Jay DeMarcus came into the sessions for 2006’s Chicago XXX professing a kind of super fandom – and, unfortunately, that hobbled the results.
He helped them write half of this LP’s 12 songs, and brought in some Nashville ringers to compose and play. That signaled something far more interesting – a fizzy combination of mindsets – than what actually happened.
Instead, DeMarcus’ goal was apparently to make the album Chicago should have released instead of Greatest Hits 1982–1989. Alas, the days when sleekly produced power ballads shot up the charts were gone by the time Chicago returned with 1991’s Twenty 1. Some 15 years later, they’d been basically forgotten, too.
His approach gave Chicago XXX a freeze-dried, weirdly anachronistic feel, like stumbling upon a perfectly preserved relic from a different age. (And not a particularly well-regarded age, at that.) The promise of something more contemporary was largely left unfulfilled – that is, until the album’s penultimate song.
“Lovin’ Chains” finally played on the natural creative tension between Jay DeMarcus’ pop-country vibe with Rascal Flatts and the bright blasts of brass that define the best Chicago songs.
DeMarcus pulled out all of the Nashville stops, co-writing “Lovin’ Chains” with one-man Music Row hit-factory Marcus Hummon and bringing back some ace sessions folks. At the same time, Bill Champlin’s reliably gruff vocal worked in direct contrast to the song’s spit-shined modern-country feel.
Not all of it came off: Jason Scheff provided a more expected counterpoint vocal section, and Dann Huff added a quick-fingered but rather rote guitar solo. Still, “Lovin’ Chains” gets points – lots of them – for recognizing the opportunity presented by having all of these contrasting talents in the same room.
So, why wait until DeMarcus’ very last co-write on Chicago XXX to make their most complete attempt at the obvious? Robert Lamm, the savvy industry vet, expressed a telling worry.
“Whoever is managing Rascal Flatts is doing a great job, but they’re probably not thrilled with the prospect of the two bands being identified so closely,” Lamm told the Orange Country Register in 2006. “They’re trying to build an amazing young country band … and to have them perceived as being mixed up really thick with a stodgy old band from the ’70s is probably not a great selling point in their managers’ eyes.”
He might have been on to something: Maybe concern about how a true cross-genre effort would be received ended up creating an unnecessary timidity. Rascal Flatts fans might not be interested in a horn-driven track, while Chicago’s followers could recoil at the more obvious down-home leanings found on “Lovin’ Chains.”
A surprised-sounding Jay DeMarcus brushed all of that aside. “Wow! Wow!” he exclaimed, after a Register reporter shared Lamm’s quote. “All I can say is that the three of us are huge Chicago fans. … We do have, absolutely, goals that we’re trying to achieve as Rascal Flatts, but certainly to be mentioned along with some heroes like Chicago is not a bad thing for us whatsoever.”
DeMarcus’ passion for the group, in fact, lasted past his own: Rascal Flatts called it quits in 2020, and DeMarcus almost immediately launched a new project with Jason Scheff called Generation Radio.
That unwavering devotion to Chicago – or, more specifically, the Chicago of yesteryear – ended up guiding Jay DeMarcus toward far less interesting results on XXX. “Lovin’ Chains,” though certainly imperfect, proves it.
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