POP MUSIC : Looking Into a ‘Cracked Rear View’

Darius Rucker never believed the hype. For him, Hootie & the Blowfish is much as it was when the band still played bars scattered across South Carolina. The singer can barely even remember the frenetic year of touring, multi-platinum sales and bad press that followed the release of 1994’s “Cracked Rear View.”

What he does know for certain is this: “That’s never going to happen again,” Rucker says without a hint of regret. “We’re never going to sell 17 million records again.”

He seems to find some comfort in those words, as if the massive success of “Cracked Rear View,” one of the best-selling debut albums ever, was somehow more trouble than it was worth. Not that he’s complaining.

Maybe he simply could have done without the inevitable backlash and unrealistic expectations that came his way when two follow-up albums failed to reach the same historic heights. Rucker says he’s happy enough to still see big crowds of excited fans on the band’s current tour, which lands tonight at the Universal Amphitheatre.

“Our last two records, we sold 6 million records [combined] without a hit single,” Rucker says. “That’s fine with us. We’ll be OK with that.”

The members of Hootie & the Blowfish--Rucker, drummer Jim Sonefeld, guitarist Mark Bryan and bassist Dean Felber--met as students at the University of South Carolina in the mid-1980s, and slowly built a following on the Southeastern club circuit with a mid-tempo, folk-rock sound. A hint of their chart potential came when the band managed to sell more than 30,000 self-produced tapes and CDs without the help of a major label.

“So we felt pretty confident that we were going to sell 100,000 or maybe 200,000,” Felber says. “What surprised us was that it kept going and going and going.”

With the release of “Cracked Rear View,” such signature songs as “Hold My Hand” and “Let Her Cry” introduced national pop audiences to Rucker’s rich, soulful vocals and a rock sound that many critics dismissed as flat and uninvolving.

“We definitely don’t listen to the media,” Rucker, 33, says now with a laugh, “because if we had, we would have shot ourselves in the head long ago.”

Bluegrass Strikes a Powerful Chord

The release last September of the band’s “Musical Chairs” album had Hootie & the Blowfish stretching its sound beyond the usual rock ballads, dabbling instead with forceful, R.E.M.-like rock on “Wishing” and straight-ahead bluegrass on “Desert Mountain Showdown.”

Rucker first discovered bluegrass while in his early 20s, finding inspiration in the music of pioneer Bill Monroe. Rucker even plays mandolin on the new album.

“You grow up black and you grow up white and you’re supposed to listen to this and you’re supposed to listen to that,” he says. “When I started listening to bluegrass, I heard these great songs, and these guys were singing them in such a way that I’d never really experienced. It was great to throw myself into that.”

When the summer Hootie tour ends later this month, the band plans to take a year off, during which time Rucker will undergo knee surgery for an injury he suffered after leaping from the stage in Anderson, S.C., four months ago. He then plans to temporarily relocate to New York, mainly to try out big city life after a lifetime spent in the South.

Rucker Contemplates Making a Solo Album

Rucker also doesn’t rule out a solo record next year, though he insists that any side project would be a left turn from the Hootie sound, and most likely echo the classic R&B; of Al Green, Otis Redding and Gladys Knight that he heard while growing up in Charleston, N.C.

“That’s really where my roots are,” he says. “Rock ‘n’ roll is great, and I love the guys I play it with, but I’d love to do an R&B; record. That’s really where I came from, and I’d like to sing that stuff.

“I keep telling my girlfriend I’m going to get ‘Al Green’ tattooed to my shoulder blade, because he’s probably the reason I’m doing this today. I stumbled onto this rock ‘n’ roll thing.”

Now that the band’s sales milestone is long behind, Rucker says he is more interested in inching toward the creative accomplishments of his pop heroes, the Beatles and R.E.M. “We just have to keep making records we want to make,” Rucker says. “I don’t think we’ll ever be at that level. I just want to be remembered somewhere.”

BE THERE

Hootie & the Blowfish, with Dave Wakeling, tonight at the Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, 8:15 p.m. $25.50 to $38. (818) 622-4440.