanted encore. Not because they didn’t want it. They knew the show wasn’t over yet. Among the cheers, people reassured each other: “Don’t worry, it’s not over. They haven’t even played their most popular song.”
Hootie and The Blowfish didn’t come all the way to Tampa to disappoint. Two minutes later the drum set lit back up with a tropical beat, and the band broke back into “Go and Tell Him.” Rucker slung his guitar over his back and danced the whole way through that “most popular song” — “Only Wanna Be With You.”
Finally, with John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” the crowd began to file out into the rain again.
Hootie and The Blowfish may be a band of yesterday, but as the song goes, “Tomorrow’s just another day, and I don’t believe in time.” And if Sunday’s show is any indication, neither do I.
See more photos from the show via photos.cltampa.com.
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This article appears in Jun 6-13, 2019.