Rascal Flatts Leaving Their Mark

9/25/2007 Stephen L. Betts   When Rascal Flatts' Jay DeMarcus sat in the studio and watched someone else play the bass parts on the group's first album in 1999, he was, to say the least, less than pleased. It’s a memory that still riles him to this day. "I thought, 'I'm the bass player in the band, but I've got to learn his parts? This sucks,"' Jay tells the Canadian Press. That is, after all, not what he, guitarist Joe Don Rooney and singer Gary LeVox had in mind when they came to town. With the release of their second album, Melt, the guys began asserting themselves, with Jay and Joe Don playing some of the parts. On their third, Feels Like Today, they were playing most of them. Their fifth album, Still Feels Good, out today, is something of a rarity in Nashville -an honest-to-goodness band album. "I didn't spend my whole life getting to this point of following the dream of making my own records to sit there and watch someone else do it," says Jay. "You know, the Rolling Stones were not the greatest musicians in the world. They were not virtuosos. But they were the Stones. If someone else had played those guitar parts, it wouldn't be the Stones." While Jay says they don't pay attention to what critics think, they do care what the industry and institutions such as the Grand Ole Opry think, and it does concern them. "I think sometimes they think of us as young punk kids that don't have appreciation for Lefty Frizzell and Hank Williams Sr. and people like that, and it blows my mind because those are the people we grew up on," Jay says. "But we wanted to leave our mark and our unique impression upon the industry. “I think the tide is turning a little bit in country music, and I'm proud to say we're part of paving the way for artists to do something a little more, to be a little edgier and do something outside the box."