Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left six podcast. My guest today is Matthew Ramsey of Old Dominion. Matthew, Are you Matthew.
Or matt either one? It's fine. It depends on who you are. Sometimes sometimes it's Matthew, sometimes it's matt. I answered it both.
Well, you the kind of person like you grew up is matt and now as you're an adult, you're Matthew.
Well, it's a it's a funny story I grew up with. I guess. My parents called me Matthew a lot. My grandparents called me Matthew. My friends called me Matt. As I was kind of beginning my musical career, I was going by matt Uh. And then I got to a certain point where I had like a you know, a website and a MySpace page and all that stuff that's Matt Ramsey. And I started getting these emails from other people that were looking for a different Matthew Ramsey who
was the adult film industry or different Matt Ramsey. So I changed it professionally to Matthew.
Okay, Old Dominion is going on the road. What should the fans expect?
Oh man, they should expect to see us having the time of our lives. And that's really the biggest comment that we get is how much fun we have on stage, and that is the truth. No matter what's going on in our lives, when we step on that stage, it wipes it all away and we just truly have a great time. We've really learned over the past couple of years really what our relationship is with our fans, and
we like to be inclusive. We take requests, we open it up the set list to them, and you know, we have a set list, but there are sections in the set where we just say what do you want to hear? So every show is different and we we play for a good couple hours. So it's a fun time.
And how about production? How much production do you carrie?
Good bit of production. We actually start rehearsals tomorrow, so I haven't seen I'll see it in its full glory tomorrow, but lots of lots of screens, lots of video content.
You know, we have our lighting director. He's been with us since the very beginning, and once we kind of started getting into arenas and and really doing the kind of big stuff, we had added some you know, show designers and set designers before that we'd worked with, and it was it felt like it was time to step it up, and so we were doing lots of different presentations that people were giving us, and our lighting director said,
I would like a shot. I think I know you guys pretty well, so I'd like a shot to present my ideas, and he hands down one won the design for sure and ended up getting nominated for awards and stuff for it. So it's a good bit. It's less than we've carried in twenty twenty three because we're doing an EMP theater tour, so it's a little bit different, but it's still it's a big show.
Okay, you're playing a Memorial Day weekend, you're playing after a car race the six hundred. Have you done that before? What's that like?
We have done that once, I think once or twice. Those are always interesting shows. You know, people there for the race and stick around for the show after. But it's not anything we're not used to. We've played every kind of show that you could possibly imagine, as I'm sure you can imagine. So we've played, you know, next
to livestock, and we'll played next to race cars. So it's pretty cool to be in the infield, and lots of times we get to go down there and stand on pitt Row and watch the cars come in and stuff, and then we go do our show.
Okay, you're playing in Europe. If you played in Europe.
Before, Yes, we have played in Europe a good bit. We started that pretty early, trying to build a fan base over there, and then COVID obviously kind of killed our momentum there for a little bit. But so this will kind of be our well. Really, our first toe back in the water was playing C two C Festival two years ago, and we'll be back there to do a proper tour this year.
Well, a lot of country acts have never toured Europe, not right now, and I want people are going. But historically, so what's the reaction for your music overseas as opposed to the US.
It was surprising to us. I kind I can understand why some artists don't go over there, especially once you've reached a certain level in the States, you kind of have to start over over there. You know, you're building a whole new fan base they don't have where they typically didn't have country radio over there. It's just it's just a catch all radio that plays your music. Now they're starting to get some country stations, so it's a
little bit easier, but we were very surprised. There's there's nothing quite like hearing your music sung back to you in a German accent, you know that to show you how far your music has gone. Uh. And and they also they really dig into the entire catalog, so we can play whatever we want. They know every word and you know, it's pretty fantastic.
Okay, do you ever get tired of playing break up with Him?
No? Actually, hear artists talk about that sometimes. For me, if it gets the crowd excited, I have no problem playing it. You know, it used to we spent a long time playing full sets of music that no one knew. So when you get a hit, it's a blessing and it starts to you know. That was the one for a long time where we knew, no matter what we were playing, we knew that was a moment we were going to get them and we would get their attention. And so still now to this day, that song creates
a reaction. And anytime anytime a group, you know, thousands of people are singing something that you created. How can you get tired of that.
So how do you decide where to put it in the set list?
It's usually these days pretty high up. We like to start the song or we like to start out the set with some hits. We're lucky enough now that we can build a set that there's hits all the way through, so so we typically try to put that one up towards the top, just to kind of, you know, for around people who we are and get them excited about the hit songs that they're coming here later.
Okay, this is audio only, but you wearing a Bruce Springsteen in the East Street Band shirt. You are seen as a country artist. So where are you on the spectrum in terms of rock and country?
Yeah, Birce Springsteen is is my biggest influence personally as far as you know. Obviously is a songwriting influence, but as a performer too. I really look up to his body of work. I don't think we would ever call ourselves a traditional country band. I think the thing that
makes us country is our songwriting. You know, we certainly try to focus on the storytelling aspect and and pack it full of hooks and you know, get people singing along, and you know, I grew up in a really small town in Virginia, so you know, I certainly have a country background, but musically, the five of us are. Our influences are so all over the map, and they include just as much rock as they do country. So our show tends to be more of a rock show than
a country show. Lots of jumping around and running around.
So how'd you get turned on to Bruce?
My dad had a record collection and he had the Live from seventy five to eighty five album and he used to play that and I remember always loving it. But it wasn't until I was probably, I want to say, eighteen, that I heard Rosalita and it sounded so fresh to me, and just his cadence and just the pictures that he painted. I was driving, I was driving from Brisbane, Virginia to Charlottesville, and I heard that song come on and it was just it just lit me up. I just couldn't believe it.
And I went home and pulled out that record that my dad had, and it was covered in mold, and you know, it hadn't been pulled out for years, and I tried to clean it off, and I was just sitting in my room and listened to that those concerts over and over and over again, and then and then I was just obsessed from that point on.
Okay, you see, you come from a small town Virginia. What is that town and where is that in Virginia.
It's called Buckannan, Virginia. It's spelled Bucannon, but everybody there calls it Buckchannan. It's in the southwestern part of the Appalachian Mountains. So it's about i'd say about half an hour forty minutes from Roanoke, Virginia, in between Roanoak and and Charlottesville, Virginia, about nine hundred people. Uh, just no stop light, just a tiny little town.
Okay, Charlottesville is a college town. Roanoak's like the first town in America. So you know, I talked to dway Yoakum about this. So you say it's Appalachia. He goes on that no one pronounces it that way, but you're from there, and he's actually from Ohio. So to what degree is it backwoods holler or at this point is that paradigm done?
No, you can find that very easily. It's definitely still there. You know, My hometown was, like I said, it's very small. It was a big deal when they put a burger king in the gas station, you know. But there are there are hollers, for sure. There's one in particularly called Wildcat Holler that is that is very close by, and it's it's a pretty poverty stricken part of the country. Obviously, the the opioid crisis is running rampant through there, and a lot of it, you know, came out of that
came out of that area. You can watch all the documentaries on on all of that. And there's a lot of Rono Virginia in that area. So it's pretty downtrodden at times, but it is a beautiful part of the country.
So what did your parents do for a living.
