Singer Darius Rucker is all about the party, and he’s bringing Old Crow Medicine Show and Austin Williams with him on his “Songs of Summer” tour. 

Rucker — a country singer and Hootie & the Blowfish frontman — said musicians’ demeanor and energy rub off on the audience, who will see the three bands on Thursday, July 23, at Phoenix’s Arizona Financial Theatre.

DEEPER DIVE: Read all the Ranking Arizona Top 10 lists here

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS: Want more news like this? Get our free newsletter here

“If the band’s not having fun, the audience isn’t going to have fun,” said Rucker, 60. “I’ve always gone out there and do something that I would want to see. We play the music. We have a good time. We laugh and tell stories.

“My goal every night is to make that person who decided they were going to buy those four tickets with the money they earned by working 30, 40 hours. I hope they think it’s great and want to see us again.”

Rucker’s show will trace the full sweep of his career, from his days leading Hootie & the Blowfish to his warm, rootsy country music sound. “Wagon Wheel” — the modern campfire classic stitched together by Bob Dylan and Old Crow Medicine Show — will be there.

Rucker first performed the song with Old Crow Medicine Show at the Grand Ole Opry in 2012, a moment he’s often described as the spark that led him to record it himself the following year. He had actually been thinking about the move nearly a decade earlier. 

“I love Old Crow so much, and I love their version,” said Rucker, who is expected to release a new single this summer. “I’ll be honest with you: I knew that song eight or nine years before I thought about cutting it. The only reason I cut that song is that I was sitting in my daughter’s high school talent show. A faculty band started singing ‘Wagon Wheel.’ 

“I had never heard ‘Wagon Wheel’ with drums. I only heard ‘Wagon Wheel’ as a bluegrass thing. I had just flown in from Nashville because I was making a record. As they [the faculty band] hit the second verse, I was texting my producer. ‘Dude, remember ‘Wagon Wheel’? he said he remembered it, but a lot of people had cut it.’ I had never heard it as a country song, though. I thought it was a bluegrass song. But they showed me it could definitely be a country song.”

Rucker’s version was successful and found new life recently when USMNT midfielder Weston McKennie belted “Wagon Wheel” on the team bus after the squad’s win over Bosnia and Herzegovina in the FIFA World Cup.

In the last five years, Rucker’s efforts have gone beyond music. He teamed with Fanatics for WWE, NFL and MLB for a clothing line.

“Every time I look on a collar, and I see ‘Darius Rucker’ under MLB, NFL or WWE, I think, ‘Wow. That’s pretty cool.’”

Still, he has remained passionate about music.

“I still can’t believe I get to play music for a living,” he said. “I remember being a 5-year-old kid, singing Al Green in front of my mom’s friends, thinking, ‘Oh, I want to do this.’ But every kid thinks that. 

“Every kid thinks they want to play football. They want to play baseball. They want to be a ballerina. Like I said to someone in an argument, I’m going to die on stage. I will play as long as they want to see me.”