It's always a wonderful time to be able to settle down by the fire, enjoy the Christmas tree and the decorations, and just spend time with the ones you love and surround yourself with the people that you don't get to see enough throughout the year.
Jay DeMarcus
Living country is more about your values and beliefs than cowboy hats or living on a farm.
I don't know that I could pick a better place to raise a family than Nashville.
Christian music was such a huge foundation for me, even as a kid, and I grew to love Christian music not only because of the musicianship, which I thought was extraordinary, but because of the message in it. It was such a huge building block of who I was and who I would become.
We were kind of young and a little naive when we first started out in the business.
It was such a whirlwind for us for about three to four years there that, every time we turned around, we were pulled in 90 different directions, and I look back on that now, and they're such wonderful memories, but you kinda wish that you would've taken the time to savor them a little bit more.
We were derided as a boy band, with pop music and not really country.
It's weird to think about being introduced as 'Hall of Fame members Rascal Flatts.'
When you first start out in the music business and hope that you have a couple hits, the ultimate payoff is to be standing in front of all those people who are singing it back to you at the top of their lungs. And you know by the way they're singing it back that it's affected their life in some way. That's the ultimate reward as an artist for me.
I'm not a perfect human being by any stretch of the imagination. But there is always this little voice inside of me that keeps me where I know I need to be.
People would say, 'Why are you guys in country music? You look like you're in the Backstreet Boys.' We took so much heat. We always said, 'It's not about hats and Wrangler Jeans. It's about a state of mind. Country is in our souls.'
What an incredible honor for us to share the stage with real life rock n' roll icons, the Rolling Stones. There are a lot of bucket list moments that you dream up as a performing musician, and this is a pretty wild one to actually have come true. You, in fact, can get some satisfaction!
I am living proof - and I know this for a fact - that you can find encouragement and strength through the message that's in Christian music, because I've lived it.
We live in the Bible Belt. I was born and raised in church. That's something that was really, really important to me, to build that foundation with our kids so they at least went to church.
My mother and father are big musical heroes of mine. I think it was because it was the first memories that I have of actually hearing music and falling in love with it and wanting to be a part of it in some way.
My faith and my beliefs sustain me through all of the craziness that this life brings.
I've never in my life had a cavity. Not one!
I think, as long as people are doing their craft at a high level, I'm going to have respect for it and find something that appeals to me.
When you put a new show out, you always have a few kinks that you need to iron out, and you need to dial your show in. You figure out over a couple of weeks what songs work well together and what songs may not have the impact you thought they would at that spot in the show.
I was at a Dolly Parton concert when I was about 9 years old. I saw her at the Ohio State Fair, and it was my first real concert that I'd been to. I saw that crowd and how they reacted and how great of a performer she was and the band. Just the energy of the whole thing collectively really captured me.
Typically, every 14 to 16 months, we're putting a new album out. To be honest, I wish it was slower.
I feel like we were so naive when we first got started, we didn't even know we'd be around for two years, given how tough it was when we were first starting out.
We were just hoping 'Prayin' for Daylight' wasn't a complete flop. Selling a million records wasn't even in our wildest thoughts.
We started out as a bar band. We were sometimes playing in front of 20 people.
So many people have stood behind me for so long.
With a band like Shenandoah, you don't want to take things and deconstruct them to a point where you don't recognize them.
We write songs that hit different people at different ages where they live.
Some of my biggest commercial musical influences would be people like Merle Haggard, George Jones, of course, Johnny Cash. People that wrote and sang their own stuff, I really admired.
Constantly writing with new people is important. Also, listening to new music that's popular and that's making a splash - that's how I get motivated.
After 15 years of singing the same 12 to 15 songs every night, it can become monotonous.
So many people in this world get up every day and go to their nine-to-five job they hate for 12 months a year for 30 years. I kind of do a self-check and evaluation to realize I'm very blessed and grateful to be where I am.
That's what Joe Don Rooney and I do. He plays guitar and I play bass - and there's no reason to call it a band if you're not gonna have the guys in the band playing on the records.
It caught us by surprise when people started calling us a boy band because we'd always considered ourselves pretty serious musicians.
The lines have definitely blurred between country and pop music.
When you get to a certain point in your career, it's easy to just phone it in, to get complacent. If you're not careful, you can stop challenging yourself.
We make music for our fans, and that's what we'll continue to do.
We were so influenced not only by country music but by the rock bands of the '80s. Our focus was to bring in something different. Country music already had a George Strait and Alabama. We wanted to put some pop music in our show.
I think it happens with every career when you've been around 10 or 12 years. You start to get on cruise control a little bit, then you freak out and go, 'Oh my gosh, we've got to change some things up.'
I love making records. That's my favorite part of the whole process. And I love playing live, but certainly getting the music on a disc that's going to live forever and be there forever, just every little detail drives me crazy.
I've been really, really fortunate to have a mother that has spent many, many long hours on her knees praying for me. And I guarantee you, I would almost bet everything I have that that has saved me more often than not. So it sustains me.
It's no secret that my favorite part of the process is making records; if I'm not making them with Flatts, then I'm out producing them on other folks.
I've been on the road since I was 15, in one way or another - on a bus, in a 15-passenger van, pulling a U-haul - so I would be lying if I said sometimes the miles and the road didn't get long. But it's always rewarding, that hour and a half every night you get to stand up there and see it all pay off and feel the love from that crowd.
We cut songs that touch us because if they don't touch us first, there's no way in the world we're going to be able to sell those songs to somebody else.
We've been very blessed in our career.
We've gotten to do so many great things throughout the years. We've gotten to meet presidents. We've been able to go to so many wonderful awards shows and meet so many great celebrities.
I think the simple message of that song is what attracted me to 'Every Day.' It's one of those simple yet profound lyrics.
People are always surprised to find this out, but the songs that we write, such as 'Winner of a Losing Game' and things like that, tend to be more country than the other stuff that we cut from outside writers.
I remember when 'I'm Moving On' came out, and we got the response we did, I thought, 'Man, this could be for real.' That was the first time it dawned on me what we had.
When you get new people around you, the excitement is new because they have different take on your music. They play it in a different way, and that's always exciting to be around. It elevates everybody onstage.
My mom was a singer, and my dad had been playing in bands with my mom's brother. My dad married my mom, and so I was sorta surrounded by music from the get-go. Born right into it.
