Post by Scully on Jan 7, 2014 11:54:24 GMT -6
Grand New Nashville: A Private Tour From Rascal Flatts
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“WE USED TO DROP OUR GEAR OFF RIGHT THERE!”
exclaims Joe Don Rooney, the lead guitarist for pop-country trio Rascal Flatts, motioning to a nearby parking garage.
Rooney and I are cruising down Nashville’s Church Street in the back of a black Mercedes, accompanied by the band’s lead singer, Gary LeVox, and bassist/keyboardist, Jay DeMarcus, who is currently trying to get our driver’s attention. “Stop right here,” he says, and we pile out into a crisp fall afternoon.
We take a left on Printers Alley, a 19th-century sheet music hub now occupied by a row of honky-tonks. Country legends like Hank Williams and Chet Atkins took their first licks here in the 1940s, and it’s still the heart of Music City’s nightlife. We stroll down the promenade, passing a tiny strip joint, a hot dog stand and a karaoke bar called Lonnie’s Western Room, finally arriving at the Fiddle and Steel Guitar Bar.
Rascal Flatts was born here in 1998, and the venue hasn’t changed much since. A flickering neon sign proclaims its name on the side of the redbrick building, and a poster on the front door warns, “Attention: No Guns Permitted.”
“This stage in here, I would sit on a stool, and Jay would set his keyboards up beside the cigarette machine,” says Rooney. “Both of us couldn’t get on there at the same time.”
A middle-aged couple shuffles up to the band. “I have to take your picture,” the lady says to LeVox.
“Absolutely,” he replies, curling an arm around her. “Wanna get in with me?”
“Yes, thank you so much!” she shrieks, handing a phone to her befuddled husband. Then she motions to me. “Can I get everybody?” I regretfully inform her that I’m not in the group as Rooney and DeMarcus walk over for the picture. “Next time you’re in Canada, I’m going to go see you,” she tells them, beaming as she walks away.
“Good!” yells Rooney. Adds DeMarcus: “We always play Ottawa!”
Fifteen years after its first gig at Fiddle and Steel, Rascal Flatts has indeed expanded well beyond Nashville. Propelled by catchy hooks and harmonies, the trio has since notched 14 No. 1 singles and sold more than 21 million albums, making it the bestselling country vocal group of the past decade.
In 2012 the band released Changed, its second album on new home Big Machine Label Group�whose roster includes Taylor Swiftt, Tim McGraw and Reba McEntire, among others�giving Rascal Flaatts its seventh consecutive studio album to debut atop the country charts.
The cash is rolling in, too: The group earned $25 million this year, No. 8 among all country acts, largely because of its rigorous touring schedule. The band played to 1 million fans last year�in the United SStates, Canada, Sweden, Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom�and many of those fans are now country converts.
“Most of pop music now is R&B and hip-hop, and really electronic-driven,” DeMarcus says. “So what we did was we filled a void for the baby boomers, in particular, that had grown up fans of bands like Aerosmith and Journey � that sort of helped usher iin a new brand of country music that was a little more on the pop side, but was still completely country because of its lyrical content.”
That style of music traces its roots to a long line of crossover artists, including John Denver, Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. Rascal Flatts was at the vanguard of the latest wave, opening the door for Carrie Underwood, The Band Perry and Lady Antebellum.
“They were one of the big bands that really helped tear the boundaries down,” says Big Machine chief Scott Borchetta of Rascal Flatts. “So I think they brought a ton of people into the format that have stayed."
The genre’s success is also attracting scores of new Music City residents. In addition to the expected country names (Swift, Luke Bryan, Brad Paisley), the city now brims with rockers (Kings of Leon, Jack White) and transplants from Los Angeles (Sheryl Crow), and a few from way down south (Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman). Crow not only moved to Nashville in 2006 but also to its spiritual genre, releasing her first country record in September. “I’m sort of like a suburb of country music,” she told FORBES at the time. “And the city limits of the format absorbed me.”
