JAY DEMARCUS

I want to be a part of bringing more visibility to the Christian music genre and give it some platforms that it may not have had before. I feel like, as blessed as we've been with Rascal Flatts, I might be able, through some of my own connections and avenues, to give them some visibility in arenas they've never had before.

There's nothing worse than looking out and seeing some guy with his arms crossed while you're singing your heart out on a new song, and he's going, 'When are they going to do 'Me and My Gang?''

The hardest part, for me, is being in the band and knowing the way I want certain things to sound, but also having to listen to opinions, and very valid opinions, of my bandmates. So, sometimes, I'll have to have conversations with them as a producer and then conversations with them as a bandmate.

When you do an arena show, and the lights have to sync up to the sound, and the sound has to sync up to the music, and all of that - things are really mapped out, and you lose some of that spontaneity.

I am living proof - and I know this for a fact - that you can find encouragement and strength through the message that's in Christian music, because I've lived it.

It would be nice sometimes to take a longer break in between projects, but unfortunately, the way that the business is, there's such a demand for new material on a consistent basis that it's nearly impossible to do that.

Living country is more about your values and beliefs than cowboy hats or living on a farm.

I think, as long as people are doing their craft at a high level, I'm going to have respect for it and find something that appeals to me.

We do pretty much the same set list every night, and the show's down to certain cues because we have video and all this production and lights and everything going on.

We were derided as a boy band, with pop music and not really country.

It's no secret that my favorite part of the process is making records; if I'm not making them with Flatts, then I'm out producing them on other folks.

So many people in this world get up every day and go to their nine-to-five job they hate for 12 months a year for 30 years. I kind of do a self-check and evaluation to realize I'm very blessed and grateful to be where I am.

I draw inspiration from everywhere, whether it's country, R&B, gospel.

When you first start out in the music business and hope that you have a couple hits, the ultimate payoff is to be standing in front of all those people who are singing it back to you at the top of their lungs. And you know by the way they're singing it back that it's affected their life in some way. That's the ultimate reward as an artist for me.

With a band like Shenandoah, you don't want to take things and deconstruct them to a point where you don't recognize them.

I guess, somewhere along the line, when we first came out, somebody thought it was a crime to be young and not wear a cowboy hat and sing country music.

It caught us by surprise when people started calling us a boy band because we'd always considered ourselves pretty serious musicians.

I've been really, really fortunate to have a mother that has spent many, many long hours on her knees praying for me. And I guarantee you, I would almost bet everything I have that that has saved me more often than not. So it sustains me.

I think our kids live an extraordinarily different life than what I lived growing up. Pretty much everything about their life is different than mine was.

Typically, every 14 to 16 months, we're putting a new album out. To be honest, I wish it was slower.

You can't manufacture the feeling of being in a small crowd and connecting on every single level to the very last person in the very last row in the back. I think when you evolve into a headlining act and things get bigger, the intimacy and some of that energy gets lost a little bit.

I love watching new acts find their footing. It's fun to watch them early on in their careers and get a gut feeling about who's going to be a superstar.

That's what Joe Don Rooney and I do. He plays guitar and I play bass - and there's no reason to call it a band if you're not gonna have the guys in the band playing on the records.

We were so influenced not only by country music but by the rock bands of the '80s. Our focus was to bring in something different. Country music already had a George Strait and Alabama. We wanted to put some pop music in our show.

You learn really quickly how not only to be an artist, but you also become all of a sudden the CEO and owners of a company that you have to make major decisions about that I don't think we were fully prepared for in the beginning.