“Living country is more about your values and beliefs than cowboy hats or living on a farm.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“The lines have definitely blurred between country and pop music.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I love every aspect of live performance and putting our shows together and approaching it from the standpoint of, ‘What would we want to see if we were a fan sitting in the audience?’”
― Jay DeMarcus
“My faith and my beliefs sustain me through all of the craziness that this life brings.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I guess, somewhere along the line, when we first came out, somebody thought it was a crime to be young and not wear a cowboy hat and sing country music.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I think the thing that keeps us motivated is challenging ourselves to see if we can be better than we’ve been before and seeing if we can stumble upon a magic that wasn’t there before – whether it’s a song, a performance, or a track that lights us up the way the first few records did.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I draw inspiration from everywhere, whether it’s country, R&B, gospel.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“It’s weird to think about being introduced as ‘Hall of Fame members Rascal Flatts.’”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We’ve been very blessed in our career.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I think the simple message of that song is what attracted me to ‘Every Day.’ It’s one of those simple yet profound lyrics.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“So many people have stood behind me for so long.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We were just hoping ‘Prayin’ for Daylight’ wasn’t a complete flop. Selling a million records wasn’t even in our wildest thoughts.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“After 15 years of singing the same 12 to 15 songs every night, it can become monotonous.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We were derided as a boy band, with pop music and not really country.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“Typically, every 14 to 16 months, we’re putting a new album out. To be honest, I wish it was slower.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“It’s hard to get to the point where you feel motivated and energized to go back in and create new music when you feel like you’ve just drained yourself by pouring everything you have into the previous project. It would be nice sometimes to take a longer break in between projects.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“It would be nice sometimes to take a longer break in between projects, but unfortunately, the way that the business is, there’s such a demand for new material on a consistent basis that it’s nearly impossible to do that.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“When I hear other artists that are new and fresh and exciting, then I get excited.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I love all kinds of music.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We were kind of young and a little naive when we first started out in the business.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“You learn really quickly how not only to be an artist, but you also become all of a sudden the CEO and owners of a company that you have to make major decisions about that I don’t think we were fully prepared for in the beginning.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“There’s nothing worse than looking out and seeing some guy with his arms crossed while you’re singing your heart out on a new song, and he’s going, ‘When are they going to do ‘Me and My Gang?””
― Jay DeMarcus
“We love touring. We love being in front of the fans.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I’m surprised at the loyalty of the country music fan. People that started out with us at ‘Prayin’ for Daylight’ still come to multiple shows a year.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We do pretty much the same set list every night, and the show’s down to certain cues because we have video and all this production and lights and everything going on.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We’ve always prided ourselves on putting together a great live show. That’s something that means a lot to us because our bread and butter is the live tour.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“You start to compete with yourself when your catalog gets bigger and bigger… I mean, everybody wants the next ‘Bless the Broken Road,’ but you don’t write those every day, so it’s difficult.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We make music for our fans, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I’m not really concerned so much with the industry, except in country music, as long as our fans keep coming to the shows and keep buying the records and we keep having success on country radio.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“It’s so much fun to have vocal groups out on the road because we get to see them do their thing, and at the end of the night, we come back, and we all do a big thing together for the encore with ‘American Band.’”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“There’s really an art form to putting together a set list that flows evenly and that takes you on a ride and doesn’t feel disjointed.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“Chicago was a big influence on all three of us growing up. I admire their musical integrity. When the opportunity came up to produce them, I couldn’t let it go by.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“When you sit there, and you sing the chorus – and then you look at each other, and everybody has the hair standing up on their arms – then everybody knows you’ve stumbled onto something.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I was raised in church, and we let our kids know who Jesus is.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I get along with everybody.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“Are there people’s music that I don’t like? Sure, there are.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“My beliefs and my faith are part of who I am, and I’m so grateful that I had the foundation laid early on. My mom took me to church from my earliest memories, so I’m grateful to have had that foundation laid early, and it’s just part of who I am.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I think our kids live an extraordinarily different life than what I lived growing up. Pretty much everything about their life is different than mine was.