My dad worked for the railroad for about eighteen years when I was a kid, so he was traveling a good bit until he ended up taking a buy out and got a job working in the local in the office of the there's a local factory in town that made like silicone and rubber products. And then my mom was a teacher. My mom was a math teacher.
What did your father do for the railroad?
He was a brakeman, so he was he was on the trains, so he would His run was from Roanoak to Winston Salem, North Carolina, so he would just take trains down to North Carolina, unload them, hook him back up, bring them back. That was kind of the family business. Was his dad did it, his granddad did it. It was like all the men leading up to my dad were all railroad people.
Okay, the factory, the silicon factory. Is that still there or did that close?
It's closed? Now? It's closed?
Now? How long would it close?
It sold a few times probably I'd say ten years ago and then ended up shutting down probably I'd say probably six years ago.
So was your father or retired or did he lose his job?
No, he was, he was at that point. They kind of they kept on selling it and and they would keep him. So he survived a couple of different sales and then and transitions, and then they kept him on until he finally retired.
And then when the factory finally went under. How did that affect the economics of the town.
The town didn't have a whole lot of economics. It definitely killed some jobs, for sure. It's now been turned into a brewery and an apartment complex, which I haven't seen,
but I hear is doing well. The thing about that little town that's drawing people there now is the river runs right through it, and obviously the Appalachian Trail runs pretty close by to so it's a big outdoors destination now that people like to come in and in the summertime and float the river, and that now they go grab a beer at the brewery.
So your father's a break man. How does he meet your mother?
They met in college. They went to Shepherd University, and I think the story is he was showing up to date to take my mom's roommate on a day and uh and something fell through and he ended up taking my mom on the date. Uh and that they've been together ever since.
Okay, So how many kids in the family.
I have one older brother, and what is he up to? He is a rock star in his own right. He he works with It's stuff that's way over my head, but he works with GPS systems and drones.
So you've had some great success in the music business. You know, people have success and they buy their parents cars or houses. Did you do any of that? I have.
I've certainly handed down some cars to my parents. I've I've definitely Uh, given my dad a truck, and I I definitely try to take care of them. I haven't bought them any houses or anything, but I certainly try to spread the spread the wealth a little bit. For Christmas, I bought them. My definition of success was always I remember telling someone I just wanted to be successful enough to see my family whenever I wanted, without having to save up or worry about how much the plane ticket
costs or whatever. So now that I've reached this level, I definitely I gave a credit card for Christmas and said, whenever you want to come, this is your plane ticket. You know, don't don't worry about how much it costs, just get here.
Okay, So you're going to school. Did you go to the same school your mother was a teacher at.
She wound up teaching there right after I left. When I was in I guess elementary school. There was a couple of classes that she was that when I was in elementary school. She was going to school to get her degree, so she would come in and do like teacher's aide stuff sometimes when I was small. But then she wound up getting a job in natural Bridge, Virginia, which is about probably fifteen minutes away, so she taught there. She didn't move to the high school until after I was going.
So what kind of student were you?
Not a great one? My brother was a really good one, obviously, he's an engineer and does all the high tech stuff. I was that was not into school, man, it was not my thing. I really didn't.
But you went to college, it couldn't have been too bad.
I went to college, but I wasn't even sure. I just kind of had reached a point. College was an avenue out of that town for me. I just I stayed. After I graduated high school, I went community college for a year because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. So I went to community college and realized pretty quickly I didn't want to be there anymore. I wanted to do something else, and the only thing I was good
at was art and music to some degree. But I was better at art, so I thought, well, maybe I'll try to go to art school, and that's when I ended up doing a degree in illustration from BCU.
Okay, is there music in the house growing up?
There was a lot. My dad is a huge fan of music and has a lot of a varied taste, but he's not a musician. He would have a harmonica sometimes and would play that for fun, but other than that, we had a piano that was just sitting there. And I was drawn to the drums first. So I think when I was probably in fifth grade, I really wanted to play drums. And so they told me, Okay, if you want to play drums, we want you to take piano lessons. Okay, that was the deal that they made.
They wanted me to learn to to to read music. I guess I'm not sure why, but I just said okay and that stuff for maybe three lessons until I dropped that and kept on the drums.
What was the motivation to play the drums? Did you see something on TV? Or we always rhythmic kid?
I mean I saw I saw at a at a middle school talent show, one of my brother's friends played. Uh. I think he played like wipeout or something. You know, that's the thing you played, of course trying to learn the drum. Yeah, yeah, so but I just saw the whole gym light up when he did that, and I was and it was so powerful to me. I was like, WHOA, what's happening here? So and my brother I remember right
around that time. You know, he's four years older than me. Uh, and he was in middle school and and he decided he and his buddies wanted to start a band, and so they were and it but my brother played trumpet and like, so it was like a horn section and this drummer and uh. They came over to the house and that lasted probably a monk, but they came over once to practice. And now all the drums were set up in our basement and they took a break and I just went down there and was like touching the
drums and I was just really drawn to them. And then I was in led me to be in you know, uh the school band playing and playing drums, and then later into the marching band. I was in the drum line and did all that stuff. So first, for whatever reason, that was really calling to me.
Okay, did you take lessons?
No, we had a you know, a band director that didn't really know anything about the drums.
I just.
I just, uh, everything everything I did was self taught. I had the I pretty much lived in our basement, so I would stay down there in our basement. I had a drum kit down there. I had guitars and ants and stuff down there on one half of the basement, and the other half of the basement was all canvases and paints and and art supplies. So I would I would always be down there, either painting or listening to music and trying to figure out what they did and try to play it.
So you played the piano to get drums. Did your appearance buy you a kid?
Eventually? Yes, I started with a snare and there was a big moment. I remember, my dad was never a big He's not known necessarily for being a spontaneous person. But it was just he and I out One day we were going to get some lunch and we walked by this uh it was just I don't like a junk store, and there was a drum kit sitting in them in the window. And we walked by and I was like, oh wow, look at that thing. And he said, well, let's go look at it, and we walked out of
there with it. I was my mind was blown, like I could not believe that he was He just bought me this drum kit. And they weren't musical, but they they supported me in every musical avenue I went down, they they didn't always understand it. Uh. And throughout the course of of my adolescence, when I would get things taken away from me for acting like an idiot, they never took away that. They never took away anything musical from me, So I would sometimes that was all I had to do.
Okay, drums can make quite a racket. Yeah, you were in the basement, but they ever say stop.
Oh yeah, there was a light switch. There was a light switch. The light switch for the basement was upstairs, so I'd be I'd be down there playing and all of a sudden it would just go completely dark, and I'd be like, Okay, time to quit.
Okay, you're playing in the school band in a drum line. You know? Is that cool?
Not cool?
What was the experience like?
That was cool for me? You know, I don't think. I don't think people think marching band is the coolest thing in the world, But for me, I loved I loved every second of it, especially too, because it was kind of cool that we had a band director that wasn't didn't know much about drums. He just sort of
let us come up with our own parts. So we would listen to to the pieces and we would we would circle up and come up with our own parts, and he would he would help guide a little bit, but he didn't know the rudiments much and so it was there was complete creative freedom there. So I really really loved it.
And tell us about the drum line.
