One On One - EP

Gary LeVox is one of country music’s most celebrated singers, his agile, far-reaching voice serving as the foundation of his longtime trio, Rascal Flatts. One on One is LeVox’s first solo project, a gospel EP featuring appearances by MercyMe, Jonathan McReynolds, BRELAND, and his own daughter, Brittany LeVox. Across five tracks, he offers messages of love, positivity, and healing through faith, a decision he made partially in light of the difficulties brought about by the pandemic. LeVox tells Apple Music that his wife came up with the collection’s title. “She said, ‘Why don’t you call it One on One? It’s you, for the first time, doing a gospel record and singing about the Lord. So, one-on-one with you and Him.’” Here, LeVox talks through each of One on One’s tracks.

A Little Love (feat. MercyMe)
“Bart [Millard, of MercyMe] and I are such good friends. But we’ve been talking about working together for a while. And then he called me and was like, ‘Man, I think I got a song. You got to come sing this with me.’ And I was like, ‘All right.’ I love that it’s uptempo. I love the message of it. To me, it was almost like a current-day ‘We Are the World’-type thing. So, I loved it, and I just couldn’t get it out of my head after I sang it.”

Never Forget (feat. Jonathan McReynolds)
“Jonathan’s one of my favorite singers on the planet, and he’s one of the most talented human beings I know. He’s a dear, dear brother, and I love him to death. And when I first met him, I was a little starstruck, because of his song ‘No Gray.’ I was in love with that song, and I saw him at the Dove Awards, and I fangirled him and said, ‘I’m singing with you one day.’ Come to find out, he was a fan of mine. It was crazy how it was a full circle. And so, we were talking, and I said, ‘Man, have you got any songs to pitch?’ So, he sent it to me, and I couldn’t get that first line of that song out of my head for months. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m doing this, but you got to do it with me.’”

While I Wait (feat. Brittany LeVox)
“Tauren Wells wrote that song. Tauren’s one of my favorite people on Earth and a good friend and amazing singer-songwriter. Tauren had actually kept that song for his record, and it didn’t make it. I called him and was like, ‘You know, now I’m doing this gospel record, that’s something I’ve always wanted to do my whole life.’ And he was like, ‘Man, I’ve got a song that I really like.’ And so, he sent it to me, and I just fell in love with it. Brittany loved it, so I was like, ‘Britt, why don’t you just go to the studio with me and sing this thing—do a duet with me on it?’ She was freaking out, you know. So, we went, and she absolutely slayed it. She’s got such an amazing gift. She really sang her tail off on this thing. And I just couldn’t be more proud to be singing with my daughter and just watching her grow, not just as a young woman, but as an artist.”

All I See (feat. BRELAND)
“That was the first time BRELAND and I ever wrote. And we wrote that song in, like, 20 minutes. I wanted to get a gospel feel and a song about how we’ve been so distracted for so long on what’s really important in life. We’re all just living on our phones, and BRELAND and I wrote a prayer for ourselves, like, ‘All right, I’m getting off-track here. I’m focusing on all this material stuff that’s unimportant. Help me focus my eyes, Lord, until you’re all that I see again.’ I sing that song more than any song that’s on the record.”

The Distance
“I wrote it at the beginning of the pandemic when there was so much fear and so much of the unknown [about] what was going on in life. We saw drug addiction going up and the divorce rate. It was just a song of hope and encouragement that we thought everybody needed. It was like, ‘Look, you can go the distance, you can finish this race. We’ve got all this other stuff going on, and we’re not thinking about the one that can carry us through. And that’s God.’ So, that was the sentiment behind it. We always hear that music is medicine, but it was truly medicine for us too.”