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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!”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“Country’s opened its boundaries so wide that it embraces everything, and it gives everybody this new freedom to create now.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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. So, sometimes, I’ll have to have conversations with them as a producer and then conversations with them as a bandmate.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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. It’s something that I’m so passionate about.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“It’s no secret that anybody who knows the music business knows that the numbers are substantially different in Christian music than they are in country music.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I grew up in the church and loved contemporary Christian music. I go back to the early days of when it first started with the likes of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. Those people that really pioneered are heroes of mine.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I want to be a part of bringing more visibility to the Christian music genre and give it some platforms that it may not have had before. I feel like, as blessed as we’ve been with Rascal Flatts, I might be able, through some of my own connections and avenues, to give them some visibility in arenas they’ve never had before.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We spent night after night out there learning the art of entertaining a crowd.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.’”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We write songs that hit different people at different ages where they live.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We’ve always prided ourselves on the fact that we’re a band that the whole family can enjoy together.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I love watching new acts find their footing. It’s fun to watch them early on in their careers and get a gut feeling about who’s going to be a superstar.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“It’s really easy to be grounded again when you get back home, and you sing in front of 20,000 people a night, and your wife hands you the kids and tells you it’s your turn to be on diaper duty and take out the trash. So it’s easy to keep things in perspective when things like that happen.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I think Christmas, for me, has always been about family, as cliche as that sounds.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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
“There were so many years that were going by at a lightning speed that it was so hard to kinda put our heads around what was happening to us.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“You need to continue to find ways to engage fans to keep them excited about what you’re doing.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“A lot of people still don’t realize that, before Rascal Flatts, I was in a Christian band for four or five years, and I had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest pop musicians and producers in L.A. I learned a lot from Peter Wolf; he was one of my heroes growing up in the ’80s. He was a producer of a lot legendary pop music.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I remember as a little kid watching the Opry from the nosebleeds, so to stand onstage and be invited to be a member was really, really cool.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I’ve never in my life had a cavity. Not one!”
― Jay DeMarcus
“To work with one of your heroes is the greatest things you can ever hope for.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“With a band like Shenandoah, you don’t want to take things and deconstruct them to a point where you don’t recognize them.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I was an ’80s child, so I grew up loving all kinds of ’80s rock. I like R&B, too.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I think that anybody can go home, put the record on, and listen to it note for note, but there’s very little entertainment value in that, I believe. When you give people something visually entertaining to watch along with presenting the music, I feel it makes it a lot more interesting.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I think the 360 deals are what stands out to me, first and foremost. I never would have dreamed that record labels would be taking a piece of touring, merchandise, and everything else. The world has changed so dramatically from when we first started.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“If people would’ve heard what we were doing back in the clubs in the late ’90s, they would be really shocked to find out how country our sound really was back then.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I love my time with my kids.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I don’t know that I could pick a better place to raise a family than Nashville.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“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.’”
― Jay DeMarcus
“We started out as a bar band. We were sometimes playing in front of 20 people.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“You can’t manufacture the feeling of being in a small crowd and connecting on every single level to the very last person in the very last row in the back. I think when you evolve into a headlining act and things get bigger, the intimacy and some of that energy gets lost a little bit.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“When you do an arena show, and the lights have to sync up to the sound, and the sound has to sync up to the music, and all of that – things are really mapped out, and you lose some of that spontaneity.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“That’s what we all hope and dream to do, when we stand in front of the mirror with our Goody comb and sing into it, is to have a bunch of songs that have touched people so much that they want to hear ’em every night.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“It caught us by surprise when people started calling us a boy band because we’d always considered ourselves pretty serious musicians.”
― Jay DeMarcus
“I think our live shows dispelled any misconceptions people had about us. When you come see us live, you know we’re anything but a boy band.”
― Jay DeMarcus
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