Hootie & the Blowfish’s Darius Rucker speaks out about drug arrest

Country music star Darius Rucker spoke out for the first time about his puzzling arrest warrant after he was booked for minor drug charges in Tennessee earlier this year.

The Grammy winner was arrested on two counts of simple possession or casual exchange of a controlled substance and one count of violation of registration law after he was pulled over in February by police, who found marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in his car. (Recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states, but not in Tennessee.)

“It shocked me,” Rucker told PEOPLE of the arrest warrant, adding that he is unsure of what prompted it. Though he was previously pulled over in early 2023 for expired tags, Rucker was released without charges at the time. “My friends who were in the police department were like, ‘Have you pissed somebody off up here? Because this is crazy that they’re doing this a year later.’ But I think somebody wanted to make an example out of me, and they did.”

“I’m handling it with my lawyers,” Rucker said. “And paying the price, and we’ll move on with our lives.” He added of his recent drug arrest, “It sucks. Fifty-seven years, never seen inside of a police car or jail, and I get busted for that.”

The “Wagon Wheel” singer is currently celebrating the release of his memoir Life’s Too Short (out now), about his life and music as Hootie & the Blowfish frontman and a solo artist. “I always said I’d write [a memoir] when my kids were old enough to handle it,” Rucker said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I’ve had a great relationship with my kids, and there’s nothing that they probably don’t know. I always said if I wrote it, I was just going to tell the truth. And that’s what we did.”

Hootie & the Blowfish is also set to embark on a 43-city tour across the U.S. and Canada, which kicks off May 30 in Dallas.