Darius Rucker wrote 77 songs for his new album. That's not a misprint.

Most of them ended up not making the cut for "Charleston, SC 1966," Rucker's follow up to his country breakthrough, "Learn to Live." The new album will be out Oct. 12, and will include 12 new songs.

"Learn to Live" has sold 1.4 million albums, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and earned Rucker the Country Music Association's best new artist award. The 44-year-old former Hootie and the Blowfish singer was the first black performer to win a major individual CMA award since Charley Pride in 1971-72.

Rucker says the many fans of "Learn to Live" can expect something very similar to "Charleston, SC 1966."

"I don't think it's going to be light-years different," Rucker said. "I don't think we set out to reinvent the wheel or do a new sound. I think this record is more of an expansion of the last record than anything else. It's like picking up where the last record left off."

The album's title is a reference to his hometown, the year of his birth and a tribute to Radney Foster's first solo album, "Del Rio, TX 1959." He said it was listening to Foster that first made him realize the possibilities of country music.