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Issue link: http://tempus-magazine.epubxp.com/i/131305
M about?' 'My hillbilly name, because I'm sure you've never heard of a Joe Don before.' And she kind of snickered and looked at me, and grabbed my arm and said, 'I'm going to tell you what, my dad's name is Don and my brother's name is Joe and I've been used to Joe Dons my whole life.'" MAKING MUSIC IF THEY NEEDED AN IDEA FOR THEIR NEXT COUNTRY hit, well, there's a lyric that pretty much wrote itself. Not that they need any help with making something a hit: "Bless the Broken Road," "Fast Cars and Freedom," "What Hurts the Most," and "Banjo" are just a few of the chart toppers they've sent up in their thirteen-year-long career. The elements of faith and those blessings therein are a frmament from which many of their songs grow and take on a new elevation with the strength of LeVox's vocals, bolstered by Rooney's guitar and secured by DeMarcus's bass. Their harmonies are often described as "soaring," and if you imagine them like an arrow, they hit right on the emotional nerve of the listener, sending sonic shock waves seemingly mixed in a blender containing equal parts down-home authenticity, real-life intensity, and just welcome-to-the-party pluck and fun. Especially at their live shows. "We want to move people emotionally with music and have them forget about life for a while," explains Rooney. "It's very medicinal, what we do, and to this day people can't experience that full emotion without being there at the live concert setting and having all their emotions and senses tapped. You can't download that online; you can't fnd that digitally," he continues. "It's the greatest feeling in the world for us to be able to go up there in our moment and believe in ourselves and the fans, because the energy is so special. They become the show." Among the other accolades they've received: earning more than forty awards, having the distinction of being one of only four acts to ever have seven consecutive studio albums debut at the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Country Albums chart, and being 54 Tempus-Magazine.com . Summer 2013 given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last September. Oklahoma native Rooney was made an Honorary Ohioan for a day by the First Lady of Ohio in February, joining his brothers from another mother. It is their investment a little closer to their new home for which the band members feel a whole other level of pride for something a lot less in the limelight: They've contributed nearly three million dollars to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville and were honored in 2010 for their steadfast devotion with the naming of the pediatric surgical suite as the Rascal Flatts Surgery Center. The group still make stops to play shows for their littlest fans who are patients there. It's a connection to those roots that were frst put down when a then-twenty-two-year-old Rooney left Arkansas, where he had been living, playing in two bands, to make a go of it in Music City, where unbeknownst to him, he would meet his future bandmates. LeVox even wrote a moving piece in Guideposts magazine in 2010 about his decision, when he was twenty-seven years old, to leave his job training the developmentally disabled in Columbus to join his cousin in Nashville. Those days, as well as the ones playing for tips and a percentage of the cash register sales, drinking Miller Lite (as Bradsher remembers) at the Fiddle and Steel, quickly changed to packing arenas, nonstop touring, and scoring hit after hit, nearly fourteen years later. Not to say there weren't bumps in the road. With Lyric Street Records' demise, the band also shifted management. There wasn't much going on in the way of good communication between the guys, and at one point they even had to have the Talk of whether to keep forging ahead or reconsider and maybe part ways. Rooney sits back into his director's chair in the dark expanse of Citation, waiting his turn to go up for another take to sing over his part of the chorus on "Changed." It's a ftting name of a song that LeVox wrote for their last record, and one that refects the natural evolution of where the band—as musicians, friends, and men—have been and fnd themselves now: I got off track, I made mistakes