Hootie & the Blowfish are set to release their first album in fourteen years. Imperfect Circle comes out on November 1, 2019 via Capitol Nashville. The album is full of top notch songwriting and world class production. And at the end of the day: it sounds like a classic Hootie & the Blowfish record.
Like many of the other millions of fans of the band, I’ve been waiting to hear about a new album.. well for years. So when it was announced there would be a new album in the works, I was cautiously excited. Cautious because the world has seen bands get back together to record a new album only to see the final product come up short to fan expectations. While an official review will be published, I can assure you that this is one of those cases where the wait was well worth it.
I had the chance to catch up with bass player for Hootie, Dean Felber. Dean is a guy that really seems to not only grasp the bands place in history but also appreciates what the band has accomplished. Take all that away and strip it down to the basics, Dean likes to create and play music. I asked him about getting the group back into the studio and how that process went. Felber tells Sound Vapors, “When we started recording, we hadn’t really played live or recorded in a long time. So we definitely had to knock some rust off a little bit.”
I asked him if it was always in the plan to reunite or if it just sort of happened. Felber says, “No it wasn’t always planned. I mean it was talked about but that doesn’t always mean it’s going to happen. I’d say early in ’18, maybe late ’17, we started throwing things around.” He continues, ” I think the whole plan was to have the album come out at the beginning to middle of the tour. It wound up us not releasing it until the end of the tour which actually turned out to be a decent thing.”
We get in pretty deep into the production of the album including some of the songwriters and musicians that were involved as well as co-producers, Frank Rogers and Jeff Trott.
You can listen to my entire conversation with Dean by clicking on one of the links to your favorite place to listen to podcasts or you can watch the video below.
-Tommy Marz
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