<\/p>\n
A variety of instruments sit in Mark Bryan\u2019s studio on Thursday, July 23, 2026, in Awendaw.<\/p>\n
Grace Beahm Alford\/Staff<\/p>\n
A creative tornado\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even while juggling his many ventures, Bryan is a voracious songwriter.<\/p>\n
He writes what moves him in the moment, he said. Sometimes it starts with a musical lick; other times it begins with a lyric or concept.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing I learned a long time ago is that part of the artistic process is just letting it happen, not trying to force it too much. So I\u2019ll just sit and play for a long time, sometimes until I find something that really hits me,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other times he’ll be struck with an idea out of the blue. On July 23, he stopped speaking for a moment and picked up his phone to play a voice memo. Bryan’s voice drifted from the speakers, punctuated by tapping, as if he were drumming his hand against a steering wheel to keep the beat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Tryna get to you, but I can’t get through,” he sang.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mark Bryan, guitarist for Hootie & the Blowfish, in his studio Thursday, July 23, 2026, in Awendaw.<\/p>\n
Grace Beahm Alford\/Staff<\/p>\n
At first, the song is about being stuck in traffic. As it progresses, it becomes about cluttered, claustrophobic online spaces and the breakdown of communication in modern society.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bryan doesn’t know if he’ll ever do anything more with the audio recording, but he won’t abandon it quite yet. He tries his best to develop a song before scrapping it, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You gotta try, and then if it goes nowhere, go on to the next one. That\u2019s kind of how it works,” he said.<\/p>\n
Lipton, bassist for the Screaming Trojans and one of Bryan’s closest friends, said Bryan has always been determined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bryan said that, over time, he came to realize that it doesn’t matter how much time or effort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[277241,39846,156,227139,277239,277242,157,277243,111,139,69,277245,277244,277240],"class_list":["post-563687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-awendaw","tag-charleston","tag-entertainment","tag-hootie-the-blowfish","tag-mark-bryan","tag-mark-bryan-studio","tag-music","tag-music-studios-charleston","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-record-labels-charleston","tag-recording-studios-charleston","tag-stone-point-records"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}