Well, pretty rinky dink. So you know, just a couple of snare drums that was a guy playing the quads and a couple of bass drums, and that was about it. And ultimately that's how I ended up starting my first band because we were such good friends and we all wanted to be in a band, but we all played drums.
So one of the guys was like, well, I have a guitar, and another guy was he could play piano pretty well, and I said, well, okay, I'll borrow a bass from somebody and I'll try to be the bass player. And so we would get together at my friend's house and we had this rotating everybody wanted to play the drums because that was the one thing that we did, so so like, I want to play drums on that song. So it was constantly turning where we would play drums
on particular songs. But that was my first kind of step. The drum line led directly to me being in my first band.
So you borrow a bass. Some people can pick up any instrument and play it instantly. Other people have to work really hard. Where do you fit on the continuum?
I have to work really hard. I still work really hard. I have a good year, you know, thankfully, so I could figure it out. But it was just that's all I did once once I was in that far into music in general. I had I had an uncle too that gave me a guitar, and I had that piano sitting there in the living room, and I borrowed this bass,
and I had a drum kit. And so just every day I was working on something, trying to figure out how people, how people were playing, what they were playing, and reading books and magazines and trying to figure it all out.
Okay, so how long does that band of drummers last?
Oh, probably a couple of years.
You know.
That was we played like the Valentine's Dance at at our school, and we played a little you know, local pool party type of thing. You know. We were terrible, But it lasted a couple of years and then transformed into some of the members we formed another band that was called Porkrons, and that was like a that was like a we wanted to be Pearl Jam. Yeah, we wanted to be a grunge rock band. So that kind of transformed into that and that lasted for probably another four years.
Okay, you're in your hometown. It's not that far from Charlotteesville. Do you go to shows in Charlottesville? Do you hang out? Were you pretty much at home?
Mostly went to Roanoke for shows, so there would bands. Charlottesville was a little further away, and for whatever reason, we never went that direction. Nless it was for sports. We would go see some UVA basketball or soccer games, football games. But Roanoak there was some decent sized touring acts that would come through Rono So I spent most of my time going to shows there. And there were you know, there was a there was a club scene there.
Two there was there was one, well really one club in Roanoak where my band would play with big x's on our hands. And because we were underage.
Okay, you graduate from high school, you still live at home and go to community college. Does the band sustain No?
That was that was pretty much the end of the band. I was at that point, I wasn't the singer in that band, but at that point had started writing a different kind of style of song.
We'll time out. When did you start.
To right around the time I picked up the guitar, Well, I was probably fourteen thirteen fourteen. I was playing the piano one day just by ear, just noodling, and my dad reminded me. He was like, you have a guitar that's in your closet sitting up there. You should pick that up. See what you can do. I was like, he's right, you know, So I picked it up, and I didn't know how to play anything. So my instinct was, well, I'll write something. I don't know how to play anything else.
But if I write something, then i'll I'll have something to play. So that was my first instinct was to create rather than to copy. So right off the bat I started writing.
And certainly in retrospect you could evaluate this stuff. How much did you write? And when was the first time you simply in retrospect, well, that was kind of a good song.
I think I thought they were pretty good right off the bat, you know, I thought, I like, the first thing I wrote was just a little instrumental piece that I could that I could get through. I had another uncle who was a fantastic guitar player, and he showed me. You know, he would show me a chord and then he would say, okay, now that you have that chord, just just move a finger. Just pick one finger and move it somewhere else and see what that sounds like.
So he kind of taught me how to explore different variations of chords. So so I would, you know, I saw him just a couple times a year, so every time I saw him, I would show him what I was doing and he would show me something else. So right off the bat, I was like, all right, I think I can create a song here. And I always thought they were pretty good.
Would you be in playing them?
There was one song that my band started playing. This was the first band that that started playing. And that's actually how I discovered my singing voice. As a joke, I sang it was a very kind of low registered song, was very easy to sing. There was no pushing for to hit any notes or anything. And at a sound check one day, I was joking and I started pushing and singing it aggressively and loudly. I was trying to make everyone laugh, and when after it was over, they
all looked at me and went, what was that? And they were like, they're all, you should do that more. So that's how I kind of discovered that sing how to sing a little bit, and that opened up the writing a good bit.
Okay, you go to community college, the band breaks up, what happens with your music?
I still am playing. I still am playing, you know, a little coffee shops. I start playing by myself. And then when I went to Richmond to go to college, I always stayed booking myself in whatever little coffee shop or corner bar I could, just to keep doing it. I just loved doing it so much. And not only that felt like I had to do it, you know, I felt like it was it was necessary for me to do and so the music never stopped.
Okay, you moved to Richmond, you know now more than ever, but even back days, you can play in a bar and people can totally ignore you.
Oh yeah, so oh yes.
Did you get a good response or were you just interly driven and say I don't give a shit out, I'm just doing this.
Yeah, a mix of both. You know. The you can play fifty gigs where you're ignored, and if you get one gig that you get a response out of, that will fuel you for hundreds more, you know, of people ignoring you. So I played much more where people ignored than people paid attention.
Okay, and this was singer songwriter type stuff.
You alone, Yeah, yeah, just me alone.
And if we put a genre on it, you know, from one end there's James Taylor, the other end there's Conway Twitty. Where are you on that? Continue?
Yeah, I was probably you know, I was big into I was big into sort of alternative country type of bands. There were there were bands at the time, like there's a band called sun Volt that I really loved. And again I was I was pretty pretty deep into the Springsteen at that point, so digging into his kind of singer songwriter style. It wasn't it wasn't country yet. It
was definitely more of a singer songwriter folk music. You know, there's a lot of there was a lot of bluegrass and and old time music that was being played in the area that I grew up, so that kind of bled into it a little bit. I was just trying to tell stories.
Okay. There's actually a pretty big punk scene in Virginia. Did that influence you? Was that around?
It was around and I and in my my band pork Rinds, we were we were intermixed with a lot of those bands. And actually the drummer in our band with an Old Dominion was at the time in the punk scene at that time, so he was also he was also someone I knew from middle school and was in the drum line as well, So he wound up going into the punk direction, and I wound up being drawn more towards like college rock, Dave Matthews type of
things like that. So I was that was also happening at the same time, so I didn't dive too much into the punk scene.
Okay, you were in Richmond for three years. At what point do you say? If you say, then this is what I want to do as a career.
It was a graduation was coming up, and at that point I started to realize, Okay, I can't I can't do both. I think I got a I can't half ass two things. So I love art, I love music. My heart is telling me that I really want to explore this music thing. So basically, as soon as I graduated, the plan was Sorry, Mom and Dad, I know, you just paid for college for art, but I want to try this music thing. And then they took it.
Well, okay, you're in college, you're playing these gigs, but it is college. Are you a partying Do you have a girlfriend or are you just the guy that everybody says, oh he's the music guy.
No, I was, I was. I'm not a huge partier. I certainly did my time, and yeah, I had a girlfriend, and then but also started another band in college, and so I was already kind of pulled and lots of different directions. I would much rather though.
Be.
The band at the party. Then I would go to the party.
Okay, you graduate, you decide you want to do music, so what's your first step.