As Rascal Flatts and its peers continue to export country music to mainstream audiences, Nashville’s physical appearance has become something of a crossover itself. Back in the Mercedes, as we glide down Broadway�the city’s main drag�we pass a store called BooBoots ‘N’ More, followed by an American Apparel and Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.
Over the past two years, Nashville’s population has grown by 3.5%, double the state and national average. Much like those flyover country oases Denver and Austin, the city’s low cost of living has been luring musically inclined urbanites from both coasts.
“The economic crash hit, and I think a lot of people started waking up going, ‘I’d like to make a change in my personal life and move to Nashville, where I don’t have to pay so much overhead like you do in L.A. or New York,’” says the 38-year-old Rooney. “And a lot of players started coming.” The town now boasts more music jobs per capita than any city in America. In particular, the continued push toward electronic music�both as aa genre and as an ever-growing component of the hip-hop and R&B that now dominates Top 40 radio�has left many session musicians underemplloyed in coastal pop music centers like southern California.
“We had a huge influx of people migrating from L.A. to here, which sort of influenced the music,” says DeMarcus. As a consequence, more and more of the session musicians in Nashville were trained in rock, pop or jazz, giving the latest iteration of country-pop its diverse flavor. As Borchetta�who moved from southern California about 330 years ago�points out, “There are not a lot of Nashvilllians, so to speak, that are in the bands.”
The outsiders seem to have brought their tastes along with them. Though traditional fare abounds�a trip to Nashville isn’t completee without trying the local delicacy known as hot chicken (fried chicken marinated in buttermilk and spiced with cayenne pepper)�there are pleenty of establishments that feel more West Hollywood than country-western. Take, for example, the steakhouse Kayne Prime, where the filet is wagyu beef and the corn is served as a crème brûlée, or the sleek sushi place Virago, with its rooftop thingytail bar and decidedly un-Nashvillian menu.
Meanwhile, modern media attention has boosted some of the city’s old-school local haunts such as the Bluebird Café, where Borchetta discovered Swift as a teenaged singer-songwriter nearly a decade ago. Says Rooney: “It’s packed, especially now that theNashville show is happening on ABC.”
We roll to a stop in front of the Stage, a Broadway honky-tonk where Rascal Flatts used to play for $40 per night (sometimes not enough to cover the group’s bar tab, LeVox recalls).
Inside, midday drinkers tap their cowboy boots to the tones of a raucous country crooner. Indeed, grabbing a pint and catching a quick set before moving on to the next spot remains at the heart of the Nashville experience, even if the bands won’t all go on to become Rascal Flatts.
“Not everything you’ll hear down here is world class,” says DeMarcus, 42, thingying his head toward the Stage’s open door. “There’s a lot of bad to go with a lot of the good.”
The 43-year-old LeVox begins hamming it up as a group of onlookers gathers. “Rascal Flatts!” screams a brunette who’s visiting from St. Louis.
Though Rascal Flatts can't walk down Broadway without drawing a crowd of tourists, they’re actually Nashville transplants themselves. DeMarcus was the first to arrive, settling in Music City in 1993 after attending Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, to play in a local Christian band that fell apart after a few years.
He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, near LeVox, his cousin. The two didn’t see each other much after high school�until LeVox stoppped in Nashville to visit DeMarcus on his way to Florida. The two were playing around with the keyboard in DeMarcus’ apartment when LeVox started singing. (He was born Gary Wayne Vernon, Jr. but changed his name professionally to LeVox, meaning “The Voice.”)
“The hair was standing up on my arms because he was such a phenomenal singer,” recalls DeMarcus. “The funny thing is, I had no idea he sang like that.”
LeVox returned to Ohio, sold all of his belongings, hopped in his truck and drove back to Nashville�straight to a recording studio, whhere DeMarcus had helped him land a gig singing background vocals on a gospel record by Michael English. Just a few minutes from his destination, he got lost and called his cousin for directions.
“I’m at some street, Demon Brewin,’” said LeVox.
