‘Fairweather’ Friends Despite A Popularity Backlash, Hootie Still Worthy Of Attention

Why are Hootie and the Blowfish still granting interviews?

Once most bands begin selling millions of albums, they retreat from the press, reserving interviews only for high-profile magazines like Rolling Stone.

Hootie and the Blowfish are still talking, even after selling 13 million copies of their debut album, “Cracked Rear View,” and another 3 million of the follow-up, “Fairweather Johnson.” Even after they’ve heard the same canned questions time and time again.

“People still want to talk to us,” guitarist Mark Bryan said by phone from Pocatello, Idaho, last week where Hootie played Idaho State University. “We’re not selling out a lot of the shows coming up, so, you know, it’s cool for us to let people know we’re coming. Probably the last time you heard about us was sometime during ‘Cracked Rear View.’ “

Hootie and the Blowfish play the Spokane Arena Tuesday.

Bryan says attendance at concerts has dipped a bit since last year. In addition, sales of the band’s second album haven’t been nearly as explosive as the first. But the band isn’t discouraged.

“It’s just business as usual,” the guitarist says. “We tour all the time and you can’t always be selling out. We’re still playing some really big places so it’s understandable.”

The band has been averaging about 5,000 to 10,000 people per night. In Spokane, they’ll likely draw somewhere in between.

Hootie and the Blowfish, rounded out by singer-guitarist Darius Rucker, drummer Jim Sonefeld and bassist Dean Felber, prefer the smaller, more intimate climate that comes with playing theaters.

“I almost wish that we were in theaters, one venue size smaller, so that it would sound better,” Bryan says. “It would be more fun all around. The basketball halls are pretty vacuous, if you know what I’m saying.”

As far as crowds go, “we’re just one size above theaters.”

Turns out the band will get its wish. Regardless of ticket demand, the four will return to theaters early next year for a month.

Of course, with the massive mainstream attention Hootie and the Blowfish have been receiving for more than two years, the band has become widely resented by non-fans and been treated as a punching bag by music critics.

A punk rock label has been running ads in fanzines that read “Stop the Insanity.” Pictured below the headline is a black-and-white photo of a harmless-looking Hootie and the Blowfish.

Although the backlash troubled the band at first, Bryan says he and his three mates don’t pay much attention to it.

“It’s been easy just to ignore it. It’s really the only reaction that seems to make sense. Everyone’s welcome to their opinion. There are albums I don’t like, too.

“It’s so much easier if we pretend like all that never happened, like we just went ahead and sold a normal amount of records,” Bryan says. “That’s why we went ahead and did another record just like we normally would have and just play the shows as if we were playing shows like we have been for the last five or six years.

“We disregard the millions of albums (sold) and the backlash. I think in years to come the fact that we sold those millions of albums is still going to be talked about and will still be a wonderful thing to reflect about.”

Wonderful for them, at least. The band could sustain a small Third World country on royalties alone.

Hootie and the Blowfish date to the late 1980s, when Bryan, Rucker, Sonefeld and Felber, four friends from the University of South Carolina, decided to form a band.

The four-piece quickly emerged as a frat-house favorite in Columbia, S.C.

Before signing to Atlantic Records in 1993, Hootie and the Blowfish recorded three independent albums. Those and steady touring laid the foundation for what was to come with the release of “Cracked-Rear View” - big-time commercial success.

Although the band’s latest album has so far sold a fraction of what its predecessor sold, it shouldn’t be regarded as a sophomore slump so quickly.

First, “Cracked Rear View” didn’t make a splash until many months after its release.

More important, “Fairweather Johnson” is a far more diverse and substantial outing musically.

The band packages its trademark hook-heavy, soaring choruses around upbeat, often rootsy rock ‘n’ roll.

To help them reach a creative plateau, Hootie enlisted a group of luminaries while they were in the studio. The list includes Nanci Griffith, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Peter Holsapple.

Ironically, the band’s latest hit, a cover of “I Go Blind” by Canadian band 5440, does not appear on “Fairweather Johnson.” It’s on the “Friends” soundtrack.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Hootie and the Blowfish play the Spokane Arena Tuesday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $27.50, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.