Well, I had this band at that point that was just called the Matt Ramsey Band, and I ended up moving to Blacksburg, Virginia, and I would just I would just be on the phone constantly trying to try to book myself anywhere, try to book this band anywhere, so we play.
We still those of us were not Virginia savvy. What's the story with.
Blacks Blacksburg is where Virginia Tech is. Okay, So that was basically on the other side of Rono from my hometown, big college town, and I would play all the bars in Blacksburg, and then I would try to play in Roanoke, and I'd go up to Harrisonburg, and there was a there was a band in Harrisonburg. They were called Small Town Workers, and with our drummer was in that band, and that's how I ended up meeting Jeff, who is our bassist now. So I would go up to Harrisonburg
and open for their band and did. I just did everything I possibly could to play any kind of four hour gig that would have me. Anytime anyone said I could, Hey, can you play for five hours, I'd say yes, and then I'd go learn a bunch of socks and then I'll just play wherever, wherever I could. And in all the while, you know, working at whatever landscaping job I
could get, or you know, to pay the bills. But a certain music certainly wasn't paying the bills yet, So I was working whatever jobs I could.
So how long do you do that for?
Well that was I graduated college in two thousand. I moved to Nashville in two thousand and two. So it was a couple just a couple of years of doing that.
Okay, so how do you decide to move to Nashville.
I was working. Well, a couple of things happened. There was a public radio program called Mountain Stage right, and I loved listening to that and all of the music
that was coming out of there. And they had a like a festival, and so I went to this festival and there were some seminars there, and I went to this like songwriting seminar with a guy named Darryl Scott and he's, you know, just an incredible songwriter and musician and written a bunch of stuff for the Dixie Chicks and and Travis Tritt and I went to him after the after the siminar, there was probably about twenty people there, and I asked him what he thought about moving in Nashville,
and he said, well, if you're moving there to be a star, then don't do it. But if you're moving there to surround yourself with the best in the world and learn from them, that, by all means I think you should. So I took that to heart. And so that was one thing that happened at the On the other and I had made a little self produced CD that I was selling at shows, and I was working at a stained glass factory in Lynchburg, Virginia, and there
was a guy here in Nashville. He's an artist and Songwriter's name's Phil Vassar, and he was he was doing well at that point, that was kind of the height of his career. And he's from Lynchburg, Virginia. And his sister used to work for that stained glass company. And she came into work one day and I gave her a CD and said, you know, if you want to throw it away, throw it away. If you like it and want to pass it on, please do. And so a couple of weeks later, I get an email from
her and said, hey, this is really good. I want to come by and get a couple more. I'm going to Nashville in a month and I want to I want to take some down there and get some people to listen. And so she did, and then she emailed me again and said, have you ever been to Nashville. So she said, we'll come down and check it out. So my boss lent me his car to drive to Nashville. We drove down and just to be clear, you don't have a car, I did, but yeah, it probably wasn't
good enough to make it to Nashville. So he said, you know, take my car, go down there. They were very supportive, obviously.
How far is it from Lynchburg to Nashville.
It's it's about seven and a half eight hours. And I drove down and took me to the Bluebird, and you know, I saw all these great writers and we drove past this big house this on this road, Hillsboro Road. There's all these beautiful houses on the way to the Bluebird, and I was just like, wow, these houses are amazing. And after the Bluebird, she said, well, we're going to one of those houses. And she took me to Phil's house and I sat down with him and he said, look, man,
you're obviously not an amateur at this. I listened to your music. You're you have something, but you kind of got to be here if you want to do it. And a decision was made. I was like, okay, I'll be here next month, and so I moved. That was in August and I moved in October.
Okay, we're in this story. Does your writing and your performance become more country than rock?
There was a there was a moment in my probably my senior year of college, I was working. I was working at a recycling plant and I was literally sorting trash and the country radio was on and it had been on in my I knew it all. It had been on in my house growing up. My parents listened to it. It was never my favorite, except for the like kind of old school stuff I really loved, and I never really paid much attention to how much which I actually did know of what was happening on the radio.
But then there was a song that came on, I think it was an Alan Jackson song that came on while I was at work, and I just had this thought of like, wow, I can do this. This was they are singing about my life. I grew up in this little town, and this is all about my life. I can write that stuff. That's who I am. So then I started to listen to it a lot more and focus on stories about my life and growing up where I did, and try to start changing it a little bit. Shorts country.
Okay, you decide to move to Nashville. Where do you get a place? What are you doing for money? You know you land, You don't really know anybody.
Yeah, I just we got so at that point, I was married.
And but just to peak, we wait to hold on a second. Did you marry the girl who was your girlfriend in college?
Yes?
Yes, are you still married to that woman?
We are still married. It has had not you know, it's ups and downs, but we are still married.
Yes. Let me ask you this, since we're this far, do you live in the same house.
No, we do not live in the same house right now.
Is this one of the downs of ups and downs? Or is this the end?
It's one of the it's one of the downs.
And you say you have children too.
We do have two daughters.
They are.
The best thing on the planet. And we are very good. We're very good with them.
And how old are they and what are they up to?
My oldest is eighteen, and she goes to the University of Kentucky. And my youngest is turning sixteen in just a few days here, so she goes. She's a sophomore in high school.
Okay, you got this girl you meet, you're in arts school. You know, we're in the picture. Did you get married? We're in the continue and we're in the right.
Right after graduation, very young, right after graduation, we got married.
Did you want to get married or how did that end up happening?
Yeah? I think so. Yeah, you know, I think we were both young, and we both grew up in this very small community where that's just what you did, and I think we we bought into that, you know, and we're very happy to get married.
Okay, so you're an itinerant musician working dog shit jobs. What is she doing.
Once we moved to Nashville?
She no, No, before you moved to Nashville.
Oh yeah, we're both working dogshit jobs. She was studying. She wanted to be a she wanted to be a veterinarian, and so she was working towards that, but wasn't having much luck getting into that. School is very competitive. So that's one reason we wound up in Blacksburg was she was working at Virginia Tech, which is a big that school. Once that started to become clear that that wasn't going to happen, that's when I started going, well, Okay, that's
not going to happen. Then maybe we moved to Nashville.
Did she believe in your dream?
She did, although she had no concept of it. I don't think she's not a she's not an artist, and she knew how much I wanted it, and obviously she was a fan of what I did. There was no way she could have known what we were getting into. I didn't even know what we were getting into. She blindly trusted me and followed me to Nashville.
Okay, sometimes the significant other is your biggest cheerleader, say you can make it, you can do it, let's do it. Other times they're completely the opposite. They're reluctant. No, I married you, this is not what I'm in for. Where was she?
It just it changed. I think she was certainly my biggest fan for a long time. Once no one is prepared, no one is prepared for what this career can once it blows up, it is what. It became very difficult. She never lost her belief in me, but it is super tough to be to be there with me for so long and then and then I'm just gone, you know, uh, And and she's you know, we're we're I'm gone. And not only am I gone, we're broke. You know, we're not making any money, but I'm going out on the road.
And it became very tough. So it it's that's probably when it got super money, you.
Know, So when you have your success, does that improve the relationship or make it worse?
Initially made it worse. Uh, it's definitely. Like I said, it's I'm still in therapy trying to figure it all out. So it definitely it just becomes you know, I'm pulled in a million different directions, and you know, I'm definitely wasn't good at I wasn't good at sharing it, and I don't think she wasn't very good at at watching it happen, because, as I said, she didn't quite understand it.