“Deh-MUN-brew-yin,” DeMarcus said, correcting his pronunciation.”Take a right.”
Once LeVox was situated in Nashville, the two began playing in clubs around town whenever they could, eventually landing a weekly gig at Fiddle and Steel. Two hours before one show, their guitarist canceled. DeMarcus had been playing with Rooney in another band and called to see if he was free. When he walked into the club that night, LeVox still hadn’t met him, but the trio performed for six straight hours, until three in the morning.
“[We played] this song by Shenandoah called ‘Church on Cumberland Road.’ I knew the song perfectly, just as well as these guys did,” says Rooney. “And as soon as we hit that first chorus, it was just this buzz that happened with our harmonies, and I think we all in that moment felt something really special.”
The next day, DeMarcus and LeVox asked Rooney to join their band. All they needed now was a name. They tried Oklahio (Rooney hails from a tiny town near Tulsa) and a mix of other ill-fated monikers dreamed up by LeVox on a long car ride (“Exit 94,” “Food Ahead” and “Rest Area,” to name a few). On a subsequent visit to Fiddle and Steel, DeMarcus simply polled the crowd. One of their friends, a piano player known as Jelly Roll, offered a suggestion.
“Back in the ’60s,” he explained, “I used to have a garage band, and we called ourselves Rascal Flatts. That’s your name right there.”
“What does it mean?”
“Hell, I don’t know!”
They signed an agreement on the back of a napkin, and eventually the band paid Jelly Roll $5,000 for his inspiration.
Just as DeMarcus completes his story, we roll to a stop at a red light�right next to a bus with the giant words “Rascal Flattss” across the side of it.
“Crazy �” says Rooney, his voice trailing off.. “It’s really amazing to think how things lined up for Jay, Gary and myself.”
As we approach Nashville's vaunted Music Row�a seeries of tree-lined streets with residential-looking buildings that happen to house music studios and label offices�Rooney points to the corrner of Chet Atkins Place and 19th Avenue South: the former home of Lyric Street Records, Disney’s longtime country imprint. Rascal Flatts recorded its debut album there in 2000; the self-titled record landed four singles on the top ten spots of the country charts and has since sold over 2 million copies in the United States. When the label went under in 2010, Borchetta’s Big Machine immediately signed them up.
And the trio continues to put down roots in Nashville. First came the completion of the $5 million Rascal Flatts Surgery Center at Vanderbilt University’s children’s hospital (“They finished that and then they said, ‘What can we do now?’” says Dr. John Brock III, the hospital’s director of pediatric urology). Next came an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry, the famed weekly country music show launched in 1925 (its winter home, Ryman Auditorium, is another Nashville must; upcoming guests include ZZ Top and the Pixies).
Today, all three members of Rascal Flatts have started families of their own. The Nashville they now experience is decidedly different from the one they knew in the 1990s. LeVox recently moved to a gated community 20 minutes outside of town, while his bandmates both live in suburban Forest Hills.
“The times to go out and hear live music and sort of fly by the seat of your pants are very few and far between now, thankfully and gratefully so,” says DeMarcus. “I love my time with my kids. � I don’t know that I could pick a better place to raisee a family than Nashville.”
And though country music remains front and center, the city is crossing over in other areas as well. FORBES recently named Nashville the fifth-best place in the nation for business and careers, thanks to burgeoning health care and banking industries. Last year saw the completion of a 350,000-square-foot downtown convention center, which will only add to Nashville’s annual total of 11 million visitors.
Rascal Flatts, meanwhile, is focusing on its next album, due out in 2014. The group is turning to producer Howard Benson, known for his work with Bon Jovi and Santana, to continue its push into the pop/rock sphere. That bodes well for the proprietors of Fiddle and Steel. Says DeMarcus: “Every platinum record we got, we gave them one, too.”
If Rascal Flatts’ history is any indication, the Nashville honky-tonk should start clearing some more wall space.
