The World is Flatts

As they continue to sell out arenas and sell millions of albums, Rascal Flatts find that the secret to success is writing and discovering great songs.

By Brian Mansfield

The facts speak for themselves... The three members of Rascal Flatts — lead singer Gary LeVox, bassist Jay DeMarcus and guitarist Joe Don Rooney are the reigning American Music Awards, CMA, ACM and CMT Vocal Group of the Year. Their recent tour grossed nearly $50 million, drawing more than one million fans, and placing them 12th among all touring acts. According to Nielsen SoundScan, their album, Me and My Gang, was the Number Two bestselling record of 2006 with 3.4 million albums sold. In its first week, Me and My Gang moved 721,747 copies, the biggest first week in sales across all genres in 2006. It was also the group’s fourth multi-platinum album in a row.

If that isn’t impressive enough, for the second consecutive year in a row, Rascal Flatts wrapped up the year as best-selling country artist in the world.

Rascal Flatts debuted in 2000, almost exactly 20 years after another mega-selling country act, Alabama, had its first Top 20 country hit. The trio has since sold more than 13 million albums, including moe than three million of its latest, Me and My Gang, 2006's best-selling country album. In November, the band won the Country Music Association's Vocal Group of the Year for the fourth time (only the Statler Brothers have won it more).

LeVox, 36, grew up mimicking George Jones and Stevie Wonder, Keith Whitley and Peabo Bryson, resulting in a vocal style that blends bluegrass timbre with R&B phrasing. The band derives its approach to fusing elements of country and pop from LeVox's unique voice. That approach has made Rascal Flatts arguably the most popular act with country's youngest fans – an audience that got even younger recently when the band covered Tom Cochrane's "Life Is a Highway" for the Disney movie Cars. They've also become one of the artists of choice for American Idol contestants, with Carrie Underwood and Josh Gracin both singing their songs on the show.

Recently, LeVox, DeMarcus and Rooney have been writing songs for the next Rascal Flatts album, planned for the fall of 2007. They often write together on the road, when bus trips put them together for long stretches.

"The three of us sit on the bus during days on the road, just to kill time," LeVox says. "One of us has a melody or a lyric idea. We just sit together and knock it out."

Each of the last three Rascal Flatts albums has had one song written by all the members of the group. LeVox estimates they write between 30 and 50 songs to get the one keeper. They've pitched some of the other songs to other acts, with little luck so far.

"I think the curse is putting our names on them," he says. "Artists will listen to them and go, 'Well, then, why didn't they cut it?' We may have to go under some aliases."

All three members of the group write with other writers as well. And the band gets plenty of good material from outside writers like Steve Robson ("What Hurts the Most," "Feels Like Today," "My Wish"), Brett James ("Love You Out Loud") and Joe Henry ("Skin (Sarabeth)").

The band has found ongoing success with the songs of Neil Thrasher (ASCAP's Country Songwriter of the Year in 2004) and Wendell Mobley. LeVox, DeMarcus and Rooney have each written with the songwriting team, which has placed seven cuts with Rascal Flatts, including four on Me and My Gang.

"Some writers, you just absolutely click with on all levels," says LeVox, who wrote the hits "I Melt" and "Fast Cars and Freedom" with the pair. "That's what Neil and Wendell and myself have. We're always focused on the same things. We love the same type of melodic structures."

Levox and the two songwriters typically write together once or twice a month. Sometimes they'll write long distance while LeVox is on the road, with Thrasher and Mobley playing melodies over the phone.

"Our cell-phone bills are high, but hopefully it's a hit and we can pay for it," LeVox says.

Other times, writers will join them on the bus, like Monty Powell, who wrote "Pieces" on Me and My Gang with the trio.

"We usually try to get one or two songs done a day with Monty," LeVox says. "Monty writes really, really quick. He's non-stop. He just keeps going and going and going. We take full advantage of that. He came out yesterday, and we've got three written already."

Like most country acts that don't write all their own material, Rascal Flatts' members spend a lot of time sorting through tunes in search of the perfect album. The group's motto when listening to new songs is "Don't bore us, get to the chorus."

"We've always tried to cut 12 singles and not have filler or 'album cuts,'" LeVox says. "There's no such thing as that to us. I think that's been the key to our success. We go through thousands and thousands of songs and find the ones that mean the most to us, that hit us the most. Something that we've lived or been a part of."

The hits came early and quickly for Rascal Flatts. The band's self-titled debut yielded three Top 10 singles – "Prayin' for Daylight," "This Everyday Love" and "While You Loved Me." With a follow-up disc nearly ready, the group and its label, Lyric Street Records, considered closing the book on the first album. Then a Nashville air personality played the album's final track – a gentle, inspiring waltz called "I'm Movin' On" – and everything changed.

"Churches were using it," LeVox recalls. "Alcohol rehab, 12-step programs were using it. It grew a life of its own."

"I'm Movin' On," written by Phillip White and D. Vincent Williams, eventually won the Academy of Country Music's Song of the Year award in 2002. It also brought credibility to a band that had appeared at the tail end of pop's boy-band craze and had been dismissed initially by some as a late effort to cash in on the fad. More than any other song, "I'm Movin' On" established Rascal Flatts as a force to be taken seriously.

"They didn't look at what we were wearing; people weren't talking about hair-care products or the flavor-of-the-month thing," LeVox says. "We were taken seriously for our artistry. It wasn't about a live show. It wasn't about any of that stuff. It was just about the lyric and the melody and the delivery of a great song."

Just as "I'm Movin' On" became something of a surprise hit, so did "Skin (Sarabeth)," a tale of a teenage girl with leukemia that first appeared as a hidden track on the group's 2004 Feels Like Today CD.

"It was kind of its own little masterpiece, you know?" LeVox says of the Joe Henry song. "It stood outside of just a number on the back of the CD cover. We definitely thought it could be a single. It was really special. But you don't really know."

"Skin (Sarabeth)" eventually reached the second slot on Billboard Magazine's country singles chart and won a 2006 ASCAP Country Music Award, as did two other Rascal Flatts hits, "Fast Cars and Freedom" and "What Hurts the Most."

Those songs and others have helped make Rascal Flatts one of country music's most successful touring acts. Having started their career opening for the likes of Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith and Brooks & Dunn, the trio has graduated to headlining arenas. The band's 2006 tour drew in more than a million fans, making it one of the year's most successful tours in any genre.

A Rascal Flatts concert is a high-energy affair that includes pyrotechnics and confetti cannons. Suggest that maybe explosions don't really belong in a country show, and LeVox is ready with a quick comeback: "Chris LeDoux and Garth Brooks taught us how to do that. We learned from the best."

There's also a fly gag that takes the three musicians to a smaller, second stage. "We sing some acoustic stuff, just the three of us, out in the back of the house," LeVox says.

The band will use the current set when the Me and My Gang tour continues during the first half of 2007, but LeVox says they'll introduce a new stage show for summer concerts.

"We've been in these markets a lot over the past four or five years," he says. "You've definitely got to keep bettering yourself, keep giving them a different look and something to get them to come out to the show."

Like Alabama before them, Rascal Flatts fills arenas, sells millions of albums and slowly makes believers out of the most reluctant observers. But none of that would be possible if they weren't singing songs that connected with listeners on an emotional level.

"We've been blessed that the songwriters thought enough of what we bring to the table that they pitched us their top-shelf stuff, even on the first album," LeVox says. "A lot of times, that doesn't happen. They never know if a new act is going to break through or not. They took a chance on us, and we'll forever be thankful and grateful for them pitching us some great stuff."


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