So when you're not making any money and you're still chasing after something and you got little babies, it becomes super difficult. And you know, it looks like a it looks like a party, you know, all the time. So I think it just it became difficult for us both to to understand what was happening.
So once the money does come in, does that help the situation? Not really.
Neither neither one of us are are wherever really drawn to money, you know, where we're not money oriented or motivated people. So you know, certainly it certainly helped in ways that we could pay the bills, you know, but you know, I think at that point.
We had.
We had neglected each other for for enough time that the money was not gonna help that.
Just to get the timeline right, you're presently not living under the same roof. When was the last time you lived under the same roof.
It's been three years.
Okay, you know you're a guy, you're from back roads, backwoods. For idea, how do you decide to go to therapy?
I needed therapy. Uh this this industry, Like I said, I was not prepared. I naively thought as as I was chasing this dream, I naively thought I was going to create music that resonated with the world or with a certain group of people. That was my goal. I did not think about people caring about me and a celebrity aspect of it. That was that never entered my brain. For whatever reason, you know, I and I moved here. Honestly, part of it is because I moved here to be
a songwriter. I didn't move here. I moved here with Daryl Scott's advice. I want to learn and I wanted to be a songwriter. I wasn't trying to be in a band that was successful. And once it all started happening and I started seeing you know, people asking me for my picture and things like that. That really started to mess with my head. I really started to get confused with what was I doing this for and what
are my motivations here? And I am just this small town guy, but people are treating me like a like something else, and I just got lost in that and trying to figure out who I thought I was as a man and who I want to be as a man, and who I thought other people thought I should be as a man. And finally got to a point where I was just like, I got to talk to somebody about this because I don't know how to process all this. So therapy is still a big part of my big part of my life.
So how often do you go? Do you do remote visits when you're on.
The road, Yes, it's a it's a weekly thing, and I do. I do zoom calls and UH and and in person calls as well. It's really helpful, it's it's really has helped me. One therapist that changed it all for me explain to me that I was in the service industry and for for whatever reason, I had never thought about it like that, and she helped me see that by doing what I'm doing it's it's not for me, it's for it's for others. And that was like a
light switch moment for me. That made that made all of the pictures and and autographs and things like that seem so simple that I could make someone's day just by doing that, and that takes nothing from me. So it helped me kind of wrap my head around what we do and it's not about it's not about me, it's about the music. And it helped it helped me figure out that's a part of it. Obviously, people care what I wear, you know, which is silly, but that's just part of it.
Okay, we're guys, you're on the road, you're recognizable, guy in a band with hit records. I'll just bottom line it. There are groupies. To what degree do you say? You know I'm here this? You know, how'd you deal with that?
Yeah? We're all, you know, Luckily we're all. It all happened in a certain time in our lives where we're you know, we didn't break till we were in our mid thirties. We all got kids, you know, which we're trying to be the best dads we can and so that that was not a huge part of our story. You know, as much as people want to be rock and roll, sex, drugs and rock and roll, we always call ourselves the most boring band ever because we play show and go a bit.
Did that contribute whether things happened or didn't happen to tension in your marriage.
Yeah, it's certainly. It's certainly something that that can play into anyone's insecurities for sure. So it definitely, like I said, it looks like a party. It looks like there's groupies, you know. There there's certain certainly an idea of that's portrayed in movies and stuff like that. You know that the kids in people's heads, and you know, there's certainly that aspect of this business that exists. But we did a pretty good job of managing.
Okay, see land in Nashville. What are your first steps? What do you do for money and what do you do on your for your career?
First thing I did was I, uh, for money, I got. My first job was two minute a truck. I was working for a moving company. I worked probably seven different jobs in the first year and a half that I moved here. And then I would just go I would cold call people and ask him if I could come in and play him some music, and I would play my music for Phil a lot, who would just tell
me to keep going, You're doing the right thing. He would take me out on the road with him sometimes to do what he's like, if this is what you want to do with your life, then you need to see what it's like. So I'd go out on the road and just hang out and write, and eventually, whenever I went, they would strip a tarm me. I'd play
the show with him. So I would go out for you know, a week at a time or so, and then come home and and just try to meet other writers and dip my toe into the co writing world and try to learn how to write with other people and play songwriter nights whenever I could. And it was, you know, it's a grind. It's definitely not a quick process. You learned that pretty quickly that you're you're in it for the long all.
Okay, are you a good networker? No?
I'm better now. I was a terrible networker for a while, but I had some help. There was a guy named mike'sis dad who works at ASCAP still is at ASCAP, and he would make calls for me and say up meetings with publishers and I go play them my music. I'm and it was it was tough to figure out how to break into that networking scene because again I'm I'm not a partier, so I didn't want to go out at night and you know, get hammered with a
bunch of people. Not to say I didn't a couple of times, you know, to try and make us connections, but not the best of networking.
Okay, you're doing all these things, You're playing new music other than Phil you know, this is a jaded world. Are you getting any positive feedback?
Yes, so I got a good bit of positive feedback. But also, you know, these publishers that you're playing for a lot of times they'll they'll tell you straight up you know it's not good, which never bothered me. I always credit my my art school background for that, because when you work for a couple of weeks on a on a piece of art, and then at the end of the project, you go into class and everyone puts their paintings up on the wall and you go down
the line and critique them. You learn pretty quickly to have thick skin and take criticism for what it is. You know, some of it's useful and some of it you just don't agree with. So I kind of learned. I learned how to navigate that kind of feeling. So I was going into these publishing offices and I'd play a song. Sometimes they would stop it halfway through and go what else you got? You just go okay, and you just keep on, just keep on writing, and you know,
then eventually you get one. They go, oh, you hit something there. There's something that one. There's something special about that one. So figure out what you did there and do more of that, and then you go back and dig in.
And at what point do you start going to co writing sessions.
It took me, it probably it took me a couple of years to do that. I ended up meeting you know this. There was a couple of publishers that I was visiting regularly and they kept on mentioning this guy, Trevor Rosen that I should meet. And this is this is not two years after living in Nashville. And they said, man, you guys I think should get together, and I think
you guys could create something pretty well together. And so I heard his name a lot, and then one night I was playing a songwriter around at this little bar called Hobo Joe's and it's not it's not there anymore, and they had I was paired on stage with Trevor and I was like, Oh, this is the guy I've been hearing about. And he said, man, I've been hearing your name everywhere, like these guys have been telling me
that I need to hook up with you. So right there, immediately, he and I were big fans of each other's music and decided, you know, we need to start hanging out and try to write songs together. So he was not my first co write, but the first long lasting co writer.
Okay, you're writing he's ultimately in the band. Are you writing with anybody else? Yeah?
We ended up throughout the course of a couple of years, we ended up in this circle of writers. Josh Osborne, Shane McAnally, Brandy Clark, Matt Jenkins, Trevor and myself wound up kind of in this little clique where we were writing stuff that we loved and no one else really got it, but we knew that we were excited about it. So that was that was our little club, and no one really had any success yet. Uh, those guys were
going to become the biggest songwriters in Nashville. But that's that's who we really found a home with as writers in the early days.
