Like so many music acts, Old Dominion found their world turned upside down when the pandemic hit in spring 2020 and touring was shut down. Not only that, the situation nearly sapped the life out of being Old Dominion altogether.
“We found ourselves doing a lot of the stuff that it takes to be in a band that is not fun, without being able to do the stuff that was fun,” lead singer/guitarist Matthew Ramsey recalled in a recent phone interview. “It just became, every decision and every meeting, it’s tough to connect over Zoom and conference calls, and we just lost that connection. A lot of those decisions (normally) tend to be made out on the road over a cup of coffee or something, without making it a big deal, just throughout our conversations. And it just became harder and harder to connect. We weren’t getting to do what we love with each other and it was just a lot of talk and no fun and no creativity. So it was really, really hard.”
Today, the good times are back for Ramsey and his bandmates, guitarist/keyboardist Trevor Rosen, guitarist Brad Tursi, drummer Whit Sellers and bassist Geoff Sprung, as they have maintained a busy schedule of touring ever since the band got the green light to tour again. They hit the PPL Center in Allentown on Thursday.
Ramsey said the good times are rolling — perhaps more than ever — for Old Dominion.
“It’s been better than I ever could have imagined, honestly,” Ramsey said. “It’s been really great and really fulfilling and just an amazing sight every night to walk out and see (the crowds).
“I feel like in a lot of ways we’ve sort of finally gotten our lives back a little bit, and we feel like when we walk out on stage, we set the intention that we want people to leave the show feeling better than when they came,” he said. “That’s what we want. We want people to feel lighter. We genuinely love what we do, and the best way to connect with people is to just be authentic on stage and have a great time doing what we love. That tends to rub off on people. Even my mom mentioned seeing some videos, going ‘You guys seem like you’re really energetic out there.’”
The malaise that set in during the pandemic wasn’t the only time Old Dominion had faced frustration and wondered where things might go as a band.
Formed in 2007, Old Dominion included a trio of established country songwriters in Ramsey, Rosen and Tursi, whose credits included songs recorded by Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton, Kenny Chesney, Kelsea Ballerini and the Band Perry. Initially the band was meant to merely be a vehicle for performing their songs around Nashville.
The group members, however, discovered they could make money by playing shows outside of Nashville. More shows kept on happening and eventually the thought of getting signed as a band and recording albums as Old Dominion came around.
The band showcased for a variety of Nashville record labels, only to be turned down one after another as many of the labels viewed Old Dominion as songwriters and not as a band that would generate hits of their own and be a compelling live act. Finally, RCA Records signed Old Dominion in February 2015, but only after the band had independently released a self-titled EP that included a single, “Break Up with Him,” that gained some airplay on Sirius XM Radio.
It didn’t take long for Old Dominion to prove the early airplay was not a fluke. Shortly before the November 2015 release of the band’s RCA debut album, “Meat and Candy,” “Break Up with Him” completed its run as the album’s lead single to the top of “Billboard” magazine’s Country Airplay chart. “Meat and Candy” went on to produce two more hit tracks, the chart-topping “Song for Another Time” and “Snapback,” which reached No 2.
The band’s next two albums added five more No. 1 singles to the catalog, and along the way, Old Dominion began what is now a six-year string of winning Vocal Group of the Year at the ACM and CMA Awards.
But there was a period during the pandemic when Old Dominion’s momentum stalled and life got difficult for the five band members.
The rebound that has followed began in September 2020, when the band members arrived at Echo Mountain Recording studio in Asheville, North Carolina, created a bubble in which to safely be together and set out to rekindle the creative spark.
The musicians agreed to convene with no songs in hand, start writing and see what happened. With no firm deadline to finish an album, the band members had time to explore various stylistic and sonic ideas for songs and the entire experience was less pressurized.
That was a very different way to approach an album project for Old Dominion. Before then, recording sessions were crammed in between stretches of touring. The sessions tended to be hectic, as the band tried to get as much work finished as possible at each session and keep the flow of new music going.
To their delight, Old Dominion emerged from the Asheville session with a finished album, “Time, Tequila & Therapy,” whose songs mostly have an easy-going blend of pop and country and an upbeat lyrical personality that reflects the spirit of the session.
“I think it was probably a product of us being together in that little three-week bubble and enjoying what we were doing,” Ramsey said of the album. “It was so much fun and it was honestly a dream that we’d always had, to be able to go into a studio with no songs and what we wrote and recorded is what you get. That seemed to be something that had eluded us (before) just because of our schedule. So we had the time and we were in a place of joy. I think that’s what you hear is a band just having a really good time together.”
The burst of creativity that began in Asheville has continued since, as the band rolled right into their next project. Four tunes were released in January 2023 on the EP, “Memory Lane (Sampler)” before getting folded into an 18-song album, “Memory Lane,” which was released in October 2023.
The band has since gone on to compile a 31-track collection, “Odies But Goodies,” made up of obscure tracks and fan favorite songs from their catalog, which was released in September.
With “Memory Lane” having given the band a top 5 single in the song “Memory Lane,” Old Dominion is back on the road, bringing out what Ramsey hopes will be a crowd-pleasing selection of songs.
“We have a really good problem of too many songs. And we have, thankfully, a lot of hits that fill the set. So of course, we want those in there,” Ramsey said of the set list. “And then we try to make space for new material and we have a few spots in our set where we try to make it interchangeable with some of the old material too, because we want to honor our fans with that. We keep track of socials and peoples’ requests and people bring signs, so we try to fit in what people want to hear in particular markets.”
Alan Sculley is a freelance writer.
