New To The Top 30: Old Dominion

This week, we welcome the new band Old Dominion to our Top 30.  While “Break Up With Him” marks their countdown debut as a band, several members have already experienced their first #1s as writers.   Country Countdown USA sat down with Matt Ramsey, Brad Tursi, and Trevor Rosen to talk about having hits as writers, and now as a band.

Trevor started the discussion: “As you said, we’ve had the opportunity to be there as songwriters quite a few times.  That’s always exciting and special.  But it’s really weird, it’s a totally different thing.  Its us!  It’s our band that’s actually on the chart.  Luckily, we get used to looking for our song, and then when you see our band name, oh wait a minute, that’s us!”

Does it cause a problem? (Brad) “That is not what I’d classify as a problem.”

How do you decide which songs stay in the band? (Matt) “It’s different for every song.  We don’t write aiming at any one artist, including ourselves, we just write the best songs we can.  In the past, we haven’t been in a position to hold songs back.  We were trying to be successful songwriters, so that was the goal.  Now it’s a different situation, and we’re just crossing this bridge, where we may pitch to the biggest artists we can, and some of them we want to hold on to.  So it’s a song by song thing, we never know until we’re out there playing them to know if it’s an Old Dominion song or for someone else.”

Just a few weeks ago, Trevor & Matt had a #1 with “Say You Do” by Dierks Bentley. (Matt)  “It all happened so fast, because we’d been on the road a lot with the band, but then they had a party for the #1, and it was very emotional.  You work a long time for something like that to possibly never happen.  So when it does happen, you celebrate, and then move on.  So it was a special moment.”

Old Dominion is opening Kenny Chesney’s Big Revival tour this summer.  That means you’re playing a lot of big football stadiums.  In fact this week, you’ll be at The Rose Bowl! (Trevor) “Every week, we go to another place we can’t believe.  I’m exciting that we get to play Ford Field in Detroit where I’m from, so to go to the stadium of the team you’re a fan of is pretty awesome.”

Let’s talk about your Top 30 song, “Break Up With Him,” I understand the song evolved? (Trevor) “Yeah it started in a sound check, we had that riff going, I recorded it in my phone, and came back to it later.  Then there was a time we were driving in a van together late at night, Matt had an idea, so we worked on it then.  Then we all got together and finished it up.  So it was three separate occasions to write it.

Matt, as the singer, how is it to speak rather than sing the opening verse? “That was the idea, that was how the idea started as a one-sided phone conversation.  To me, the talking thing was never that outside.  Conway Twitty did it.  I guess there’s been a resurgence of it recently.” (Trevor) If something sounds cool, do it!”  (Matt) That just seemed to serve the song.  That’s what that song called for.”

What’s it like seeing people respond to the song as it goes up the chart? (Brad) The first few lines always get a great reaction.  (Trevor) There are a growing number of people who know it from the first note and sing along with it, so that’s pretty exciting.”

So how did you come up with the band name Old Dominion? (Trevor) Easy.  Four of the five guys have ties to the state of Virginia, so Old Dominion is the nickname of Virginia, and it was the only band name not taken.”  What names lost out? (Trevor) “Fried Eagle was one.”

Back to the chart, Trevor, you just had a #1 with “Sangria” by Blake Shelton. (Trevor) It started one day, my co-writer Josh Osborne had the idea for the title, and tried to write it with someone else, and it didn’t go anywhere, so he brought it to me.  He thought about it as a guy singing it with the girl’s lips tasting like sangria, and that’s how it started. Then we started grooving on a chord pattern, had a Chris Isaak thing to it, so it was a good day.  The funny thing, a lot of people don’t know this, but Kenny Chesney cut it first but it didn’t make the album.  When that happens, it’s deflating, but it turns out to be the best thing for it, because it’s a #1 single!”

Do you do those songs in your show? (Matt) “Oh yeah, we do all these songs live.  It’s nice for us to be able to do that, because a lot of new artists do covers, but we get the opportunity to play songs that we wrote that people also know that are hits.  It’s fun to do that for sure.” (Trevor) We haven’t worked up Sangria yet, so we should add that next.”

So what’s the status on the album? “We’ve tracked it all, and we still have some finishing touches, but the goal is to have it out in the fall, and I think we’re going to hit it, so sometime this fall, the album will be out.”

We’ve got the video here, so describe what people are going to see. (Trevor) “We wanted to do something fun, so it’s a spoof of ‘Back To The Future,’ so it’s a goofy, fun video that shows our personality, show that we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we just goof off and have fun.  I think you’re about to see how talented we really are!”  (Brad) At one point, I throw my guitar to myself.  I throw it and then I catch it in 1985.”

So here’s Old Dominion and “Break Up With Him.”

Tags: old dominion

Category: New Artist, New Music