Extended Q&A Part 2: Joe Don Rooney of Rascal Flatts
From left, Gary LeVox, Jay DeMarcus, Joe Don Rooney, of the band Rascal Flatts, and Billy Ray Cyrus pose together at the premiere of “Hannah Montana the Movie” in Los Angeles on April 2, 2009. (Associated Press photo)
Rascal Flatts Week continues here at BAM’s Blog, and Joe Don Rooney’s homecoming draws near.
Rooney, the guitarist for the multi-platinum-selling contemporary country band, grew up in Picher. He and his bandmates will play Friday night at the Buffalo Run Casino Amphitheatre in Miami, OK, just three miles from Rooney’s hometown.
For more information on the show, go to www.buffaloruncasino.com.
As promised, here is the second part of the Q&A taken from a teleconference last week with Rooney, who talked candidly about his music, family and the Miami show:
Q: How did you latest album (“Unstoppable,” released in April) turn out different from what you’ve done in the past? How did you benefit from your 10 years of experience?
A: You know what, I think this album is chock full of just great songs. We always try to find the best song we can find period. And sometimes that can be difficult because you write a lot of music. We all threw out a lot of music ourselves. You know, we write a ton of stuff, but we’ve always lived by that rule that the best song wins no matter what, no matter who writes it. It doesn’t matter if it comes from Europe or Nashville or L.A. or New York or wherever, if it’s better than something we’ve all written individually or together, we’re gonna cut it. And you kind of have to kind of put your heart on the shelf when it comes to that and just do what you think’s right for the company, for Rascal Flatts, for the business.
And I think with this album, we really have learned a lot over the past 10 years about picking songs, about what works best for us. And I think also we’ve all gotten better at the things we do, the parts that we play. As far as guitar-playing and Jay playing bass and multi-instruments – Jay plays piano really, really well, too – and Gary singing and I think all of us as singers have gotten better at what we do with each other and for each other.
And not only that, a step further, I think the songwriters have gotten better. I think Dan Huff, our producer, has gotten better as a producer. I think our engineer, Justin Niebank, has gotten better at mixing. … Everybody’s been great but they’ve just gotten better and I think that’s made this album that much more special than any album we’ve done for us as an artist. You know, you can weigh it against any album we’ve done and I definitely think it’ll stand up, no matter how many hits we have off this album or not hits on this album, I think it’s our best work yet comparatively to the other albums simply because we’ve all gotten better.
Q: You’ve done a lot of humanitarian work with the band. Have those opportunities affected you differently since you were able to help clean up your own hometown?
A: You know what, I’m definitely more aware now when things, when tragedies happen, I think anywhere in the world and especially in our country. It affects me differently now for sure. It has, I think, more so just since I’ve left my hometown, you know, 13, 14 years ago now. Seeing the world, getting to travel, and getting to see this great country and see every state and play in every state and practically every city and town there is in the United States – minus Alaska, I haven’t been up to Alaska yet, I don’t know if I want to go up there, it’s awfully cold. (laughs)
But seeing the tragedies and stuff, it definitely has affected me differently now because I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff but I’ve seen a lot of good stuff come out of it. And getting to witness and see what people do in times of hardship and times of need, how people pull together and band together, and human nature coming out in that, I think it’s a beautiful thing. It’s sad that it takes sometimes tragedies like that, like a tornado or things like 9/11 happening, for people to come together and help each other. But sometimes those things happen for reasons we can’t quite explain while we’re going through them. And I think I’ve learned a lot from that – I’ve learned that, you know what, sometimes you just gotta put down whatever you’re doing and just go help somebody, even if it’s the smallest thing. And of course, if it’s the biggest thing, you need to rush over there to help ‘em.
And getting to see Picher go through that tornado, on the heels of everything else going on there, it’s just like, good Lord, after all this, how can a tornado come in and practically wipe away the town. But things like that do happen, and it’s sad reality. But I think we have people like the Red Cross, we have the Salvation Army, we have people like that that come in and help in ways that are just mind-blowing. And I really got to witness and see those people feeding people and clothing people and sheltering people and helping people voluntarily. And I got to see that firsthand, and it really opened my eyes up to just the human spirit to see people really care about people in need. And it’s really made me I think more mindful of helping people because you know Jay, Gary and myself are all about that. We do, obviously, tons of charity work and do tons of great stuff with Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.
And having a baby now has changed my perspective on that, on these little kids who did not ask for in any way to be sick or get the disease they get. And so, I look at my son differently probably than I would have if we hadn’t done this work with Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.
So, I think all these things have helped me define myself and learn what kind of artist it is and what kind of human I want to be.
Q: This is your first time to come back to the Picher area since the tornado hit the town last May, is that correct?
