Mark Bryan – 30 Years In and Still Trying to Find a Tune

Mark Bryan

30 Years in and Still Trying to Find a Tune

by George Seth Wagner

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Grammy-winning and smash hit record Cracked Rear View, Mark Bryan has been back on the road with the group he co-founded in 1986, Hootie and The Blowfish. On top of the sold-out tour Mark is preparing for the release of his new solo LP Popped. A genre-bending, diverse array of music that gives fans an insight into the Hootie lead guitarist's artistic aspirations and deeply personal life experiences.

The first four singles off of Popped take the listener through themes of ska-rock, island music, and influences of The Beach Boys, all with a genuinely uplifting feel to them. Popped, which releases October 25th, was all done in Bryan’s home studio with the aid of local South Carolina musicians.

I had the joy of sitting down with Mark on the phone and getting the chance to talk about the love he has for the fans coming out in droves to the Hootie concerts, and what he’s most excited for people to experience off of the upcoming record.

I listened to the singles off the upcoming record. Ska-influenced music was not something I was expecting to hear. But you do it in such a fun, unique way, and all these tracks are sonically and musically so different than stuff coming out today in the pop landscape that I was really, really in love with a lot of the work you've been putting out.

Oh, man, thank you so much. That really means a lot. And the best is yet to come. There's a fifth single coming soon, it's called “Big Bright,” and then there's a reggae track that's going to be the track that comes out with the release of the record. Then there's six more after that, so have some fun with it, man. I appreciate you listening.

This new record, so far from what we've heard, is a beautiful mix of genres that most people wouldn't expect based on your previous solo work and your work with Hootie and the Blowfish. What drew you to these styles, and are there any groups or specific records and albums that inspired you musically in this process?

I've always been a fan of a lot of different styles. What I found out is that you have great songs, and great songs appear in every genre. So, over the years, I've sort of migrated to many different sounds and styles. With the luxury of having Darius Rucker as the lead singer in your band, you don't have to confine yourself to one style of songwriting. So, I've always tried different things. Then, when we do it as a band, it comes back to sounding like the band, and centers itself, if you will. With this solo album, it was a chance for me to go ahead and try to make what was happening in my head happen on tape. I just went there with each of the ideas. I have the musicianship now myself, plus the friends I can bring in to play instruments. Then, I have the studio and the instrumentation to pull it all off. So, I just went there with each track, if that makes sense.

I was reading you brought in a bunch of local guys to the South Carolina music scene, and you recorded a lot of this in your new home studio, is that correct?

That's right.

Did you find that to be a shift from what you're used to doing with going into other dedicated studios with session musicians or the other guys in the band? Was this a different process for you, and did you have hurdles to overcome when it came to that?

I always have done it from my house, but I just have a fully functional, state-of-the-art studio now. It's actually separate from my home. I built it next door. Then, just with my engineer helping me set all that up and having his gear brought in as well, which is a bunch of vintage preamps and compressors and that sort of thing. With all of that combined and all the instrumentation that I own now and have functioning, we have so many options. If I want to have horns, I can ask my friends here in town that are super talented. Not only will they put a little horn section together, but they can arrange as well, do horn arrangements and that kind of thing. Then I have many friends that are rhythm section players that I could ask. For some tracks, I just ended up playing the rhythm section. A) because I knew what I wanted to hear in my head, and I can play it. And then B) because it was fun. It's fun to play drums. I always mess around on drums, but I never really track with drums. So I was like, I'm going to try tracking, and I really enjoyed it. We came up with some cool stuff from it that we were able to use. I'm not saying I'm the drummer you should hire for your next record. But I was able to, like I said, take what I was hearing in my head and play it and make it feel really good. That's what it's all about. I really enjoyed that part of the process.

It's been 30 years now since Cracked Rear View was released. Like I was telling you a little bit earlier, I can speak from personal experience when I say that a lot of people in my generation have gravitated towards Hootie and the Blowfish and fallen in love with your music. I'd be out in college bars, and I'd hear people who weren't born when the record came out singing right along to songs like “Let Her Cry.” As you've been touring this summer with the band again, what have you been feeling with that outpouring of love from fans who have been around for the past three decades and for a new generation that has really grown to love your guys' stuff?

