Gary LeVox, Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney recently opened up to ET about the milestone and their new music.
This summer marks the 20th anniversary of Rascal Flatts' self-titled debut album, and the musical trio are looking back at their beginnings. The country artists sat down with ET and reflected on the special milestone.
Rascal Flatts' Gary LeVox, Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney recently joined ET's Rachel Smith via video chat, where they looked back at an ET interview from the 2000 CMAs -- after their first album's successful release -- and weighed in on what they would tell their younger selves if they could travel back to that time.
"We would tell ourselves to just take it in and enjoy the ride," Rooney said. "It flew by so fast and we had, and not in an egotistical way, but we had so much success back to back to back to back to back for, you know, almost two decades. ... We were just outrunning ourselves [and] we just didn't have the time to really enjoy all of the huge milestones," he added. "I mean, we were making history on things [and] we really were like, 'Phew! Off to the next thing. Phew! Off to this tour.'"
"Still being here, making music, I think is one amazing thing -- a feat in itself for any artists in a group, is to have this much longevity," Rooney shared.
For LeVox, the best part of the past 20 years is the emotional reward of having a dream as a child, and then taking the leap of faith that makes it come true. "It's nice to have a dream and watch it come to fruition," he shared.
Right now, the artists had originally planned to be on the road performing as part of their 2020 farewell tour, Life Is a Highway. However, the coronavirus outbreak forced them to cancel the tour altogether. That being said, the group said the farewell tour didn't mean they'd never work together in the future, but it was more supposed to show their appreciation for their fans and the support they've gotten over the past two decades.
"We've never said we weren't going to make music together again or make another album," DeMarcus said. "We're working on some fun surprises right now and some things out into the future that we don't have a timeline on yet."
"[What] we're in the middle of launching right now is this new EP [How They Remember You], so I think that that right there in and of itself is evidence that we're probably going to make some more music together for sure," DeMarcus added.
In the meantime, LeVox is getting ready to put out a solo album, and DeMarcus has a reality show, DeMarcus Family Rules, coming to Netflix next month.
"We have been working on it for a couple years, and my good friend Todd Chrisley, we've done his show a few times," DeMarcus shared, explaining how it came together. "He kept trying to talk us into doing a show. ... We pretty much let the cameras roll for a few months and, you know, what they got is what they got," he added of the show, which debuts on Netflix on Aug. 19. "I haven't even seen it myself, to be honest."
As for their new EP, How They Remember You -- which gets its name from the title track -- the group has given some thought to how they hope to be remembered by fans, now that they are going off on their own musical journeys. "I hope that people remember that we made our music for the fans. We never sang a song or played a note for critics," DeMarcus said. "We always wanted to give our fans something to be inspired by."
"I hope people remember that, as much as we were blessed and given in this life and this career, we tried to give back equally as much," he added. "We tried to pay it forward. And I hope that somewhere down the line, years from now, people will remember us as having left our mark and changed this industry in some kind of positive way."
Rascal Flatts' new EP, How They Remember You, drops July 31.
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