Joe Don Rooney, best known for playing guitar in one of country music’s most successful groups, Rascal Flatts, has broken his long silence since pleading guilty to a 2021 DUI. In a lengthy social-media post, he affirmed his sobriety and also dispelled a rumor that he was transitioning.
“There have been so many rumors and opinions thrown around about me — but I’m finally healthy and ready for the world. And NO, I’m not transitioning to be a woman,” he wrote. “That thought has never entered my mind. Nothing against the trans community whatsoever but I needed to set the record straight.”
Rooney spent the bulk of his post writing in depth about his violent car accident and the changes it prompted him to make in his personal life.
“My life and career took a major detour at 4a in the early morning hours of Sep 9, 2021, when I ran square into a tree and about killed myself,” he wrote. “I was drunk, and I was so far gone with my life – I was completely out of control and finished with trying to fight the fears, depression, and anxieties that had spun me out in a way I’ve never experienced before.”
Rooney said that the factors that triggered him to drink included “the pressures of my career and the many mistakes I made in regards to my home life, coupled with a lot of pain and trauma from my childhood and early on in my adult life.” Rooney’s divorce from wife Tiffany Fallon was finalized in December 2023.
Rooney credited the car wreck with turning his life around and shifting his perspectives. He said he spent four months in a treatment facility in Utah for alcoholism: “When I first got there, I didn’t want to stay. I was ashamed of myself. I was so full of fear and guilt, that it took me all of the those 4 months to really start understanding treatment and the AA way and how to best utilize these new tools that I downloaded from the amazing clinicians, counselors and other patients there.” On Jan. 13, Rooney said he’ll be able to claim 28 months of sobriety.
Rolling Stone reported in 2022 that Rooney would serve two days in jail and lose his license after pleading guilty. The rest of his sentence — 11 months and 27 days — were suspended. The incident came a year after Rascal Flatts had announced plans for a farewell tour, which they canceled due to the Covid pandemic.
Along with Rascal Flatts bandmates Gary LeVox and Jay DeMarcus, Rooney achieved massive commercial success in country music in the 2000s with songs like “I Melt,” “Bless the Broken Road,” “What Hurts the Most,” and a cover of Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is a Highway.”