After spending nearly two decades performing as a member of Big Time Rush, James Maslow has officially launched his solo career in the country music, a venture that he’s been preparing for over the last few years.
Fans will recall that Maslow first came into the spotlight in 2009 when Nickelodeon debuted the hit series Big Time Rush, which followed four Minnesota hockey players who unexpectedly became a boy band. The success of the show poured into the cast members’ real lives as Maslow, alongside castmates Kendall Schmidt, Logan Henderson and Carlos PenaVega, formed an actual recording group.
After initially disbanding in 2014, the band reunited in 2021 and has since continued to tour around the world, performing in front of thousands of nostalgic and devoted fans. But while the boy band remains an important part of his life, Maslow embarked on a new chapter. Just this summer, he introduced fans to a different side of himself during his solo debut at the 2026 CMA Fest in Nashville, performing five unreleased songs, one of which included “Stars and Stripes and Saturday Nights.”
Opening up about the transition from arena stages with Big Time Rush to performing brand-new material with Music Mayhem, Maslow admitted the rush of feelings has been both exciting and intimidating.
“I have had such a privilege for the last almost two decades to play to not just the volume of fans, and we get a lot of fans at shows, right? But to have fans who know every lyric to every song, I’m so lucky as an artist,” Maslow said ahead of his CMA Fest debut set about his time on stage as a member of Big Time Rush. “A lot of artists get that for their hit songs, but then maybe people are mumbling along for others.”
“Now, I’m coming in here, and I’m playing five songs I haven’t even released. So I haven’t even given people the chance to know the lyrics yet because that’s how the cards have fallen,” he continued, adding that he has a full-length project in the works. “We’ve been on tour for the last almost year with Big Time Rush, really almost five years. And now I’m getting ready for this whole album. So I am, of course, a little more nervous, but also just more excited than I’ve been in a long time to play a show.”
Maslow’s foray into country music also came with another big move, a brand new address. He relocated to Nashville nearly three years ago with his now-fiancée, Caitlin Spears. In May of 2025, the couple announced their engagement, sharing the happy news on Instagram with photos from the proposal alongside the caption, “Forever sounds good with you ❤️💍🥂.”
“…We found home here,” he says of the Music City move. “We’ve lived in a lot of places and [Caitlin’s] originally from the South. She’s from a small cow farm in Oklahoma and didn’t want to go back to Middle America for many years, and we’ve been together for seven years now. But now, at this stage in our life, when we were talking about having a family, God willing in the near future, we found that Nashville in particular has such an amazing balance of being in the country.”
The pros also include the proximity to the music industry. “20 minutes outside of the city, and you got land and farms and also having so much in the industry. The best writers, the best players in the world. So I came here just looking for a place to call home and then found myself writing with the best in the world,” Maslow said.
The 35-year-old star also added that he’s fully indulged himself in the country genre and has no intention to veer into the pop world for his solo work.
“Truly, I wrote like a whole pop album that I’ll never put out because it just didn’t feel like me anymore and it felt too parallel to what I’d done before,” he admitted. “And as I started dabbling in country, I realized, dang, this feels actually a lot more authentic.”
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