** This story appeared in the December 16, 2013 issue of Forbes Life.
Scroll down for full story...
“WE USED TO DROP OUR GEAR OFF RIGHT THERE!”
exclaims Joe Don Rooney, the lead guitarist for pop-country trio Rascal Flatts, motioning to a nearby parking garage.
Rooney and I are cruising down Nashville’s Church Street in the back of a black Mercedes, accompanied by the band’s lead singer, Gary LeVox, and bassist/keyboardist, Jay DeMarcus, who is currently trying to get our driver’s attention. “Stop right here,” he says, and we pile out into a crisp fall afternoon.
We take a left on Printers Alley, a 19th-century sheet music hub now occupied by a row of honky-tonks. Country legends like Hank Williams and Chet Atkins took their first licks here in the 1940s, and it’s still the heart of Music City’s nightlife. We stroll down the promenade, passing a tiny strip joint, a hot dog stand and a karaoke bar called Lonnie’s Western Room, finally arriving at the Fiddle and Steel Guitar Bar.
Rascal Flatts was born here in 1998, and the venue hasn’t changed much since. A flickering neon sign proclaims its name on the side of the redbrick building, and a poster on the front door warns, “Attention: No Guns Permitted.”
“This stage in here, I would sit on a stool, and Jay would set his keyboards up beside the cigarette machine,” says Rooney. “Both of us couldn’t get on there at the same time.”
A middle-aged couple shuffles up to the band. “I have to take your picture,” the lady says to LeVox.
“Absolutely,” he replies, curling an arm around her. “Wanna get in with me?”
“Yes, thank you so much!” she shrieks, handing a phone to her befuddled husband. Then she motions to me. “Can I get everybody?” I regretfully inform her that I’m not in the group as Rooney and DeMarcus walk over for the picture. “Next time you’re in Canada, I’m going to go see you,” she tells them, beaming as she walks away.
“Good!” yells Rooney. Adds DeMarcus: “We always play Ottawa!”
Fifteen years after its first gig at Fiddle and Steel, Rascal Flatts has indeed expanded well beyond Nashville. Propelled by catchy hooks and harmonies, the trio has since notched 14 No. 1 singles and sold more than 21 million albums, making it the bestselling country vocal group of the past decade.
In 2012 the band released Changed, its second album on new home Big Machine Label Group�whose roster includes Taylor Swiftt, Tim McGraw and Reba McEntire, among others�giving Rascal Flaatts its seventh consecutive studio album to debut atop the country charts.
The cash is rolling in, too: The group earned $25 million this year, No. 8 among all country acts, largely because of its rigorous touring schedule. The band played to 1 million fans last year�in the United SStates, Canada, Sweden, Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom�and many of those fans are now country converts.
“Most of pop music now is R&B and hip-hop, and really electronic-driven,” DeMarcus says. “So what we did was we filled a void for the baby boomers, in particular, that had grown up fans of bands like Aerosmith and Journey � that sort of helped usher iin a new brand of country music that was a little more on the pop side, but was still completely country because of its lyrical content.”
That style of music traces its roots to a long line of crossover artists, including John Denver, Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. Rascal Flatts was at the vanguard of the latest wave, opening the door for Carrie Underwood, The Band Perry and Lady Antebellum.
“They were one of the big bands that really helped tear the boundaries down,” says Big Machine chief Scott Borchetta of Rascal Flatts. “So I think they brought a ton of people into the format that have stayed."
The genre’s success is also attracting scores of new Music City residents. In addition to the expected country names (Swift, Luke Bryan, Brad Paisley), the city now brims with rockers (Kings of Leon, Jack White) and transplants from Los Angeles (Sheryl Crow), and a few from way down south (Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman). Crow not only moved to Nashville in 2006 but also to its spiritual genre, releasing her first country record in September. “I’m sort of like a suburb of country music,” she told FORBES at the time. “And the city limits of the format absorbed me.”
