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10 Questions with ... Jay DeMarcus
May 5, 2019
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. Those are the moments that mean the most to me and, right now, it's the same thing. We travel thousands of miles each year, and it's not easy to spend that much time away from home. It's not easy to spend days in parking lots, only to play two hours a night. But when you get up on that stage and the lights come up, the band starts to play, you realize you're doing exactly what you were put on the Earth to do. When you see how your music has connected to the people sitting out there in that audience, that makes all of the hard nights, and days and miles worth it, and that's what's important for me
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BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:
Jay DeMarcus, one-third of superstar Country trio Rascal Flatts, opens up about his journey to stardom and the faith that carried him through in his newly-published memoir, "Shotgun Angels: My Story Of Broken Roads And Unshakeable Hope." The story spans from DeMarcus' upbringing in Ohio to the day he met his wife, Allison, and all the memorable moments in between. DeMarcus uses his story to encourage readers to grow their faith, have hope and be fearless in chasing their dreams. He sat down with All Access last week to discuss it.
1. How did your Rascal Flatts band mates, Gary LeVox and Joe Don Rooney, react to your idea of writing a book? Have they been supportive? Skeptical?
They don't know yet, I haven't told them. Don't tell them! [laughs] I'm kidding. They were completely supportive. They were fine with it. I came to town before both of them as part of [Christian music duo] East To West, the other band I was in, so they know I have a story to tell before they came into my life and became a part of my bigger picture. They were both very supportive and very encouraging to me to tell my story.
2. You talk about your "voice of doubt" and the struggle it caused in those moments of chasing your dream. What advice do you have for individuals letting that "voice of doubt" take over right now? How can they ensure that hope wins?
Your faith in yourself has to be bigger than your fear. In those moments when you can choose to either fold under the pressure or rise to the occasion, your faith has to be stronger than your fear. For me, more often than not, when I was faced with those times [it was] because I had a mother that was so consistently faithful in her own life and used that as a source of strength in her life. It rubbed off on me. When I was presented with those moments to either cower because I was under the pressure or step up to the plate and try to hit the ball as hard as I could, my faith was bigger than my fear.
3. In the first chapter you share your experience of performing in place of the headlining band that couldn't make it to a show at King's Place in Columbus, OH. After your initial "freak out," you were able to take the stage and have a successful performance, and you had a realization of having fun in the middle of that performance. Do you still experience that "fun feeling" when you perform today? How do you keep it fun for yourself?
I think it's just the joy of doing what you feel like you've been put on the Earth to do. I think [for] all of us, no matter what profession we have, there are those times where you may feel a little anxious about an interview, somebody you've never met before. You sit down and, in the middle of it, you can feel [yourself] getting into your stride and into your rhythm. You realize you're doing what you're supposed to do, and you start to go, "You know what, I'm pretty good at this. I think this is something I could do. I'm doing pretty good with this right now." That's what I started to feel, not from a self-serving standpoint.
The point is, I feel like I was given a gift, and I was using [my gifts] exactly how I was supposed to be using them. Those are the moments that mean the most to me and, right now, it's the same thing. We travel thousands of miles each year, and it's not easy to spend that much time away from home. It's not easy to spend days in parking lots, only to play two hours a night. But when you get up on that stage and the lights come up, the band starts to play, you realize you're doing exactly what you were put on the Earth to do. When you see how your music has connected to the people sitting out there in that audience, that makes all of the hard nights, and days and miles worth it, and that's what's important for me. That's what keeps it fun for me.
4. Music runs deep in your family. You talk about your mom winning a record deal by getting first place in the "Ohio Country Music Queen Contest," but not taking it due to a lack of support from your father. Do you think your mom giving up her dreams of stardom made you push harder for success in the industry, and in your own life? Was there part of you that wanted to be successful so she could live her dream through you?
Maybe there was a piece -- subconsciously in me -- that kind of wanted to be able to at least have some success for both of them [mom and dad], so that maybe they could live a little bit of their dream through their son. My dad wanted it [a record deal] really, really badly too, and I think that was one of the reasons why he probably wasn't as supportive to my mom when she was able to pursue it first. Both of them [were] very, very accomplished, very gifted musicians, and she [my mom] will tell you now that she has no regrets, because she wouldn't have had my sister and I. But I don't know. There may be a piece of her in there that wonders, "What if" all the time. I'm glad that I've at least been able to let her live through our success a little bit.
5. You share early memories of your "papaw" teaching you Bluegrass music and listening to the Grand Ole Opry with you on Saturday nights, and now you are a member of the Opry as a part of Rascal Flatts. Does he still cross your mind when you play there now?
Every time. The one thing I regret is him not having lived long enough to see Rascal Flatts, and to see us on the Opry stage. He loved it so much. It was such a big part of who he was and how he lived. I think about him every single time I'm at the Opry House. I think Papaw would've loved to have seen this. This would have been so cool for him to have been able to see. Well, I think he does see it, just from a different seat.
6. One of your most vulnerable moments in the book is sharing that you had a daughter in your 20s who was placed for adoption. You wrote her a letter that you hoped she'd receive when she was 14. What did you tell her in that letter? What was the most important thing for you to share with her? And do you have hope you'll be able to meet her one day?
