Photo: SSGT Michael R. Holzworth, U.S. Air Force [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
After a decade long break, the band Hootie & The Blowfish are back with a new album and tour. The band will be releasing a single in the Spring and a full length album this summer. A tour has already been scheduled to begin on May 30th in Virginia Beach. The band has announced that their tour entitled, The Group Therapy Tour will hit 44 cities. So far, the tour will make stops in all major cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Nashville and New York City. The Group Therapy Tour will be action packed since it will start on May 30th and reach 44 cities ending on Sep 13.
It’s hard to believe that it has been almost twenty five years since Hootie & The Blowfish blew away the record industry away with their mega million selling album Cracked Rear View in 1994. Smack right in the middle of a period of music that had been dominated by the dark grunge sounds of bands like Nirvana,Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, Hootie & The Blowfish were an outlier at the time.
If your too young to remember the impact that Hootie & the Blowfish had on the charts, or simply have forgotten how popular they were, the following statistics will knock you off your feet. Just a few months before the band released their debut album Cracked Rear View, they had been playing the bar scene. Within a few weeks after release, the album basically went viral before we even used the word viral. Cracked Rear View became one of the fastest selling albums in history. The album went on to be certified 16 times platinum and has become one of the biggest selling albums of all time.
Can the return of Hootie & The Blowfish ignite CD sales once again? It’s a very different world that we live in now since the CD dominated music sales in the 1990’s. It will be interesting to see how Hootie & The Blowfish do in their return.
Brian Kachejian was born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx. He is the founder and Editor in Chief of ClassicRockHistory.com. He has spent thirty years in the music business often working with many of the people who have appeared on this site. Brian Kachejian also holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Stony Brook University along with New York State Public School Education Certifications in Music and Social Studies. Brian Kachejian is also an active member of the New York Press.
