Darius Rucker
B93 Birthday Bash 18
US 131 Motorsports Park, Martin
June 19,20
Free general admission, $30 for reserved, Parking $15 per day
B93.com

Imagine a parallel universe where your favorite rock band actually sang country instead. Now image that band was the highly popular, Billboard charting Hootie and the Blowfish. Getting a little too weird? Well actually, it was almost a reality.

"Let's go do the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band thing we'll be a country band'," said Darius Rucker in regard to where Hootie was going as a band. "It was such a big part of what we listened to. I thought we'd be great at it, but the band didn't want to do it, so I'm cool with that."

Rucker followed his dreams, went solo ,and turned himself into a country music sensation. Even though he identified with the genre for most of his life, Rucker knew it would be hard to win some listeners over.

"Growing up listening to it all the years before I sang [country music], I could totally see myself professionally singing it," he said. "Sure it was very scary; you just don't know what could happen. I could be the laughing stock of the music business."

But, Rucker is far from a joke. Instead, he was an American Country Music nominee in the Top Male Vocalist of the Year Category this past April. And while Brad Paisley took home the award, Rucker was in awe to have made the same list as Paisley, Kenny Chesney, George Straight and Keith Urban.

"One of those things is not like the other," Rucker said of the nomination. "It was really wild. To have my first record and be nominated in that category with those four super stars was like that cliché you hear, I had already won even though I hadn't won. They had to say my name with those guys. That was win-win for me. "

Since the debut of his solo album Learn to Live in 2008, Rucker's realized that his fans can actually come from a wide range of places. He remembers hearing fans tell him that they would never listen to country music but now listen to it regularly because his music brought them to it.

"We were playing a show a couple months ago and were playing songs off the record. There were these girls about 13 or 14 years old and they were singing every word; they were loving it. We got to [the Hootie song] "Let her Cry" and they sat down, they had never heard it before. You just go ‘wow.'"