Hootie!

Jen and Mark Bryan, the guitarist for Hootie and the Blowfish.

Every year, Hootie and the Blowfish get back together and do a show in Charleston.  It is usually the only show that they play as Hootie since Darius Rucker and the rest of the band are pursuing solo careers and other endevours with their own bands.  They scheduled the show for two nights, Friday and Saturday, with a music festival during the day on Saturday.  The opening band on Friday night was Toad and the Wet Sprocket and on Saturday, Foster and Lloyd opened the show.  The headliners of the music festival during the day were a couple guys from Sister Hazel, who played on a small stage set up outside of the Family Circle Cup arena.  They also came out and played their hit "All For You" during the Hootie show, which was a lot of fun.

We started out the night on Friday eating dinner and having a couple drinks at Vespa, a small pizza place on Daniel Island right outside of the Family Circle Cup facility.  They have awesome wood-grilled pizza and some good happy hour specials.  We had general admission tickets, so after dinner we headed straight to the gates to get in line.  We timed it perfectly, getting close enough to the front where Jen could run up and snipe a couple of seats in the front row of the GA section. 

Darius Rucker's truck featuring the Ravenel Bridge.

It was a perfect night for a concert and the show was better than I was expecting.  They played all of the old favorites, some of Darius's new hits, and quite a few covers.  My favorite cover was Champagne Supernova by Oasis, which they played during their third encore. 

After the show, we went to an Irish pub up the street to have a few drinks and hang out with a couple of our friends who joined us for the concert.  There was an irish group with bag pipes and a snare drummer playing in the bar, which was loud enough for us to appreciate after being at a rock concert for three hours.

When the night was winding down, we were getting ready to leave when Mark Bryan walks in the door.  He's the guitarist for Hootie.  We decided to stay for another round.

Once Mark and the rest of his entourage got settled in, Jen went up and talked to him.  She asked if they were going to switch up the songs for the second night and he said they were going to change things around a bit.  He asked what song she wanted to hear, and she told him that she had never heard them play "Show Me Your Heart" live and he said that he actually wrote that song...and then proceeded to sing the first few lines of the song to her.  I thought I was going to have to carry her out of the bar.  Hootie night #1 = success.

The next night was a bit different story, as rain clouds tried to put a damper on the party.  It was nice all afternoon and we got to enjoy the music festival and even went back to Vespa for another pizza before the show.  We managed to get seats in almost the same place in the GA section and took turns going on beer runs.  Foster and Lloyd played for a while and right before Hootie was getting ready to play, a huge storm rolled in.  They made everyone in the GA section take cover and get off of the metal bleachers (which was a good call), so we grabbed an umbrella and huddled near the stairs so we could get our seats back when the storm blew over.

Devoted fans.

After probably an hour of waiting and some entertaining antics of a few people that had floors seats including a mock tennis match, something like a dance off, and a game of catch with a tennis ball from the floor to the 2nd deck, a security guard came around and started telling everyone that she show had been canceled.  No one believed the guy, so most everyone stuck around.  After a few more minutes, Mark Bryan picked up a mic and announced that they wouldn't be letting a little rain stop them. 

Once the stage was ready to go, Hootie started playing and put on another awesome show.  They played a couple different covers and changed up the order of their set, which made it feel like an entirely different show.

Overall it was an awesome weekend.  I'm still dripping from standing in the rain for so long, but it was worth being waterlogged to see the smile on Jen's face when Hootie took the stage.