As Rascal Flatts recorded their new album, Back to Us, the record’s title represented much more than just the name of their favorite song on the project. The disc, released Friday (May 19), is the country trio’s first since 2014’s Rewind, and gave Gary LeVox, Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney a way to return to their roots, 17 years after their eponymous debut album.
“Back to Us is a wonderful representation of where we are right now in our careers,” LeVox tells The Boot. “The three of us couldn’t be more proud of this project: It’s got amazing uptempo songs. It’s got huge power ballads on it. It’s got a Chris Stapleton tune [“Vandalized”]; of course, he sang the snot out of it. We have a duet with Lauren Alaina on there [“Are You Happy Now”], on a song that we wrote; it’s the first song that we’ve had on the record that the three of us have written for a while.
“It just captures where we started, where we have been and where we’re going,” LeVox adds, “all in one record.”
Whether it’s the catchy “Roller Rink” (a deluxe-edition-only track), the inspirational “Our Night to Shine,” the haunting “I Know You Won’t” or Rascal Flatts’ current single, “Yours If You Want It,” each song on Back to Us allows DeMarcus, LeVox and Rooney to show off their creativity in ways they felt unable to in the past.
“We were really, really thrilled and excited that the trend in pop music is ‘80s again, because we all grew up in the ‘80s,” DeMarcus explains. “It’s such a bigger color palette to paint from. You were sort of limited years ago in country music: You could put a mandolin on it, you could throw on a banjo; you might be able to get away with a little bit of a loop and a little bit of a synth pad, but, boy, if they heard any synthesizers, you were in trouble. Not so much anymore.
“Country’s opened its boundaries so wide that it embraces everything, and it gives everybody this new freedom to create now,” DeMarcus continues. “So to go in and create this music is so much fun and so liberating, because we finally got to put all the elements in musically that we’ve always wanted to put in. That’s where you hear that broad range of sounds and techniques of building tracks and loops and beats and synths.
“I think we stayed true to who Rascal Flatts is, we just pushed the musical boundaries a little bit,” DeMarcus concludes. “There are still great songs with great lyrics; we’ve just done different things with the tracks.”
DeMarcus has firsthand knowledge of how different some of these tracks really are: As the producer of Back to Us, he had creative freedom, but also felt responsible to make each song stand out.
“The hardest part, for me, is being in the band and knowing the way I want certain things to sound, but also having to listen to opinions, and very valid opinions, of my bandmates,” DeMarcus admits. “So, sometimes, I’ll have to have conversations with them as a producer, and then conversations with them as a bandmate. They’re two distinctly different things, so it’s a challenge, but it’s one that I love, because I came to this town to be a producer and songwriter — that’s what I wanted to do; I never set out to be an artist.
“It’s such a wonderful thing for me to be able to be in there and make music with people that I love, first of all,” DeMarcus adds. “It’s something that I’m so passionate about.”
http://theboot.com/rascal-flatts-back-to-us-interview-2017/