Photos by Andy Argyrakis

Nowadays, Hootie & The Blowfish doesn’t come around nearly as often as its heyday in the 1990s, though even with a half-decade absence from the area, the more than 25 million record sellers’ popularity picked up on the exact same page.

Having front man Darius Rucker go on to a monumental solo career in country sure didn’t hurt, but the fact the band’s heartland rock remains in regular rotation on radio and online more than speaks for itself.

Hootie didn’t have a new album to push when the “Summer Camp With Trucks” Tour pulled into and packed Tinley Park’s Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, so it meant mainly the hits, some stray album tracks, a solo and a few recent remakes, ensuring any era’s appreciators had a point of reference.

They included everything from opener “I Go Blind,” to “Cracked Rear View” classics “Time” and “Let Her Cry,” now celebrating their 30th anniversary, plus covers of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” each performed in the rootsy, jangly style of the entirely original line-up.

Rucker even traded verses with opener Edwin McCain on their collaboration “Solitude” and tore through his own “Alright,” while guitarist Mark Bryan, bassist Dean Felber and Naperville’s own drummer Jim “Soni” Sonefeld operated like a smoothly running train while lending meaty harmonies to additional heavyweights “Old Man & Me (When I Get To Heaven)” and “Hold My Hand.”

The guitars cranked up a couple notches for the grungy likes of Collective Soul, who are fresh off the return to form collection “Here To Eternity,” yet balanced a few bone crunching debuts next to previous alternative masterpieces.

“Mother’s Love” and “Bluer Than So Blue” met the mighty “Shine,” “The World I Know, “December,” “Run” and anything else a little less than an hour could encompass with Ed Roland and company coming across as potently as they did three decades ago.

Besides the above appearance and joining the fellow supporting act on AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” McCain turned in a short sweet start to the well-matched evening, especially when it came to sentimental ballads “I Could Not Ask For More” and “I’ll Be,” which alongside the catalogues of Hootie and Collective Soul, continue to connect with the masses.

For additional information on Hootie & The Blowfish, visit Hootie.com.

Upcoming concert highlights at Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre include Xscape and SWV (Aug.11); Creed (Aug. 16); Kidz Bop (Aug. 17); Imagine Dragons (Aug. 18); Deep Purple (Aug. 23); Styx and Foreigner (Aug. 24); The Doobie Brothers (Aug. 25); Pitbull (Aug. 30); Fuerza Regida (Sept. 1); Megadeth (Sept. 3); Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and John Mellencamp (Sept. 7); Staind and Breaking Benjamin (Sept. 14); Junior H (Sept. 15) and Korn (Sept. 28). For additional details, visit LiveNation.com.

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