Okay, Shane mcinally ends up becoming a big name. When you meet him, what's his status?
He he had I think he was living in this tiny little house and he had just gotten one song recorded by lea An Willmack, And that's when I first met him, and I was like, Oh, this guy's got something going on.
You know.
That was a really big, big deal at that point in time. So he had just started to scratch the surface of having a little success.
And when do you get your first cover.
It wasn't until about thirteen years after being in Nashville. I got a song Trevor and I Matt Jenkins wrote that was recorded by an artist named Steve Holy and he's a Texas guy and he had had a career in the nineties and he had just had this big hit that was kind of like a comeback for him, and he cut a song of ours, and we thought, oh, you know, Steve Hole, he's back. So he had this big hit and ours is the next single. Of course, it didn't do anything.
Okay, thirteen years go by, do you ever think of giving up?
Certainly there were those moments where where you're definitely thinking about why am I doing this? But then you quickly realize, like I've been in it this long, what else am I going to do?
You know?
And there's just enough of a carrot. There's always just enough of something that's that's motivating you to keep going. And it could be it could be some positive feedback, or it could be just a song that you wrote that you feel like you leveled up on. Or it could be someone like Shane having he did it and I'm right next to him. He's got he's got a song, So it's possible. You can see those possibilities and it
just keeps you going. But it is tough. And those times where you know they're turning your water off because you can't pay the bills, that that you feel like maybe you should give up.
Okay, you have that first cover which doesn't pan out. How many more covers do you have till one does? And what is that?
My next cut was a song called wake Up Loving You, and Craig Morgan recorded it and that song, that song in particular, there's a whole story about how that song opened up a whole new world before before, before Craig Morgan recorded it. At this point, we were writing a lot. Obviously, I'm trying to trying to make it happen. You know, I'm broke, can't pay my bills. We had mentioned that I was not a good networker, and I was frustrated.
It was really frustrated that I wasn't able to get myself in front of the right people at this point, and we were, like I said, we were completely broke. There there's a songwriter festival that's actually happening right now in Key West called the Q West Songwriter Festival, And back then it was kind of it was a huge deal, and everybody in Nashville went down to Key West and
at this songwriter festival. And I thought, well, Okay, if I can just get down to Key West and spend three days down there at the songwriter festival, everyone in Nashville that I need to talk to is down there. I gotta find a way down there, but I can't afford it. So I said, if I could find a plane ticket down there, I'm going. So I have a friend and whose brother is a pilot, and he gave me a stand by ticket, so I flew stand by. You know, I had to pay taxes. It costs like
twenty bucks. And I was waiting there. I didn't have a place to stay. I put a sleeping bag in my suitcase and I said, I'll just I'll sleep on the street. I don't care. So I flew down to Key West. I'm literally wheeling my suitcase down the street and I see another person that I know, and he said he's a songwriter. And he said, hey, I didn't know you were coming. Where are you stay? And I said, I don't know. I don't have a place to stay. And he said, well, there's an extra bed in my
room if you want to crash there. I said, I definitely do, so he gave me a place to stay. So I went to Walgreens and I bought an eight dollars box of granola bars, and that was what I was going to eat for those three days. And then my friend Mike's his dad from ASCAP was there and he said, if you want to meet me for dinner every night, I'll pay for your dinner. So he'd pay for my dinner every night, and then I would just go to all these shows and songwriter showcases and meet
people and talk to them. And ASCAP at the time was hosting them an after hours sort of open mic night that was at this little place called the Bottle Cap and they had a house band and you would show up at like midnight and I hope they called you up to go play your song. And so the first night I went and they would didn't call me up. The second night, I go and they didn't call me up.
In the third night, it's probably about two thirty in the morning, and they called me up and I, you know, I've explained to the house band, here's the chords, just you know, here's what we're going to do, and we played this song wake Up Loving You, and it brings the house down. I mean, it was just a huge reaction. Everyone just flips out. The next morning, everyone is coming up to me, going, what did you do last night?
Because the only thing that I hear about is what you did whether you know your song, so you must have really made an impact. And that song, that moment, and that song got me a publishing deal after that, so I can finally pay my deals. So the you know, the the eight dollars granola bars and the free plane ticket got me that publishing deal.
Okay, at this late date, do you own your songs where you still love a publishing deal?
Right now? I have a publishing deal, but it's an admin d so, so I just paid you know, a percentage for admin.
Well, how about all your earlier stuff?
Yeah, there's a couple of catalogs I've I've done a couple of catalog sales. Uh, you know, there's not much going on. I got my money from it, and so I've sold some catalogs. So some of them I don't own, but now going.
Forward I do. So you sold catalog to covers or catalogs of old Dominion.
Stuff, anything that these are. I've sold catalogs that are just exploited work. So I still own parts of the Old Dominion stuff. And of course you know, we have ownership and masters and things like that too, So anything that's a bit exploited. So some some of them are Old Dominion songs and some of them are other artists.
Okay, so you go to key West, you get this, does it start to roll? Do you start getting more covers?
Yeah? Once you once, once we finally got that that publishing deal, and then Craig Morgan records that song. I think it went to like number thirteen or something on the charge was a big deal for me at that point in time. And you know, I'm you know, at that point, then Shane's starting to take off and and we're starting We're writing a lot of stuff together. We
start to get a little bit more traction. So finally then we wrote a song, Shane and Trevor and I and I wrote a song called say You Do that Dirk's Bentley recorded, and that wound up being my first number one solid.
Okay, at what point do you and Trevor say we're going to form a band?
It was kind of all happening at the same time, but it wasn't. It wasn't a decision that was like, let's form a band and go for it. We were writing all these songs and and uh, you know, I'd grow I grew up in bands. That's all I did, was was playing music I liked. I loved playing music out.
So I and I now had all these songs that I was writing, I wanted to go play them out and I would I would try to put together a band to help me showcase you know, I would invite publishers to come hear them so that I could sing them. And at that time, Jeff and Witt had moved to Nashville to be they wanted to be touring musicians or studio musicians, and yeah, so I had some buddies from Virginia that were in town, excuse me, and I would just call them and say, Hey, I've got a show,
can you guys come play. I knew they wouldn't really charge me because there were a buddies, so they would come play. And so we started doing that in town pretty often. And for years we did that with no real you know, it would be my name or there would be no there was no real band name or
anything to it. It was just be and a lot of the songs I was writing with Trevor, and Trevor was always coming to the shows, and he was always frustrated because nobody was singing background vocals, and you know, he's he's ain'tal about that kind of stuff. So he would jump up on the stage and start singing the background vocals to the songs that we that we wrote. And then next thing, you know, he's coming to rehearsals and you know, the guys are like, okay, Trevor's here now,
you know. We were just kind of then we started realizing, Okay, we can get in my van and we can drive to the next town over and we can get paid to play. Yeah, you don't get paid to play in Nashville, so oh we could we all need money. Let's go play. We can play covers and stuff, and let's go play. So we would just drive around and try to make
a little extra cash. And then ultimately what started happening was we did start having success as songwriters, and then people started going, well, oh, you know, Trevor's having a bunch of He's getting a bunch of songs cut. I'm getting songs cut. And they start going, well, who's this band that's writing everybody else's stuff? So our show became you know, there there were hits already in our show, and it started to create a little buzz around town about what we were doing.
