Sad news for Rascal Flatts fans. Jay DeMarcus says the trio he was in with Gary LeVox and Joe Don Rooney, which disbanded in 2020, unable to do their farewell tour because of the pandemic, will likely never reunite again, now that so much time has passed.
“I would want to say never say never,” DeMarcus says on the Chrisley Knows Best podcast. “We’re in such different places right now and don’t really communicate on a consistent basis. Gary’s out doing his own thing, and I think he’s enjoying being the boss, calling the shots. I don’t begrudge him for that. It must be hard — I know it is, because I was in it too — but it’s hard to be the lead singer and have to consider other people’s opinions, because you have partners. I can’t imagine how liberating that must be for him to do things the way he wants to do it now.
“But it’s also liberating for me, too, because there were times in our career that I looked at things, and I would go, ‘I absolutely know this is not the right thing to do, but because I’m out-voted, we’re going to do it anyway, and we’re gonna crash and burn, because it’s a dumb decision,'” he continues. “So all of us probably shared those frustrations at some point or another.”
LeVox has been busy releasing his own music, while DeMarcus is running his Red Street Records label, and is also working on his own album. Rooney, the only one who didn’t leave the trio with a concrete plan, was arrested in 2021 for a DUI, but is now sober, and living life to the fullest.
.”We’re on totally different pages now.,” DeMarcus maintains. “Of course, Joe Don went through his very public debacle a couple of years ago. He’s better than I’ve heard him in 10 years. He’s 19 months sober, and he’s enjoying having some peace and learning how to live again without his addiction, and so I’m really, really, really proud of him and where he’s at right now.
“There are just so many steps that would have to take place in order for us to get back to even talking about it … It’s not too late,” he adds. “I think the further we get away from it the harder it is to put it back together.”
Part of the sadness for DeMarcus is that the Flatts never got a chance to have a proper goodbye, with each other or their fans, due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m still mourning the loss of the Flatts, even though there wasn’t an official breakup,” DeMarcus acknowledges. “Most of my adult life, it’s all that I’ve known. Getting on that bus, and going out and singing to people, and seeing what your music does, and how it’s touched people is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It’s better than any drug you could ever be on.
“And to have that stripped away from you, not on your own terms, was a very painful thing,” he remarks. “And to not have known March 7th, of 2020 when we were in New Jersey doing our last show that that was the last time the three of us would be on stage together, makes me really sad to think about.”
In hindsight, with the benefit of three years after the last Rascal Flatts show, DeMarcus now sees what he couldn’t see then: that the threesome was long overdue for a desperately-needed break.
“We had an amazing 20-plus year run. I think for us, the thing that happened is we burnt the candle at both ends for so long,” DeMarcus says. “We toured, and we did another record. We’d do press, and we’d tour, and we’d do another record. We would do press. It was a never-ending cycle and it did work, but it’s hard to put the machine down or put the brakes on when everything is cruising along and going full-speed ahead. For us, we should have taken a break at some point, just a year off to kind of collect ourselves, hit the reset button ….I think we stayed in maybe a couple of years too long, and we should have taken a break.”
Find all of DeMarcus’ music and upcoming shows at JayDeMarcus.com.
