Lady A’s Charles Kelley talks friendship with Darius Rucker as their tour winds down

It would be an understatement to say that Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley was a fan of Hootie & the Blowfish when he was growing up.

“(Hootie’s album) ‘Cracked Rear View’ was one of the top life-changing albums for me,” the singer-songwriter says. “I’ve got two older siblings that were in college, and I remember hearing a five- or six-song EP of Hootie. I’d just started playing drums, and my brother Josh had started playing guitar. It was all about Hootie and Dave Matthews, Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw. It’s funny when you look back and hear those influences. There’s a video of us singing ‘Hold My Hand.’ I couldn’t have been more than 13 years old.”

That story served as an icebreaker when Kelley found himself on the same label as Hootie frontman Darius Rucker.

This past summer, their respective bands have been joined at the hip for Lady Antebellum and a solo Rucker’s “Summer Plays On” co-headlining tour, which winds to a close this weekend beginning with a show at PNC Music Pavilion.

But it’s not like Kelley and Rucker won’t see much of each other going forward.

“We’re big golf buddies,” Kelley says. “He plays literally every single day. He wakes up at 8:30 or 9, goes and plays 18 holes, takes a two-hour nap, and does his meet-and-greet.”

On the golf course, Kelley says, they talk about the music scene in the ’90s and how things have changed.

“It’s a different age now. One of the things he said was, ‘Back in the day, we used to tour to promote our record, and now we put out a record to promote our tour.’ ”

They also have been talking about potential musical projects: “We’re seriously talking about doing a record together. The hardest part is finding the time.”

Lady Antebellum did find time, though, before making its latest album “Heart Break,” for group therapy. Band members revealed over the summer in an interview with the “Today” show that it was using sessions to help them communicate better.

Kelley wants to make it clear, though: They aren’t anything like Metallica in “Some Kind of Monster”; in other words, they’re not at each other’s throats constantly.

“Everybody is so sweet,” he says. “I’m the one if there are ever issues. I’m very opinionated and react without sitting and thinking. I have to keep my OCD in check.”

“It’s just having someone to chat about all this stuff we are going through. Hillary just had twins. To be a working mother is such a tough job. For me, I could do this every day, but we’ve got to be human beings, too.”

“It’s helped me learn to slow down and not to put all your happiness in making the band the sole priority,” says Kelley, who also has a son. “It’s about balancing that with my wife and my little man, to shut off the (work) side of my brain.”