As Rascal Flatts and its peers continue to export country music to mainstream audiences, Nashville’s physical appearance has become something of a crossover itself. Back in the Mercedes, as we glide down Broadway�the city’s main drag�we pass a store called BooBoots ‘N’ More, followed by an American Apparel and Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.
Over the past two years, Nashville’s population has grown by 3.5%, double the state and national average. Much like those flyover country oases Denver and Austin, the city’s low cost of living has been luring musically inclined urbanites from both coasts.
“The economic crash hit, and I think a lot of people started waking up going, ‘I’d like to make a change in my personal life and move to Nashville, where I don’t have to pay so much overhead like you do in L.A. or New York,’” says the 38-year-old Rooney. “And a lot of players started coming.” The town now boasts more music jobs per capita than any city in America. In particular, the continued push toward electronic music�both as aa genre and as an ever-growing component of the hip-hop and R&B that now dominates Top 40 radio�has left many session musicians underemplloyed in coastal pop music centers like southern California.
“We had a huge influx of people migrating from L.A. to here, which sort of influenced the music,” says DeMarcus. As a consequence, more and more of the session musicians in Nashville were trained in rock, pop or jazz, giving the latest iteration of country-pop its diverse flavor. As Borchetta�who moved from southern California about 330 years ago�points out, “There are not a lot of Nashvilllians, so to speak, that are in the bands.”
The outsiders seem to have brought their tastes along with them. Though traditional fare abounds�a trip to Nashville isn’t completee without trying the local delicacy known as hot chicken (fried chicken marinated in buttermilk and spiced with cayenne pepper)�there are pleenty of establishments that feel more West Hollywood than country-western. Take, for example, the steakhouse Kayne Prime, where the filet is wagyu beef and the corn is served as a crème brûlée, or the sleek sushi place Virago, with its rooftop thingytail bar and decidedly un-Nashvillian menu.
Meanwhile, modern media attention has boosted some of the city’s old-school local haunts such as the Bluebird Café, where Borchetta discovered Swift as a teenaged singer-songwriter nearly a decade ago. Says Rooney: “It’s packed, especially now that theNashville show is happening on ABC.”
We roll to a stop in front of the Stage, a Broadway honky-tonk where Rascal Flatts used to play for $40 per night (sometimes not enough to cover the group’s bar tab, LeVox recalls).
Inside, midday drinkers tap their cowboy boots to the tones of a raucous country crooner. Indeed, grabbing a pint and catching a quick set before moving on to the next spot remains at the heart of the Nashville experience, even if the bands won’t all go on to become Rascal Flatts.
“Not everything you’ll hear down here is world class,” says DeMarcus, 42, thingying his head toward the Stage’s open door. “There’s a lot of bad to go with a lot of the good.”
The 43-year-old LeVox begins hamming it up as a group of onlookers gathers. “Rascal Flatts!” screams a brunette who’s visiting from St. Louis.
Though Rascal Flatts can't walk down Broadway without drawing a crowd of tourists, they’re actually Nashville transplants themselves. DeMarcus was the first to arrive, settling in Music City in 1993 after attending Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, to play in a local Christian band that fell apart after a few years.
He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, near LeVox, his cousin. The two didn’t see each other much after high school�until LeVox stoppped in Nashville to visit DeMarcus on his way to Florida. The two were playing around with the keyboard in DeMarcus’ apartment when LeVox started singing. (He was born Gary Wayne Vernon, Jr. but changed his name professionally to LeVox, meaning “The Voice.”)
“The hair was standing up on my arms because he was such a phenomenal singer,” recalls DeMarcus. “The funny thing is, I had no idea he sang like that.”
LeVox returned to Ohio, sold all of his belongings, hopped in his truck and drove back to Nashville�straight to a recording studio, whhere DeMarcus had helped him land a gig singing background vocals on a gospel record by Michael English. Just a few minutes from his destination, he got lost and called his cousin for directions.
“I’m at some street, Demon Brewin,’” said LeVox.