It is the absolute story of the tour to me. It's the way this music connects with people and their lives and things that have happened in their lives. Our notion of going on tour was, hey, it's the 30th anniversary of Cracked Rear View. This is a great summer to tour. What has happened is this incredible response from people where the music has just connected with their lives in certain ways. It might be a graduation thing, or it might be a song that's part of their engagement, or it might be the loss of a loved one, or that kind of thing. Somehow or another, this music really is threaded into people's lives. That to me has been the thing that we've felt this summer from everybody. You really feel it when you're on stage and you see everybody singing back. Sometimes you see people crying and that kind of thing. There's no other way to describe it. It's absolutely amazing, man. What a thrill to have been able to do this for a living my whole adult life.

I was reading some statements that you made. A lot of artists who have been writing and recording music for as long as you have sometimes will feel burnt out and they'll feel creatively drained. For you, it doesn't really seem that that's the case. With this new record, there's so many different avenues you've been tapping into that are really creatively beautiful. What keeps you moving along and delving into these new creative processes?

In a way, I'm just getting started, man, because if you think about it, my mentality all along was coming in as the lead guitar player of the band. I was definitely part of the songwriting process all the time, but I was bringing in hooks and stuff like that. I was never the lead singer. For my first several solo records – I guess the first four solo albums – I was thinking about how do I get these songs out to people, not how do I become a great lead singer? I just was never really thinking I'm going to be the front guy of the band. It was more about I've got all these great songs. I have to present them to the world. The less and less that Hootie tours and is active, the more I realize that if I want to go out and play these songs, I really do have to learn how to sing them and learn how to just be comfortable with my voice. I try to write songs that I can be really comfortable singing. There are some cool low things on the record, which is nice. I will be able to sing them when I'm old. I just try and think about it like, okay, how can I become a little more of a lead singer in this process of releasing all my songs? I'm finally thinking about that a little bit. I just never really thought about that before. So for me, this is still kind of a new feeling.

Awesome.

Then I also feel like I'm a better musician than I've ever been. And then ultimately, hopefully a better singer. The older I get, the better I get, hopefully. Having lived life somewhat, maybe even a better songwriter. I still feel like maybe the best is ahead of me. Same with the band. We're all still really good at what we do. When we're out there playing, I feel like we're as good as we've ever been. I really mean that. I'm not just saying that to say something positive. I actually really mean that. I think we might be as good as we've ever been, as tight as we've ever been. So it's possible that we have our best album ahead of us. Darius's voice is like a fine wine right now. Everybody's writing still. You never know what we can come up with. We have a message now that we could have never had when we were in our 20s. I'm remaining optimistic about it. I know it's a long shot.

I don't think it's a long shot because I agree with the sentiment. I was trying to catch your guys' show in Pennsylvania a few months ago. Something came up for my roommate and we couldn't go, which sucks because she's a massive Hootie and the Blowfish fan. I just remember how packed it was. I had friends go. I wasn't surprised. It just made me smile because I saw how packed these stadium tours were. These massive venues were still for you guys. That warms my heart. I know a lot of bands of your guys' generation have broken up. Some of them just retired from music because they don't have that love for it anymore. They just physically can't handle it. So it makes me really happy to hear that you are still moving along and doing the damn thing.

It's special for sure, man. Soni [Jim Sonenfeld] is going to be 60 this fall and he's probably the healthiest of the four of us. It's amazing, dude. He's so clean now. He's always been an athlete and staying in shape. Now he's been sober for 15 years. He's very healthy the way he eats. He's the one you see on the treadmill every day outside. We bring some workout equipment on one of the trucks and he's out there working on it every day. He's in great shape. And he'll be 60 this fall. So we're cooking right along, man.

You've talked about previously getting to a point with Hootie that you guys were just doing a new album every few years. But you wanted to keep pushing new music out into the world instead of keeping it on a hard drive in your studio. Are there any tracks on the upcoming record that you want to put out at a later stage that you've been sitting on for a long time that you're just thrilled to put out into the world?

Do you mean from Popped?

Yeah.

