Rascal Flatts frontman explains what motivates him as a performer

Gary LeVox wants to move people with his music.

"That's why I wanted to be a singer," the big-voiced frontman of Rascal Flatts says. "You get to tell stories through music. And it may be your own story or it may be somebody else's story or a story that the whole world deals with."

LeVox has seen just how stirring those stories can be. The singer, born Gary Wayne Vernon Jr., remembers one scene in particular that touched an entire arena.

It was during "Skin," a song that begins with the lines, "Sarabeth is scared to death / To hear what the doctor will say / She hasn't been well / Since the day that she fell / And the bruise, it just won't go away." From the stage, LeVox says, he noticed a fan upfront wearing a bandanna, and he invited her up, motioning to security to let her pass.

"Obviously I could tell that she had cancer," he explains. "So I pulled her up, and she was dancing on stage. Security was holding this guy back. She was on stage, and I was singing to her, and she was singing all the words, and she kept going, 'That's my husband.' He was a big old dude," LeVox remembers. "So he comes up on stage, and she takes her bandanna off. She didn't have any hair, and her husband takes his hat off, and it was right where I sing, 'And they go dancing 'round and 'round.' The whole entire place was in tears. It was just such a beautiful moment captured on stage. He shaved his head for her, and it was just their story."

There have been many such moving moments involving fans, LeVox says. Some of them he's been blessed to be a part of in person, while others have been relayed to him, like the time when Gerry House, a DJ in Nashville, Tenn., began playing the Rascal Flatts tune "I'm Moving On." The song wasn't even intended to be a single, but House played it because his wife loved it, and when he aired it for the first time, it changed the course of one man's life.

"There was a guy who was driving to work that morning. He was thinking about committing suicide; he was on his way to do it," LeVox says. "He heard that song and stopped, called the radio station and gave his story of what he was going to do. So that song just saved his life, just because he heard it."

LeVox says he often thinks about stories like these when he performs. "I love doing 'Broken Road' and 'My Wish,' and I love 'Banjo,' " he says. "A lot of those songs have been the soundtrack to people's lives. Everytime I sing 'Broken Road' or 'My Wish,' I think about a story that I've heard. I mean, every night on stage, something pops into my head which fuels me more to sing it with more passion."

LeVox is a man of faith, and so, the fact that his band's music has made a difference in people's lives, well, "that's kind of our mission field," he says. "It's just been … to have that kind of impact on somebody's life through music is why I always wanted to do it."

That mission probably came into focus pretty early on for LeVox, who grew up in Ohio singing gospel hymns with his grandfather as a grade-schooler. " 'The Old Rugged Cross' is the first song I ever learned word for word all the way through with my grandpa," he recalls. "I was 7 or 8 years old."

Bluegrass, country and pop music played just as big a part in shaping LeVox's sensibilities, and you can clearly hear the significance of those styles when he sings. But the soulfulness of his delivery — the thing about his vocals that really sells the songs and empowers the words to resonate so profoundly — is clearly rooted in those spirituals.

LeVox's prowess as a performer, meanwhile, came courtesy of his time on a local karaoke circuit. After work, he used to hit up the hotspots around his hometown, where his talent helped him collect cash prizes. "You know it was like a hundred bucks, or two hundred bucks, or something like that a night," he says. "On Friday or Saturday, man, I'd go try to hit three different places all around Ohio."

Little did he know back then that some years later folks would be singing his songs at karaoke. And if not for the insistence of his friend Jamie Foxx (yes, that Jamie Foxx), those songs might have sounded quite a bit different.

At some point in the mid-'90s, LeVox was being courted by a major label as a solo artist. The imprint was looking to sign him to a pop deal, and so the singer headed out to the West Coast to meet with them and work on music. Through his manager, who had worked with Foxx, he became friends and roommates with the comedian, who had just landed his own show on the WB. "I moved in with Jamie, and we'd just sit around and make music, and go to 'The Jamie Foxx Show,' " LeVox recalls. "That was our lives. He was learning how to do TV, and I was learning how to do music."

Actually, it sounds like they worked on that last part together. "He loved to sing," LeVox says. "His biggest fear was, you know, he was like, 'Dude, I'm a comedian.' Everybody knows how musically talented he is now, but he was like, 'My biggest fear is that people won't take me seriously as a musician, because I'm a comedian.' Usually when you break on to the scene with whatever you're doing, that's what they know you as."

Whatever anxieties he might have had regarding his own aspirations, Foxx was sure not to pass them on to LeVox. In fact, he pushed LeVox to pursue the music he really loved. "He was like, 'Look, dude, country is your roots. That's where you come from,' " LeVox says. "He was like, 'Go do your thing,' you know. 'You ought to just do country. Do something that you love.' "

Not long after, LeVox did just that, answering the call when his cousin Jay DeMarcus encouraged him to move to Nashville, where the pair ended up forming a band with Joe Don Rooney. Nine albums later, Rascal Flatts is one of the most popular acts in all of country music. Just before the group begins working in earnest on its new album on the Big Machine imprint, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2014's "Rewind," LeVox and company have returned to town for their second series of shows at the Hard Rock Hotel.

"Man, we are fired up. We are so pumped up and thrilled to be back. We just loved everything about it," LeVox says of the first go-round last February, sharing what he loved about the first residency and what fans can look forward to during this round of shows. "We loved getting there and having everything set up, and we enjoyed sleeping in something that wasn't moving. That was nice. And just the fun, you know? And the Hard Rock did such a good job of promoting it. It was fantastic. It was great. You know, any place you can sit and see and meet people from all over the world, it's awesome.

"No one's ever seen us like this before. It's so cool and so broke down, but without giving too much away, there's only two other people on stage with us. It's what they play is what builds it up. It's really cool. The two people sound like 10. I'd say that. It's really custom-made for Vegas."

In other words, prepare to be moved.

— Read more from Dave Herrera at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at dherrera@reviewjournal.com or follow @rjmusicdh on Twitter.