Their first tour in six years promotes an upcoming duets album
At the back of the stage, there’s double kick drums. One reads 2000, the other 2025. The Back to the Future DeLorean-styled letters are referencing the quarter-century Rascal Flatts have spent as a dominant force in country music.
The group’s first tour in six years, aptly titled Life is a Highway Tour, came to Allentown, PA’s PPL Center on Saturday (Mar 15th). The boys emerged from under the pointed stage — silhouetted like the classic photo that was used to tease the tour — playing “Here’s To You,” which they tagged with “The Boys are Back in Town.”
The crowd went nuts for “Fast Cars and Freedom,” before bassist Jay DeMarcus took to officially welcoming everyone. Wearing an Iron Maiden tee, he thanked the fans for giving them 25 years, “whether we were on the road or not,” a nod to a five-year hiatus that left the trio’s future uncertain. But, as often happens in music, the pendulum has swung back in the right direction, and there’s now no end in sight for the group. This Life is a Highway Tour is not called a farewell tour, as their canceled 2020 trek was labeled.
This tour also promotes the group’s new duets album, Life is a Highway: Refueled Duets. Guitarist Joe Don Rooney took the Jonas Brothers’ vocals for “I Dare You,” the new single off that album. But not before offering a seated, rendition of the tender “I’m Movin’ On,” with only a cellist to back him. To set up that number, he detailed his recent journey with sobriety, telling the arena, “There’s someone who loves you more than what you’re going through.”
Lead vocalist Gary LeVox’s twang can give even the poppiest numbers from the Flatts’ catalogue a country heart. And on the one’s backed by steel and banjo—including a song literally called “Banjo,”—it drives home that this dynamic threesome were truly the last great, versatile country group before bro-country mixtaped the genre to death.
The last third of the show was loaded with the major hits, “These Days,” “What Hurts the Most,” among others.
In many ways, the three people in the group needed a break. LeVox for his solo project, Rooney to heal, and DeMarcus for his pandemic-era docu-series. The break refreshed them, and clearly made them see value in the sum of their parts. And validation of that came from the fans, who throughout the night vociferously demonstrated their joy that Highway of Life brought Rascal Flatts back where they belong—on stage together.
