Have we seen the last of Rascal Flatts?
Back in January of 2020, the band announced they were calling it quits with a farewell tour that was scheduled to run from June through October of last year.
Obviously, that was canceled (along with everything else in 2020) due to COVID, and according to a new Billboard interview with lead singer Gary LeVox, it sounds like that tour isn’t going to happen.
“[Rascal Flatts] had a farewell tour planned, but COVID kinda told us all farewell.”
So…that’s it?
It sure sounds like the end for the band, with LeVox going on to say that he hasn’t spoken much with bandmates Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney since COVID because “there hasn’t been much work stuff to talk about.”
And the band members seem to have already gone their separate ways. LeVox has been busy working on a Christian EP, with his debut solo single from that project “The Distance” being released today.
LeVox is also planning a solo tour, where he says he’ll still be pulling from Rascal Flatts’ seventeen #1 hits for his setlists.
“I have 17 No. 1s with Rascal Flatts, plus there’s my new stuff. I’ll be covering all bases.”
Jay DeMarcus, meanwhile, has formed his own Christian music label, Red Street Records.
So at least for now, it seems like the band has come to a sort of unceremonious end.
And while it’s easy to shit on Rascal Flatts for their pop sound or their ridiculous style (y’all are almost 50, guys, the bedazzled shirts and bleached spiky hair need to go), or the fact that their lead singer named himself after the French word for “the voice,” Rascal Flatts was a huge part of country music for anybody who grew up in the early 2000s.
Everybody danced to “Bless the Broken Road” at high school prom or cruised around in their first car listening to “Life Is a Highway.”
Oh, and everybody cringed at the disaster that was “Bob That Head.”
But at least for now, it seems like that chapter of country music has closed.
So if it’s really the end, I guess we can just say: So long, Rascal Flatts. It’s been… interesting.