Rascal Flatts Review

With a flash bang that must have been seen and heard in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton the Rascal Flatts “Bob your head” tour touched down at the Toyota Pavilion at Montage Sunday night and brought 16 thousand to their feet in a hurry.
Gary LeVox, Jay Demarcus, and Joe Don Rooney rode down to the super high-tech stage on a futuristic scaffolding from what looked like a hundred feet in the air. Think Mad Max’sd thunderdome meets ET’s Spaceship. The stage set included huge risers for the keyboard, drummer and pedal steel player with immense video screens on two sides. In the center was a semi circle screen that concealed the stairway to the scaffolding. Through most of the nearly two hour show at least five young ladies did the frug and the mash potatoe behind the screen. Just like shindig! Which brings me to the only criticism I can make of the spectacle. Where was the country? Oh sure the five piece back up band included a fiddle player who could play down the devil or Charlie Daniels but try as I might I couldn’t hear the pedal steel.
But I don’t mean to say it’s bad. In fact the show was just short of amazing.
From the opener “Still feels good” from the latest CD it was clear that these guys can sing. The effortless harmony that is their trademark was in full force Sunday night. Launching into “Life is a highway” Gary Levox (Le Vox means the voice, right?) made you forget all about Tom Cochrane. The list of hits that follwed included “Love you out loud”, Everday, a rousing version of “Stand” and the pop sounding “Take me there”. Then after an overly long speech from Joe Don where he thanked the employees of “Dunder Mifflin” for being so doggone nice it seemed like ti was time for the obligiatory acoustic set. Joe Don laid down a nice version of “Movin’ on with just an acoustic guitaur and Jay Demarcus sang a sadly truncated “Skin” while noodling on a keybord. The Medly roared back into the full band behind Gary belting out “Feels like today.”
The Flatts will release their first greatest hits CD shortly and it’s bound to include every song they played Sunday night. After the band was introduced the pace picked up with “Fast cars and freedom, “ Bless the broken road”, “What hurts the most” and the set ended with “Here’s to you.”
The encore brought the trio back out for “Me and my gang” and the night ended predictably but not badly with “Bob that head.”