Hootie & The Blowfish Working On First New Album Of Original Material In Four Years

04/01/2002 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Brett Anderson

(4/1/02, 5 p.m. ET) -- Hootie & the Blowfish have entered a Los Angeles studio to begin work on their first album of original material since 1998's Musical Chairs. The group has hooked up with renowned producer Don Was, marking the first time Hootie will make a record without longtime collaborator Don Gehman.

The goal in hooking up with Was, whose long resume includes work with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, is to harness the band's live energy in the studio setting. "The first time Don came to hear us play our new songs, he seemed as excited as we were about the new material," guitarist Mark Bryan says. "He heard something in us live that he hadn't heard on any of our records and he wanted to capture that."

The studio time follows a six-month period of writing by the band, itself preceded by a two-year hiatus to make "solo albums and babies," Bryan says. Hootie frontman Darius Rucker says that his work on his own soon-to-be-released solo effort, Back To Then, has had a direct impact on where the band is headed with their new project.

Rucker tells LAUNCH, "I think my singing in the new Hootie record is totally affected by making this record, totally. I mean, it's finally to a point to where I'm actually singing. I think, for all these years I opened my mouth and let sounds come out, and that was just naturally what I did. And I think now, with this record and with the Hootie record I'm actually becoming a singer," he says.

Rucker's Back To Then arrives May 28 from Hidden Beach Records. The Hootie album is expected for a summer release from Atlantic Records.

-- Neal Weiss and Billy Johnson Jr., Los Angeles

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