The most important thing to tell her was why we made the decision. It wasn't that I didn't want to be in her life, and that I didn't love her, and that I wasn't abandoning her. I wanted her to know that, because my greatest fear at that point in time was to have this little girl grow up and think that her mom and dad didn't love her or want to be a part of her life.
We were faced with an impossible decision and situation. We were smart enough to know that we should not get married just for that reason, because we weren't in love. We made the best decision we could possibly make at that point in time, and I wanted to be able to explain that to her as best I could in a one-page letter, which is impossible to do.
For me, I felt like I had to tell that part of my life, because that became such a catalyst for all the other events that unfolded to get me here. It was a hard decision to make to tell that story because I knew that there would probably be people that thought that I was putting it in there just to capitalize on something, and it wasn't. It's pain that I've carried with me from the moment that it happened, the day that it happened. It's one of those situations that life brings at you that's completely unexpected, and if you've never dealt with it, you don't know how to deal with it.
[On meeting her someday:] I want it to be her decision. I didn't write this to try and, like, draw her out. I wrote this to try to present an honest take on how those events shaped me and changed my life. If she wants a relationship someday, I'm obviously very open to it. But I want she and her family to make that decision.
7. How do you think the presence of social media would have changed your story had it been around in the early part of your career?
I think it [the adoption] would've gotten out somehow [laughs]. I think it would have not laid dormant for all these years. It's amazing to me how fast information is passed along now. What's even more amazing to me is the "bravery" that people have behind a keyboard to tear somebody down. I wish we lived in a world where people could tell you the things they want to say to you face-to-face instead of online. They don't know the damage it can do sometimes.
8. You mention you had hesitation when you first had the idea of writing this book. What ultimately made you go for it? Was there a specific person or experience that helped you make up your mind to write it?
When I bounced it off some of my friends and my wife, and I said, "Hey, I think I've got an opportunity here. I might be able to say something," they all encouraged me to do it and to tell my story, because there are a lot of things in my life that don't make sense from a practical standpoint. There are a lot of little miracles that happened to get me to this place, and I feel like it's going to be interesting for everyone to read really how I ended up here. I felt compelled to tell that.
But the reason I had some reservations is because anytime you put yourself out there, you open yourself up, and you're vulnerable about your story. And you -- more importantly -- make a stand that you're a believer. All too often people want to go, "Yeah, but ...," and that can be a little difficult sometimes. I just wanted to present my story, tell it the way that it is, and tell it from my perspective and how it affected me in hopes it would encourage somebody.
The thing for me that sucks the most is there will be people out there that will criticize it and say that there's selfish reasons I tell these stories, and that's OK, I expect that in this day and age. But those aren't the reasons and motivation for telling my story.
9. How was the experience of writing a book different than writing a song (besides the obvious)? Was it more challenging? Any surprises along the way that you weren't expecting?
There's just a lot more pages you have to fill [laughs]. In a lot of ways there's a lot more similarities than differences. You have to have a point of where you're going. You have to make sure that you're not just meandering. In songwriting, we write in hooks, and I feel like books are the same way. You have to land somewhere and have a point. You write in different hooks so that the story makes sense and has some continuity to it. At the end of the day, when you put it all together, it goes somewhere.
One of my favorite exercises that my [book] co-writer and I would do on the bus is write a couple of chapters, and he would read them out loud. It was great to hear it back out loud, because sometimes what seems to fit great on the page doesn't sound so great when you say it back out loud. I believe there's a cadence you have to have to your writing, just like in songwriting. You can't just put it all out there and expect it to feel right, to sound right, when you say it back. I found there to be more similarities than differences, but you need to put a lot more information in a book [laughs].
10. Rascal Flatts has had an incredible run at Country radio, having charted your first hit back in 2000, and there's no sign of slowing down with your current single in the 20s and climbing. Does that kind of radio longevity surprise you? And why do you think radio remains so receptive to your music even after all this time?
We have had an incredible run, and it's one of those things that I'm incredibly grateful for. I think it all starts with a song, and we've been able to get our hands on some incredible songs that have resonated with people and hit them right where they live, and [in] different seasons of their lives.
Somebody came through the meet & greet line several years ago and took a picture with us and said, "I just have to tell you, you've been the soundtrack of my life. My daughter got married to 'Broken Road.' My son gradated to 'My Wish.' We take family road trips to 'Life Is A Highway,' and you've literally been the soundtrack of our lives." I don't think anyone can pay any higher compliment to us than that. That is so humbling to hear that you've been ingrained in somebody's life so much that they consider you to have that impact on their entire family. It's just wonderful. I think some of the longevity is credited to being able to find those kinds of songs.
Bonus Questions
You share a lot of revealing facts about yourself in the book, but one we found most shocking was you failing your driver's test three times. Explain yourself!
It's because I started driving when I was 14. My papaw took me out and taught me how to drive a stick shift when I was 14, so I developed some really bad habits. I was driving all the time, but I wasn't "10 and two-ing it," and I wasn't stopping fully at a four-way stop. The first time I failed, [the DMV examiner] said, "You rolled through that four-way stop back there. You didn't come to a complete stop," and I was like, "There was nobody at those other stop signs. What do you want me to do?" I know some people would think I was dumb and couldn't pass the test, but that wasn't the reason. My mom will tell you she prayed for me not to get my license. Third time's a charm!
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