At what point do you start calling it old Dominion.
We had this little bar well we played. We would play in tuscal Loose, Alabama a lot, and we had this person that hooked us up with a bar there and we'd drive down to tuscal Losa and we played, you know, from ten thirty to two in the morning, and then we drive back. And one night we were taking a break and there was this kind of haggard woman sitting at the bar and she said, what's the
name of your band? And I said, well, we don't we don't really have any We're not really a band, you know, We're just it's just I'm writing these songs. And she, she was drunk, she just goes, that's bullshit. You guys are a band. And when she said that, we all looked at each other and went, we kind of like, you know, we should have probably let's pick a Nate. We should pick a Nate. So so and being that Wit and Jeff and at the time we
had a guitar player. He was named Devin Malone. They're all from Virginia, there are, and so we thought, well, let's pick a Virginia related name. And so we used to play at this little bar called the Blue Bar every week in Nashville and there was nobody there, you know, we were just we had a regular gig there. If there's five to ten people would show up. And I was setting up. We were setting up to play that night and uh, this is in two thousand and six,
is probably seven. We were setting up that night and I said, man, the only thing I can see that's r GINU related that isn't taken his old dominion. And everybody just went, that sounds cool. And so that was it from the from that night on, we were we were old dimension.
A lot of people they say, like the Doobie Brothers, they say, you know, yeah, we just had this name. We never thought we'd stick with it, and all of a sudden we wake up and we're.
Stuck with it.
Yeah, so you know you had to you know, this was years before you know, you broke through his old dominion. If you knew we're going to break through, would you've picked old dominion or would you have said wait a second, wait to say, lem come.
Up with something different. I mean, naming a band is the worst thing, you know, It's none of them ever sound good until they until they're just a part of people's vocabulary. So I think I love our name. I don't regret it at all. There was a moment where we thought we were going to have to change it, and things had started to take off a little bit, and we had this attorney that was telling us, hey that I don't think you're going to be able to
do this. There's you know, there's Old Dominion everything. There's a trucking line, there's a beer company, there's the university. And he said the university is probably the biggest thing because they have a band. You know, they have the marching band, they have merch. You know, they're going to come after you and we're gonna have to change the name. So we thought about it and time we've tried to come up with any other name that we could, and it got so frustrating. I was just like, fuck this,
I don't want to do this anymore. You know, I'll just quit, Like, let's not do this. I don't I don't want to change the name. And then Trevor is a pretty he's he's a pretty motivated guy and can find Yeah. He's like, man, I don't care what this lawyer says, I'm gonna find I'm going to reach out to Old Dominion. So he finds he likes, goes up the email chain and finds somebody at Old Dominion University and says, hey, we're in this band. It's called the Dominion.
Our lawyer is telling us we need to change the name. Was afraid you guys are gonna sue us. What do you think? And they came back and said, you know, as long as you don't use our colors and you don't use our logo, we're fine with it. So we got we got that in writing and then from that twenty one we were we felt good by it.
Okay, this lead date, I'm sure Old Dominion is a corporation who owns Old Dominion the band.
The band, five of us are. It's a partnership following us.
Okay, so now you got some covers, you get some notice. How do you end up deciding to cut your own record?
You know, we were making a lot of demos of the songs that we were writing. I had a publishing deal that wasn't the best deal in the world. But the one of the guys there was a he's a producer and a successful one. His name is Blake Chancey and he's worked with back then. He had done Montgomery Gentry and Dizzy Chicks and a lot of other people. And my first demo session was coming up from that
publishing deal, and he's a bolt. You know, you guys playing a band, Why don't you guys just instead of hiring a bunch of musicians, he did your buddies to come in. So he was trying to save money, and so we did and that's the first time we recorded together and thought, well, this is pretty cool. That was fun.
We should think about doing that again. So as we were trying to figure out how we would go about doing that, looking for talking about maybe finding a producer or something to help us do it, we realized, you know, in our demo sessions, Shane was such a strong creative voice in bringing those demos to life that maybe we should just use him. That he's our friend. He's been with us this whole time. He's writing all these songs
with us. So we sat down at lunch with him and said, would you come into the studio with us and maybe try producing it?
And he was like, are you sure?
He said, yeah, man, you're always so good in the demo sessions. You're always so fast and your choices are so cool. We'd rather have you in there than trying to find somebody that is, you know, hot.
To do it.
So he agreed and and that's how we started that partnership.
Okay, the original album EP whatever, who pays for it? We had a.
Well he signed kind of an independent deal this It was like a partnership with thirty Tigers and U Reguier, who was Trevor's publisher at the time. They helped fund it so that we could put out an independent project.
Do you remember how much money you spent?
No idea, Uh, it probably wasn't. It wasn't much. It was it was five or six songs. It probably was forty or something.
Okay, what is your intention with recording the album?
At that point? We thought, okay, well, even before that, we had recorded some stuff that that stuff that we'd recorded with my publisher. We were at that point playing shows. We had named ourselves Old Dominion, and we were giving them out for free. So we would just show up at a bar, we'd play the show, everybody gets a free ZP. So that was one thing that we were doing,
was just trying to build this following. And we thought the same thing like, if we can make a make a little EP, we can maybe shop it around and try to get it picked up, or hire a manager and get on the radio. Somehow, pretty naive, but it had enough momentum to keep us going like this seems like the next step. So I'm not sure what's going to happen with it, but we need new music out
because we've given out all the freezds we can. So let's see if we can create something that's the next step for ourselves.
Okay, you're given the CD away. When does it turn into something?
That CD had had some songs on it that it had wake Up Loving You on it, and it had had another song on there called Nowhere Fast. I think that that wound up making it over into the next EP. And and then we had a song on there called shut Me Up, which at this point now we have a manager and we're starting to talk to satellite radio and try to get some play there, and so shut Me Up was the first choice. Where we had started,
we had a little independent radio staff. It was one person, a radio person that was shopping that song around trying to get it on to the radio. In the meantime, we're recording more music to try to create a full album,
and break Up with Them was on that. And so once we had once we had this album of music, and every record label had turned us down more than once, we just kept going satellite radio picked up break Up with Him, and they started playing break Up with Them, and then a guy in Seattle at a radio station heard it on saturd Light radio. And meanwhile, we're trying to get him to play shove Me Up, and nobody
will play shot Me Up. But he heard. He hears break up with Him and said, Okay, there's something here. So he starts calling all his friends in the radio world, and all of a sudden, we have a song on the radio with no record deal. So that never happens, but that's how it happened for us.
Okay, break up with Him is starting to get radio action. Let's go back a chapter. The guy you hire as your manager, is he still your manager?
He's still our manager?
So who is it and how'd you find him?
His name's Clinton Higham, He's he's Kenny Chesney's manager and he was working at this He has a company called Morris Higham Dale Morris as was partner at the time. Dale's responsible for Alabama And at the time, you know, we had we had secured it deal with c AA as a booking as a booking agent. But you know we're they're booking us for five hundred bucks a show, you know, and we'd like, okay, we need we need
to find a manager. We took meetings all over town with every manager that we could, and we had actually made the decision to go with with another manager, and at the at the eleventh hour, Shane calls it says, hey, Clint him wants to meet with you guys, and we said, well, man, we we already kind of made our decision. He said, I know yet, you know, you haven't signed anything. Doesn't hurt to go meet with him. He's just he's really interested.
