They just absolutely blew me away from the moment I saw them live.

(From an interview with Mark Bryan of Hootie and the Blowfish)

In 1990 or 1991 my band, Hootie and the Blowfish, was together and touring around the clubs around the southeast on the weekends. And I got a tip from one of my college DJ buddies that the drummer from Dash Rip Rock was coming in to play at the club in town in Columbia with his new band, Cowboy Mouth. So I went out to see them. That was on a Sunday or Monday night or something like that. 

It was me, the guy who told me about the show, and one other person. And they played like they were playing in front of 3,000 people in a big club. They killed it. Fred was climbing around the club. They absolutely blew me away.

So I asked if they wanted to come open for us the next night in Wilmington at The Mad Monk. And they did. There were 33 people there that night. And again, opening for us, they still played like they were at Wembly Stadium. And Darius Rucker was like, “I never want them to open for us again. I’ll never play AFTER Fred again.” But he of course did. They just absolutely blew me away from the moment I saw them live. I must have seen them over 100 times since then. - Mark Bryan

(photo L-R: Mark, Fred, Harry Shearer)