OTTAWA - Rascal Flatts got the name of their 2010 tour right as country music's crooning clowns were absolutely unrelenting fun in front of 8,000 honky-tonking fans at Scotiabank Place Friday night.

Big, bold and just a little bad, the Rascals -- Jay DeMarcus, Gary LeVox and Joe Don Rooney -- are easily the biggest thing in country today, and riding on top thanks to Unstoppable, their multi-platinum sixth album

Their first time back to the capital since 2008, "Unstoppable" is a huge show. The stage alone looks like the Grand Ole Opry on steroids, with more red-white-and-blue lighting and fireworks than the fourth of July as opened their show with Summer Nights.

After all, when the January temperature feels like the next ice age, a man can dream.

Fast-paced and frisky, the boys kept things going fast and loose on Me and My Gang, God Bless a Broken Road, Fast Cars and Freedom, Still Feels Good and covers of Lean on Me and Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me in three-part harmony no less.

As slick as the music side of things went, the boys scored major points for the way they bonded with the fans, joking about two-fisted beer-drinkers with biscuits and gravy and the reason the love playing Canada.

"Lord have mercy, no matter how cold it gets up here, girls still wear short skirts. "

All that country charm went down well with the fans with Gary on vocals for Here Comes Goodbye, I Melt which mashed into Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On and My Wish, while pressing flesh up and down the end-to-end catwalk with the audience singing along.

The loudest noise of the night might have come when their fiddler played the Canadian national anthem.

For their encore, Gary sang the Beatles' Revolution, before the show's opener Darius Rucker joined the boys for Hold My Hand and Tom Cochrane's Life is a Highway.

There might not be another band that does more to make each show as entertaining as possible. Rascal Flatts is, indeed, unstoppable.

Darius Rucker opened the show.

Surely you remember him -- it wasn't that long ago that Rucker and his Blowfish were the most popular band in the U.S., ballcap-wearing, football-watching southern fratboys who won the lottery with their single Only Wanna Be With You.

Rucker first gave country music a try in 2008, releasing two albums good enough that two singles, Don't Think I Don't Think About It and Learn To Live, charted in the Top 20.

After all, even though his music with Hootie & the Blowfish was generic American pop, it had a pretty big country heart, with a little blues thrown in. It turned out to be less of a transition than many expected.

Country? Pop? Blues? It didn't matter last night as Rucker brought his own kind of country pop to open the show.

Opening with Forever Road, Rucker and his band were laid-back on Friday, getting Rascal Flatts fans into the mood with a short but lively set that included most of his hits: Drinkin' and Dialin', It Won't Be Like This, Alright Darlin', Only Wanna Be With You, Don't Think I Don't Think and to close, a cover of Prince's Purple Rain.

As musical hybrids go, Rucker's fun country pop fit the mood of the fans like a glove.