Scotty McCreery is so grateful for Darius Rucker and Hootie & the Blowfish, as “Bottle Rockets” continues to make its way up the charts. The song was written during a writing retreat in the mountains of North Carolina.
“We just got to writing songs and talking about summer,” McCreery reveals on Marty & McGee. “There were six inches of snow on the ground. We had a good time writing it, for sure.”
McCreery had no idea if the song would become a collaboration when it was written. But he did know that he and the other writers had created something special.
“It fit like a glove when we wrote it,” McCreery boasts. “When we wrote it, I did the demo by myself, and it worked. But the dream was, can we get Hootie & the Blowfish to do this? Me and [Darius], we’ve become good friends over the years, and we’re golf buddies now. We’re in the same fantasy football league. We’re boys, but when you text somebody that, it’s not just being boys, now we’re talking business. So I was a little nervous. But he texted right back that he loved the song, and wanted to do it. He said, ‘Let me get the other guys involved.’ And we didn’t sample it either. They all went back in the studio, rerecorded their parts. I was just cheesing when I got the mix back.”
McCreery just released his Scooter & Friends EP. The five-song project includes “Bottle Rockets” plus another dream come true collaboration, his “Once Upon A Bottle Of Wine,” this one with Charlie Wilson.
“I’ve been a massive fan of Charlie Wilson since I first heard him on the radio when I was a kid,” McCreery shares on social media. “He’s one of my favorite artists of all time. Getting to perform with him on stage a few years ago was a bucket list item for me. Being able to call him a friend means more than I can say. And now, having him sing with me on a song I wrote is a dream come true.”
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Rucker praised McCreery after the release of “Bottle Rockets,” calling it the “summer anthem of 2025.” Numerous songs were written during the writing retreat, but none as special to McCreery as his collaboration with his favorite rock band.
“We had a lot of songs started going into that retreat, but this song came out of a conversation,” McCreery remembers on Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen. “This was us reminiscing on previous summers, like ‘I remember my last summer of no job, no responsibilities and school was out. That was such a fun summer.’ And for me in the Carolinas, and I think for everybody worldwide, Hootie & the Blowfish were huge. It was just talking about those soundtracks of summer. I forget who played into it first, but the chords were kind of matching, and we were like, ‘Man, that’s kind of cool,’ so we just ran with it.”
McCreery and his wife, Gabi, recently announced they are expecting their second child this fall. He is co-headlining Two For The Road Tour with Dustin Lynch in November, after headlining several of his own shows this summer. Find “Bottle Rockets” and all of McCreery’s music and upcoming shows at ScottyMcCreery.com.