This is Darius Rucker, unfiltered.
In honor of his fifth solo album, When Was the Last Time, the Grand Ole Opry member and three-time GRAMMY winner sat down with ET to indulge in a bottle of his signature Backstage whiskey for an Interview Under the Influence.
"Backstage we thought was a great name because of what I do, but it all started back in the day," Rucker says, referencing a 1997 festival performance with his rock band, Hootie and the Blowfish.
"We were on tour with Slash's Snake Pit and we were backstage and we look at our trailer. It's us and eight other guys. It's, like, 12 dudes in this trailer," he continues. "We look right next door and in the window we see Slash, and it's Slash and, like, 12 girls. That night, we drank some whiskey to Slash."
And two decades later, the tradition continues.
"Every night we toast to Slash still," he says.
Rucker dishes on everything from why he's an "idiot" for naming his band Hootie and the Blowfish, to winning a GRAMMY for a drunkenly penned song, to the hilarious fan interaction that made him feel old. See the full interview above.
When Was the Last Time marks Rucker's first new album since 2015's Southern Style and features his eighth number one hit single, "If I Told You."
"We definitely took our time with this one," he says of the album, which was produced by Ross Copperman.
"He's young and high energy," Rucker says, revealing that the full length has a "different sound" than his past releases.
"When you change producers, that just happens," he explains. "Lyrically, we've got some fun stuff. We've got a song with me and Jason Aldean, Charles Kelley and Luke Bryan."
The album comes just one day after Rucker took the stage for his first-ever performance at the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, NY.
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