“Deh-MUN-brew-yin,” DeMarcus said, correcting his pronunciation.”Take a right.”
Once LeVox was situated in Nashville, the two began playing in clubs around town whenever they could, eventually landing a weekly gig at Fiddle and Steel. Two hours before one show, their guitarist canceled. DeMarcus had been playing with Rooney in another band and called to see if he was free. When he walked into the club that night, LeVox still hadn’t met him, but the trio performed for six straight hours, until three in the morning.
“[We played] this song by Shenandoah called ‘Church on Cumberland Road.’ I knew the song perfectly, just as well as these guys did,” says Rooney. “And as soon as we hit that first chorus, it was just this buzz that happened with our harmonies, and I think we all in that moment felt something really special.”
The next day, DeMarcus and LeVox asked Rooney to join their band. All they needed now was a name. They tried Oklahio (Rooney hails from a tiny town near Tulsa) and a mix of other ill-fated monikers dreamed up by LeVox on a long car ride (“Exit 94,” “Food Ahead” and “Rest Area,” to name a few). On a subsequent visit to Fiddle and Steel, DeMarcus simply polled the crowd. One of their friends, a piano player known as Jelly Roll, offered a suggestion.
“Back in the ’60s,” he explained, “I used to have a garage band, and we called ourselves Rascal Flatts. That’s your name right there.”
“What does it mean?”
“Hell, I don’t know!”
They signed an agreement on the back of a napkin, and eventually the band paid Jelly Roll $5,000 for his inspiration.
Just as DeMarcus completes his story, we roll to a stop at a red light�right next to a bus with the giant words “Rascal Flattss” across the side of it.
“Crazy �” says Rooney, his voice trailing off.. “It’s really amazing to think how things lined up for Jay, Gary and myself.”
As we approach Nashville's vaunted Music Row�a seeries of tree-lined streets with residential-looking buildings that happen to house music studios and label offices�Rooney points to the corrner of Chet Atkins Place and 19th Avenue South: the former home of Lyric Street Records, Disney’s longtime country imprint. Rascal Flatts recorded its debut album there in 2000; the self-titled record landed four singles on the top ten spots of the country charts and has since sold over 2 million copies in the United States. When the label went under in 2010, Borchetta’s Big Machine immediately signed them up.
And the trio continues to put down roots in Nashville. First came the completion of the $5 million Rascal Flatts Surgery Center at Vanderbilt University’s children’s hospital (“They finished that and then they said, ‘What can we do now?’” says Dr. John Brock III, the hospital’s director of pediatric urology). Next came an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry, the famed weekly country music show launched in 1925 (its winter home, Ryman Auditorium, is another Nashville must; upcoming guests include ZZ Top and the Pixies).
Today, all three members of Rascal Flatts have started families of their own. The Nashville they now experience is decidedly different from the one they knew in the 1990s. LeVox recently moved to a gated community 20 minutes outside of town, while his bandmates both live in suburban Forest Hills.
“The times to go out and hear live music and sort of fly by the seat of your pants are very few and far between now, thankfully and gratefully so,” says DeMarcus. “I love my time with my kids. � I don’t know that I could pick a better place to raisee a family than Nashville.”
And though country music remains front and center, the city is crossing over in other areas as well. FORBES recently named Nashville the fifth-best place in the nation for business and careers, thanks to burgeoning health care and banking industries. Last year saw the completion of a 350,000-square-foot downtown convention center, which will only add to Nashville’s annual total of 11 million visitors.
Rascal Flatts, meanwhile, is focusing on its next album, due out in 2014. The group is turning to producer Howard Benson, known for his work with Bon Jovi and Santana, to continue its push into the pop/rock sphere. That bodes well for the proprietors of Fiddle and Steel. Says DeMarcus: “Every platinum record we got, we gave them one, too.”
If Rascal Flatts’ history is any indication, the Nashville honky-tonk should start clearing some more wall space.
** This story appeared in the December 16, 2013 issue of Forbes Life.