Jul 262017
 
mark bryan hootie

Mark Bryan wears many hats. Best known as the guitarist co-founder of Hootie and the Blowfish, he also runs an after-school music program for kids and just won an Emmy for producing the PBS music series Live at the Charleston Music Hall. He’s lived in South Carolina for decades, and a concert there when he was in college inspired a track on his new album. It’s a good story, so we’ll let him tell it:

In 1987, Boston band, Scruffy The Cat was on tour for their Tiny Days LP, and they came to Rockafella’s in Columbia, SC. I was a Junior at the University of South Carolina, and a DJ at WUSC.

When I heard Scruffy was coming, I begged the legendary club owner/promoter Art Boerke to let my band from Maryland, The Norms, open the show. The guys were going to drive down for the gig, but decided to bail at the last minute. I showed up at sound check to let the guys in Scruffy know what had happened, and they couldn’t have been cooler about it.

They decided to open for themselves, and the now late, great lead singer, Charlie Chesterman kept joking, “We are The Norms from Maryland.” Finally they started ripping through their freshly released material and when it was time for “My Baby She’s Alright”, they said, “We are going to bring Mark Bryan from The Norms up to play one with us”, and I got to play one of my favorite songs of that year, with one of favorite bands of that era.

Years later when I started jamming with my buds in a three-piece, punkabilly outfit called the Occasional Milkshake, “My Baby” became one of our staple covers. So when we got the chance to record it for a Charlie Chesterman tribute album called Choruses vs. Solos, we jumped at it.

He’s followed up that Occasional Milkshake cover with a solo version of “Mybabyshe’sallright” on his upcoming album Songs of the Fortnight, and we’ve got the premiere below. Peter Holsapple of The dB’s, who also performs as a touring musician in Hootie, joins on harmonica.

Find more from Mark at the Hootie and the Blowfish website. Top photo: Mark Bryan as photographed by Jonathan Boncek.

Mark Bryan Tour Dates:
8/10/2017: Charleston, SC @ The Windjammer (Record Release Show)
8/11/2017: Charleston, SC @ Volvo Cars Stadium (Hootie and the Blowfish)
8/12/2017: Charleston, SC @ Volvo Cars Stadium (Hootie and the Blowfish)
9/7/2017: New York, NY @ Rockwood Music Hall
9/8/2017: Vienna, VA @ Jammin’ Java
9/9/2017: Hershey, PA @ Music on Chocolate

Cover Me is now on Patreon! If you love cover songs, we hope you will consider supporting us there with a small monthly subscription. There are a bunch of exclusive perks only for patrons: playlists, newsletters, downloads, discussions, polls - hell, tell us what song you would like to hear covered and we will make it happen. Learn more at Patreon.

  One Response to “Hootie and the Blowfish’s Mark Bryan Honors College Inspiration on Scruffy the Cat Cover (Premiere)”

Comments (1)
  1. I recall a scruffy gig at Rockafellers when the singer for the opening band , Darius Rucker, was done with his set
    I told him , you guys were good , you have a great voice
    Your going all the man you guys are be huge rock stars someday , remember us , we want to play with you again
    Well a short while later that band which became Hootie &t The Blowfish did indeed become huge rock stars
    We never did get to open a stadium tour
    Oh well the gig we did was good

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)