Hootie & the Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker breaks silence on his drug arrest: ‘We handled it’
He’s rocking like a wagon wheel.
Country musician Darius Rucker, 58, has broken his silence about his drug-related arrest.
On Tuesday, the Hootie & the Blowfish singer opened up to the “Today” show about the incident. Although he turned himself in on Feb. 1, he was allegedly in possession of the substances a year ago on Feb. 19, 2023.
“I went down and we handled it,” he said. “My lawyers are taking care of it. It is what it is.”
Rucker was allegedly caught with marijuana and psychedelic pills before his arrest in Tennessee.
According to the arrest affidavit obtained by TMZ, police in Franklin, Tennessee, pulled Rucker over last February after noticing his car had expired tags.
Officers claim they smelled weed coming from his vehicle, although Rucker reportedly replied “no” when asked if he had smoked that night. He did, however, allegedly admit that he may have smoked in his car the previous day.
At the time, cops searched the car and found what they suspected to be a THC pen along with 14 unmarked purple pills, which the singer allegedly claimed were given to him by his girlfriend, Summer.
The Grammy winner was released on a $10,500 bond.
In his memoir, “Life’s Too Short,” which came out on Tuesday, the “Wagon Wheel” singer detailed his partying days, writing, “Whatever you got, I’m in. Booze. Drugs. Everything you can name, anything you can think of, and piles of it, tons of it, as omnipresent as air. We drink, we smoke, we sniff, we stockpile.”
The “It Won’t Be Like This for Long” singer also said he used to use drugs “day, evening, night, into the next day, always” and “nonstop.”
He told “Today” about his arrest, “It was funny because I was going to a friend’s house. They were moving and asked me to take some stuff. And I did and got pulled, got stopped. And the crazy thing was, they let me go. And it was a year later that I get a phone call that said there was a warrant for my arrest.”
He added, “So I went down. Fifty-seven years, I’ve never seen the inside of a jail cell.”
Rucker was booked on two counts of simple possession/casual exchange of a controlled substance and one count of a violation of the state’s vehicle registration law. He said the charges are still pending.