A: You know what (pauses) yes. You are correct. Had to think about that for a second. (laughs) Yes, I have not been back to that area since last May, you’re right.
That was a whirlwind of a month for me, literally. ‘Cause my wife’s birthday was May 1, I wanted to throw her a birthday party, so I had a lot going on there. And then in the middle of May, the tornado hit. My wife was also pregnant and we had our baby at the bookend (of the) month, at the end of May, May 31. So they bookend the month of May and the middle was just crazy. But the payoff was May 31 for sure.
Q: And you had an awards show going on in the middle there, too.
A: Yeah, it was a lot going on, you’re right.
Q: And you said your son’s name is Jagger: Is he named for Mick Jagger?
A: You know what, I mean, you gotta kind of throw that out there, I guess so. (laughs) We went through so many names. It was funny, I told a local radio station in Nashville, I was doing a phoner. I said ‘Well, we want to …’ – he wasn’t born yet, obviously – I said, ‘We want to name him with the initials JDR, like me, like his father, and so if anybody out there has any good names with JD, like Joe Don, but other names, let us know.’ And it’s funny, ’cause they ran that on the radio and man, they got all these calls. And they actually printed off the sheets and faxed them to my management company, and there was like 320. I’m not kidding. So we got a bunch of them on there, but honestly, Jagger was not on there. (laughs) And my wife thought of that name one day. She said, ‘What do you think of Jagger?’ I was like ‘wow.’ It just kind of hit me. I said, ‘You know what, it works, I love it, I think it’s beautiful.’ So we call him Jag. His name is Jagger Donovan Rooney, but we call him Jag.
Q: Are you having fun with all the baby and toddler stuff now?
A: It is fun. We had his first birthday … and it was awesome. It was really great, and we videotaped some of it. And my mom and dad couldn’t be there for it, so his grandma and grandpa on my side couldn’t be there, but his grandma and grandpa on Tiffany’s side got to be there, which was great, and we had some friends over. And it was awesome. …
He’s crawling around pretty crazy, but he’ll probably be walking in the next probably four months maybe.
But it was great because we had this friend that made this small cake, like the size a baby would need vs. a grown-up, but it was a guitar cake. And he crawls to every guitar I got in the house and he strums the guitars. And he actually strums it lightly like he kind of knows what he’s doing. It’s kind of strange. It’s amazing to watch. So when this cake got put in front of him, we were just gonna let him just devour it, well, he starts strumming the cake. (laughs) It was the sweetest thing. And he got a little icing on his finger and he’s kind of looking at it like ‘what is that.’ And then his mom, Tiffany, took a little icing and put it in his mouth and his eyes just got big and man, he just started ripping into that thing. And it was black and it was red icing, so man, you can probably picture in your mind what happened after that. It was big bath time after about 30 minutes of that.
Q: Kids will definitely change your life.
A: Man, there’s no doubt. I mean, I saw it in my friends and I was like, ‘Aw, whatever, come on.’ You know, it’s all that cliché stuff you always hear and then all the sudden you’re going through that same cliché stuff you always heard and it’s kind of funny. Kind of look in the mirror sometimes and laugh like, ‘How in the world did we create this, man? I mean, wow what planet did you come from?’ That’s when you know. When you have a child and you look it in the eyes and it looks at you, I think that’s when you know that there is a God, no doubt about it. That’s my feeling on it.
Q: Could you list off some of the side projects you’ve been working on?
A: I’ve got some things in the works. I’ve got a rock band I’ve been working with called Stars Align … and they’re a L.A.-based group and I’ve been working with them for a few years now. It’s been a lot of fun. They’re unsigned right now and I’m shopping them for a record deal. And that’s a whole other world for me. It’s a lot of fun for me to get to produce and I like that end of the business. I like getting behind the console and working in the studio and kind of being an editor so to speak for an artist spilling out their heart.
I’m also working with a country artist named Brian Taylor and he’s a great singer. He’s got a really cool kind of country-rock edge to him, kind of a Bryan Adams meets country kind of thing. And I’m shopping him for a deal, too, so hopefully these things pan out in the next year or so and you guys can hear them on the radio and see ‘em on TV. It’d be great ’cause it’s a lot of fun for me to get into the producing side. It’s something I definitely want to do more of in the future.
But you know, my main thing is Rascal Flatts and it will always be. As long as they’ll have me around, I’m gonna stay around. It’s been a great experience. It’s been 10 years that (show) you know, you can dream big and dream big all you want. You know what, dreams can come true for sure, but man, this has just far exceeded anything and everything I think all three of us had ever thought of, for sure. I don’t think we could have done it without each other, though, we were blessed to find each other and blessed to experience this together.
Look for the third and final part of this extended Q&A later this week.
-BAM
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
It’s commendable that Rooney is very selective in the music material that he chooses for his albums.