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Darius Rucker: What’s ‘Most Important’ To Him

Darius Rucker is known as one of country music’s most charitable stars. He has been helping others ever since he entered the genre almost twenty years ago. It’s something he…

Darius Rucker poses in a tan shirt and black ball cap.
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Darius Rucker is known as one of country music's most charitable stars. He has been helping others ever since he entered the genre almost twenty years ago. It's something he will always do.

Nearly two decades after first visiting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where he was immediately inspired to pledge his support, Darius continues to give back, surpassing the $4.3 million mark with this year's 15th annual "Darius and Friends" benefit concert and celebrity golf tournament held in Nashville in June. This year's event alone raised $715,000 for the cause.

When we chatted with Rucker recently, we asked him how he stays motivated and has the time to give back with his busy musical life in Nashville.

Darius's answer was simple. "The easiest way for me is that's one of the most important things. It's giving back and the people I want to give back to. It's important to me big time to do that."

He added, "We're gonna make time to do that. That's just how I live. If somebody asks me to do something for their charity and I say yeah, I tell the management, 'Let's make it happen.' Let's just do it.'"

The country star reiterated, "That's how I live, and that's how I'm going to keep doing that because the easiest thing you can do is help somebody, and I love when we do that."

Rucker released his memoir Life's Too Short in May, and fans wanting to know about his life in the music business and beyond will get the real stories straight from the source.

Darius told us that he wanted the book to be 100% legit. He said, "For me, I don't know how other people do it, but I always said that if I ever write a book, I was going to be as honest as I could be."

He admitted to confessing, "There's some over-the-top stuff, but I just wanted to tell the story. I wanted people to understand the hard stuff and the good stuff."

"So when I was writing the book, I wanted you to read it like you were sitting at a bar, and I was telling you my life story. That's how we wrote, and that's how we wanted it to be."

He offered some advice to other artists who want to write a book: "Now that it's done, I would tell other artists to just be honest with themselves and write it like they are telling the story."

Nancy Brooks has been working in the country music industry for almost 30 years. She has interviewed pretty much any country star you can think of. In the late 1990s, she started working with Dolly Parton. And yes, Nancy reports that Parton is as sweet as you would think. She loves her life in country music and has been backstage at every CMA Awards show since the late 1990s. Many of her stories are from her one-on-one interviews. She was there at the beginning of the incredible careers of many music superstars today, including Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Blake Shelton, and has interviewed them multiple times throughout the years.