An autobiography about Charleston, SC 1966

    This has been a pretty crazy ride for me. Just to be accepted into the world of country music the way I have is so humbling. Coming from the pop side like I did, I didn't expect the open arms, and they've been everywhere. You see so many of the pop guys try to come over to country and you hear all the horror stories, so when I started all this over four years ago, I thought, "Why do I think this will work?" Then Mike Dungan, the president of Capitol Records Nashville, took a big chance. He and I still joke about the fact that when he told his friends he was signing me to a country deal, most of them told him he was crazy. But here I am three years later making records.
    I realize there are people who are surprised that I wound up in country, but I can tell you that nobody in Hootie & the Blowfish was surprised. They knew. They heard it. I was the one who played all the New Grass Revival CD's in the van. I was the one who flipped over Foster & Lloyd the first time I saw the video for "Crazy Over You" on TV while we were at the University of South Carolina. That was the record made me think, "I'm going to make a country record someday." And it actually went back a lot further. I'm really different than the rest of my family. Nobody except one aunt listened to country music. The thing I really loved was that my mother would always let me listen to whatever I wanted to. If somebody came and said, “Oh what's he listening to that twangy stuff for?” she'd be like, "Leave him alone! He can listen to what he wants to listen to."