Yeah. I couldn't pick one track. It's this cool thing where all the ideas were in my head or on my little tape machine or whatever, whether it was the ska bass thing or the reggae bass one that's coming out soon or some of the rock ideas or the acapella stuff. All these ideas were already floating around. That's what I'm the most excited about. I made all of them come to fruition on one project. You get to hear a nice cross-section of what I'm capable of but also, I think these songs, you'll feel something from them, and you'll want to sing along. Hopefully, they'll be timeless in their own way.

These new musical avenues, when you opened up on one track and it was a multiple-part harmony acapella of your voice just overdubbing one another, I wasn't expecting that, but you sound great on it. Going back to what you were saying about feeling comfortable with your voice as a singer, you sound excellent on this new record.

Thank you, man. Well, that was a very Brian Wilson influence moment. It was also

influenced by The Eagles and “Seven Bridges Road.” Do you know the song I'm talking about?

Yeah.

My thought was that it'd be really cool even though Darius is obviously the lead singer of the band, it'd be cool to start a song with an acapella intro like that with Hootie. So that was what I wrote. I wrote it in the hope that we'd be doing a new Hootie project, but we just decided not to. So I just went ahead and recorded myself doing it. But the idea behind that was that that was going to be like a “Seven Bridges Road” for Hootie. But really, I just went Brian Wilson with it. What would he do? How would he do it? I kind of stacked them with some falsetto in there and stuff. It's awesome. I love it. I'm really happy with it.

It stands out. It caught my attention immediately as soon as I put it on the track. And I was like, OK, I love this. I love the direction we're going in.

Thank you, man. Also, if you listen to the lead vocal on that track, you can totally hear Darius singing it. Oh, yeah. It's definitely down in the “uh” range. That baritone. As you hear, it's where I speak. I tried to do that a little bit on this record of making sure that I didn't put anything way out of my range. I think on my earlier records I did. I would push my range. Sometimes that would sound cool or whatever, but I don't know. That's not where I'm at all the time anymore. It has to be the right song.

Yeah, I feel you. As the years go on, voices change. So I'm glad that you're giving yourself a little bit of a break for these. Another track on the album – “To You My Friend” – is a tribute song to your friend. Musically, if people listen to it and don't read into it or read into the lyrics, it's a very up-tempo, happy song. Sonically, it's very joyous. Did you find that writing process in particular particularly difficult compared to the other tracks? Because I know losing people is so difficult.

Here's how that happened. There's a really quick story that'll explain the whole thing. His mom – who I grew up with as well – she was like everybody's mom. She was awesome. She walked into the funeral of her brother a couple years before my buddy died. His uncle died. She walked into that funeral. I said, “hey Pat, how you doing?” She's like, “I'm still putting one foot in front of the other and trying to find a tune.” I was like, where did that come from? She's like, “I don't know. I just said it.” I was like, well, we just started a song together. She laughed. And I really did. I wrote a chorus. I just left it sitting there. Then all of a sudden, Kevin, my best friend, two years later, was dying of cancer. It occurred to me that this would be a time to finish this song. So I took the sentiment from her saying that and applied it to him dying. And there you go. You can hear it in the song from there.

Absolutely. That's beautiful. Again, I'm very sorry for your loss.

Thanks. Well, hey, if that's how it's going to go down at least I was given that from the universe. The family feels really good about it. They have that song that we can all raise a drink to every time for him and even for his uncle. So it's pretty cool.

Yeah, that is. No, you created a beautiful piece of art for your friend. I think that's the most touching thing.

Thank you, man. The influence is definitely Fishbone and Mighty Mighty Bosstones and that whole world. I came up in college radio in the late 80s. The energy from Ska-Rock was just insane. Chili Peppers and so forth.

Whether it's for the band, whether it's for your solo work. Popped comes out October. What can people expect from you and for the band next? What can your fans expect? What can new listeners expect? What are you most excited about with upcoming work?

Everything I said about Popped, I'm really excited for that to come out and people to enjoy the whole record. As far as Hootie's concerned, we haven't made a plan for anything next. I'm going to do some select shows next year. But I don't have anything to announce yet other than to say, I just want to do a couple of plays in the right markets at the right time next year. If I do, I'd love to bring a horn section out and be able to do the new tracks and then even add horns to the Hootie hits that I would do in the set. That kind of thing. Hopefully, I'll have something to announce for some shows soon.

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 11th, 2024.

Photo © 2024. Courtesy of Plan A Media. All rights reserved.