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Rucker, Felber, Bryan and Sonefeld met in 1986 as undergraduates at the University of South Carolina at Columbia--the band's name came from nicknames given to two university classmates, one with owl-like glasses and another with full cheeks. Making the cultural transition from the North to the South was a difficult one for the group's three Yankees. At the university at that time, band members recall, whites would sometimes be kicked out of frats for having too many black friends. Hootie & the Blowfish's very first gig was held at an off-campus fraternity with a reputation for racism--and the interracial band was understandably wary. "We were a little concerned about going out there and playing," says Bryan. "So we brought our Marine buddies along."
After college, the group began to tour full time. The Southeast has a fertile music scene with plenty of places for young bands to find an audience, from the Georgia Theater in Athens to the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta to Rockafellas, the Elbow Room and Green Streets in Columbia (young bands on this circuit don't earn much; if you're in it for the money, move to Seattle). Hootie fitted right into the Southern pop-rock scene, playing clubs, bars, parties: any parties--birthday parties, frat parties, you name it. They would would sing REM and U2 covers and maybe a few Hootie originals, then crash on a dorm-room floor. "We'd drive 12 hours to do a show," Bryan recalls. "For $150 and two free beers," Sonefeld says, finishing his band mate's sentence, a habit among all four members of Hootie.
Throughout the early '90s, the band logged a couple of thousand miles a week and earned only $6,000 to $10,000 apiece annually, but from the start the supposedly carefree group displayed a nascent business sense and an instinct for organization. "Even when doing cover songs for frat parties they used their earnings wisely," says Dick Hodgin, the band's first manager. (Rusty Harmon took over when Hodgin decided he didn't have the time to focus on the band.) "They put money away instead of doing what most bands do--split it and spend it." Today the band has four corporations, including Fishco, Inc., which handles record royalties and related matters, and Breaking Records, the group's new label, which will focus on finding and developing grass-roots bands.
In 1992, after borrowing cash from friends and families, the band spent $8,000 to release its own mini-album, Kootchypop--an endearingly amateurish six-track production that featured an early version of Hold My Hand. The CD sold about 40,000 copies and got the attention of Atlantic, which, intrigued by the band's home-brewed fan base, signed Hootie to a modest $75,000 deal in 1993. "I don't think Atlantic was hoping for anything when it came to the deal," says Tim Sommer, who brokered the contract for Atlantic. "Did I think they'd make a million dollars? No. But I did know they'd sell records. Before I signed them, they'd already sold half a million dollars' worth of Ts. If you can sell a T shirt, you can sell a record."