Rascal Flatts will release their 10th studio album, Back to Us, this Friday, featuring their latest single, “Yours If You Want It,” and Gary LeVox says, “Our entire career’s just flown by. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been in the game as long as the numbers say, you know? But this being our 10th album it’s kind of mind blowing because you know, first you just want to get a record deal. Then you just want to have a single and then hopefully hear it on the radio. And we’ve been so blessed and just it’s really, really amazing that we’ve got 10 studio albums completed.”
Joe Don Rooney agrees that the time has flown by. He says, “I think when you love what you do and you’re passionate about it, I think time does seem to move faster and it does not feel like 17 years.”
For this album, the guys self-produced all but one song on the album and Jay DeMarcus says, “For me the fact that it was the three of us mostly on this record for the majority of it, and us locking ourselves away and really being responsible for every note in everything that was played and everything that was put on this record from start to finish, it was a really, really great way to create.”
Throughout the years, Rascal Flatts’ music has provided the soundtrack to so many people’s lives from heartbreak to weddings, to graduations and losing loved ones, and Gary says with Back to Us, “I just hope it’s another chapter in their lives and that we continue to write the story of their lives, you know, with this. Hopefully that they can relate to some of this stuff and have fun with the ones that are supposed to have fun with and just that they’re impacted in some way and that they find a part of their life in one of the stories that we sang on this album.”
Jay DeMarcus has seen some of the comments fans have been leaving online about their latest single, “Yours If You Want It,” things like, ‘They’re back. This is the Rascal Flatts I fell in love with.’ He says, “It’s been so encouraging for me to read through that and I hope in some way people rediscover the joy that they had when they first found Rascal Flatts and I hope it brings them back to the very reasons why they fell in love with us to begin with.”
Rascal Flatts – 10th album :29
Gary LeVox – “Our entire career’s just flown by. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been in the game as long as the numbers say, you know? But this being our 10th album it’s kind of mind blowing because you know, first you just want to get a record deal. Then you just want to have a single and then hopefully hear it on the radio. And we’ve been so blessed and just it’s really, really amazing that we’ve got 10 studio albums completed and this one was probably more fun than it was making the first one. It was a joy. It was great. We’ve got some great stuff on there, I think some of the best stuff we’ve had in awhile.”
Rascal Flatts – Back to Us album title 1:17
Jay DeMarcus – “For me the fact that it was the three of us mostly on this record for the majority of it, and us locking ourselves away and really being responsible for every note in everything that was played and everything that was put on this record from start to finish, it was a really, really great way to create. And the fact that we had a label head in Scott Borchetta that literally sat down with us and said, ‘Guys, I think that the magic pill has been and always is the three of you guys. You need to be in a room with yourselves, in a studio. Try some songs use your road band,’ which is something we’d never done before. And for the first half of this record that’s exactly what we did. And he also said, ‘I’m not going to put any time constraints on you and you turn the record in when you’re ready and you feel like you have the music you want to present to the world.’ So that was …”
Gary LeVox – “And he also said ‘there are no rules’ on this record.
Jay DeMarcus – “Yeah. It was such a great way to work without all of this pressure and all of this … you know, in a lot of ways we don’t feel like we have anything left to prove. That’s not saying that to be arrogant, it’s just that we don’t feel the pressure of having to sell 500,000 records again or a million records or have another hit song, you know? It’s great to create with the freedom of knowing that you can take a deep breath now and kind of enjoy where you are in life and in your career.”
Rascal Flatts – time flies when having fun :38
Joe Don Rooney – “17 years. I think when you love what you do and you’re passionate about it, I think time does seem to move faster and it does not feel like 17 years. But this album, Back to Us, though is special in so many ways. You know we kind of locked ourselves away and really, really took our time with picking the right songs and writing songs for this album and spent a lot of time at Jay’s house in his home studio. And you know we were just comfortable and it was a very collective progress with the album, and it’s just amazing that we’re still able to find these songs and write these songs and make the kind of music we’re able to make after all these years. And just feel blessed and really humbled to still be in the business where there’s so many wonderful country artists now days.“
Rascal Flatts – what do you hope fans get from album 1:04
Gary LeVox – “I just hope it’s another chapter in their lives and that we continue to write the story of their lives, you know, with this. Hopefully that they can relate to some of this stuff and have fun with the ones that are supposed to have fun with and just that they’re impacted in some way and that they find a part of their life in one of the stories that we sang on this album.”
Jay DeMarcus – “I would say for me, I’ve been on iTunes since the single’s been released and there are hundreds of comments on there that say things like, ‘They’re back. This is the Rascal Flatts I fell in love with.’ And it’s been so encouraging for me to read through that and I hope in some way people rediscover the joy that they had when they first found Rascal Flatts and I hope it brings them back to the very reasons why they fell in love with us to begin with.”
Joe Don Rooney – “Yeah definitely and I hope they feel and can hear the passion and the energy in this album that we have, probably maybe more so now than ever before. I hope that that translates from this album to the fans because we’re here and we’re here to stay and we love our jobs that they provide for us and we hope they love the music as much as we did recording it.”