THE READING ROOM: Memoir Celebrates the Songs That Shaped Darius Rucker

When he was 6 years old, country singer Darius Rucker discovered his destiny. Rucker was lying on his living room floor listening to Al Green’s then-new album, I’m Still in Love with You, he recalls in his new memoir, Life’s Too Short. His mother, who had passed down her love of music to him, had invited a group of friends over for supper, and after the meal they heard the music and agreed how much they loved Al Green. Rucker’s mom said to them, “We got a six-year-old Al Green right here,” and Rucker needed no further prompting. He ran to the kitchen, grabbed a salt shaker to use as his microphone, and sang the entire album by heart to the gathered group. As he lost himself in his performance, he realized that these women were no longer his audience: “the music isn’t mine; it’s ours,” he writes.

Music reverberates so loudly through Rucker’s youth and into his career with Hootie & the Blowfish and then as a solo country artist that he describes every chapter of his life in terms of the song that marked that period. As he writes, “this book is about my life as told through those songs. Songs that took me away, starting at ground level, living in a poor but happy home, never wanting much more, enjoying what I had, even when times got tough, because I had my escape, my refuge, my songs … What songs? What kinds of music? Everything. An eclectic and surprising soundtrack … The Beatles. Stevie Wonder. Al Green. Frank Sinatra. R.E.M. Nanci Griffith. The Notorious B.I.G. Lou Reed. KISS. Barry Manilow. And more.”

Rucker grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, the youngest of five children raised by a hard-working single mom in a single-story house. His aunts and their children often lived in the house, too, and the “bathroom feels like mini hotel lobby, with people coming in and out constantly,” he writes. One day Rucker found two 45s by The Beatles — “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” — and he dropped the needle on those records (and their B-sides, “This Boy” and “I’ll Get You”) over and over, transported out of the bustle surrounding him by the harmonies and melodies and lyrics. Rucker describes listening to these songs, and all the rest that shape his life, “until the song inserts itself into me, until it becomes a part of my soul.”

In adulthood, when his mother is lying in a coma after a heart attack, for example, Rucker came off the road to visit her room. As he held her frail hands, Nanci Griffith’s “I Wish It Would Rain” popped into his head, and he started singing the words again and again through his sobs: “Oh, I wish it would rain / And wash my face clean.”

An easygoing storyteller, Rucker breezily chronicles the history of Hootie & the Blowfish, from the band’s early days playing clubs in Columbia, South Carolina, and up and down the East Coast to global fame and the eventual decision to stop playing together in 2008. He’s candid about his and the band’s drug use. “If I’m honest — and I will be completely honest — Hootie & the Blowfish reigned supreme in two not altogether unrelated areas: selling records and doing drugs.” In 2008, Rucker moved into country music, and in October 2008 he scored a No. 1 hit with “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It.” Four years later, on Oct. 2, 2012, Brad Paisley invited Rucker to become the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry, where he was inducted by Vince Gill.

In a recent interview, Rucker told me, “I really hope people read the book and go, you know, he had really low lows and high highs, but he made no excuses about either one.” He lives up to that promise in Life’s Too Short.

Darius Rucker’s Life’s Too Short was published May 28 by Dey Street Books.