So we said, okay, sure, what's it been hurt? And we walked out of that meeting, going, that's our guy.
Okay, he's the top level manager. A lot of times top level managers don't want to get involved in developing acts. Why was he so eager?
I think he he and Will Hitchcock, who's our day to day there they saw us play a couple of shows. Our songwriting was humming at that point, you know, like we knew how to make hits and it was being proven by everyone else that we were getting all these cuts from and and I don't know, to this day, I don't know he still is like, I don't know if I would do that again, you know, you know, I don't know if I you know, he's I don't know he's certainly, I don't think he certainly would do
a band again. But uh it Will definitely really believed in us too, and and he and so Will gave him a hard self for for taking us on. And I don't know why he what he saw, but it had to be the songwriting, because I mean, there's we were you know, they took us. They were like, man,
you guys sound great. You look like shit, though, so and we're like, we're broke, and they're like, okay, well go buy some here's some money, go buy some clothes at age and them and you know, like I go buy a cool jacket or something, you know, like you look like shit. So they helped us at that department. But I think, really honestly, it was just the songwriting, and we were definitely creating something that sounded different. You know, I don't know if we if we knew how different
it sounded. But you know, when you get five guys together and you're creating music with that chemistry, it's gonna sound different than than anything that a solo artist that's using the same studio musicians as the next guy is gonna sound like. So we certainly had a different sound that seemed attractive to it.
Okay, at what point do you switch in your mind from I'm a songwriter in the background to I believe in this band in the foreground.
Yeah, that took a long time because we had made a name for ourselves as songwriters, and then all of a sudden, it felt like we were leaving that behind. All of a sudden there was this band thing, and we're like, man, we gambled on ourselves already once. I don't know if we could do that again, you know. So it did become really difficult to turn the songwriter switch off because we just weren't sure about the band. We just didn't know if that was ever going to
take off. So we were still pitching all of our songs to other artists, and you know, we would write something in pitch and write something in pitch, and all the songs that wound up on our albums were and you know, turned down by every other artist. The only one, the only one we never pitched at that point in the early stages, was break up with them. We knew something was different there and something was happening, and we said, okay,
don't don't pitch that song. So we started to make that turn of like, okay, we have to bet on ourselves a little bit here. But it took, I mean probably honestly into the second album, well into the second album before we realized, Okay, I think the band thing is probably gonna stick. We need to we need to take it a little bit more seriously.
Okay, you have these self financed records. How do you get a major label deal?
Oh gosh, that was such a process. Obviously, you know, we do showcases for labels and we'd go in there and play music and they would all turn this down because most of them did look at us as songs. They knew that they knew our background with songwriters. We were older. You know, we're in our thirties. We're going you know, you guys, and as I mentioned, we looked like shit, and you know, we're like, man, you guys are kind of old your songwriters, it's not really for us,
you know. And we would circle up after after being turned down, and Clint would say, you know, what do you want to do? And we'd say we were just going to keep going. Man, if they don't like us, that's fine. We're still having fun. We liked what we
were doing, so we would just keep going. And ultimately Sony turned us down, and then we were kind of all out of options to everyone in Nashville had turned us down, and so Dale Morris and Clint called their friend Doug Morris in New York and Uh and Julie Swidler in New York and said, man, we don't know what to do. We got these guys. They're getting radio play and nobody will take them, and we don't know what to do. So we go to New York and
meet with Doug and Julie and and they called. They ultimately ended up calling Nashville Sony and said, you're signing Old Minion. So so we were forced into Naxville to through New York.
So you're saying, even with all that satellite radio play which turns into to restural radio play, still no one wanted to sign.
You still didn't do it.
We were on.
And also we had because of our connections a couple of reasons. One we had we shared a manager with Kenny Jesney, and secondly, Kenny had just recorded a song that Brad and I had written and it was going to be a single. So we had a Kenny Jesney connection we got and we got asked to be on his tour. So we're on a stadium tour. Was no record deal. So we're playing football stadiums, we're getting radio play, and they still would not sign us.
I happened to like that save it for rainy Day. But moving on from there, you now they pressed the button. You now have success. To what degree do you feel the pressure to follow it up? And to what degree do you still feel the pressure? I think.
I think because of the way it happened and how long it took and how much fun we were having, we didn't feel much pressure. We felt like, you know, it's we felt like we were in impostors for sure, and there's still an element of that that we carry with us. We don't really feel that much pressure. I think, you know, the first one, every success we had off of the first album was like, I cannot believe this
has actually happened. This is amazing, and so we've always sort of adopted that attitude of like, man, at some point in time, it's this ride is going to be over, So whether that's tomorrow or in ten years, we will rioted man. So we definitely always just try to circle up within within ourselves and go, let's continue the only thing that got us here with writing music that we loved and producing it the way that we wanted to produce it, and and that has served us well. So
that's ultimately what we always do. And we still know at some point it's going to be over and that's fine.
Yeah, how do you end up switching labels?
There's a couple different We've had a couple of different little Yeah, we still have always been under Sony. It's just whether we were RCA or Ariosto Columbia. We had you know, some we had our first staff at at RCA. Our radio staff was was really close to us. We love them all. And then you know that the music business happens and people go different places and new people
come in and the relationships aren't the same. So you know, there's COVID really then cod it comes into the picture, and we had had you know, one Man band was this huge hit and and then we tried to follow it up with with a song called some People Do That that was struggling on the radio, and you know, you start looking for reasons. I think, you know, you start calling the label going what's going on? Why is
this one not working? We just had the biggest hit, and you get all excuses of like, well it's COVID, people don't want to play sad songs, and ultimately the relationship with the radio staff just didn't feel like it was serving us as well. I think and and Are, the label president at the time, uh called me and said, you know, what do you want to switch? And I was like, well, that seems kind of drastic. You know, I don't know if it's that bad, but uh, you know,
but I was like, but that's an interesting idea. I don't know, let me let me think about it. So we we all talked and said, well, you know, why not, let's if that's what he if he thinks that will help, sure, So it really Then on top of that, a lot of our original staff had moved over to Aristo and so we knew we would be back with our original people again. So that was constant. We were like, well, if we move, maybe works, maybe doesn't, but we'll have our buddies over there again.
So that was a big reason, and then you move on from there.
Then we move on from there, and then that's kind of that one wasn't really that was no one's idea, but the labels they just kind of caused and said, this is this is what we think we're going to do with you guys. We think, you know, we need some we need some big fish over here. So you're that big fish. We want to put you over there. So you know, we just kind of werelong.
Okay, So at this point, you know, even in the earlier once again, this is any only, but I could see all your awards, you know, in this low case. You know, you're a guy from Nowheresville, Virginia, not that a lot of the people in country music come from the metropolis necessarily, but you talk about imposter syndrome. You go up, you get the awards whatever. I mean, Externally, it's a top level band with everybody else who continues to have hits.
What does it feel like internally, Yeah, it doesn't feel like that. We always feel like we're it's really I mean, it's really just been within the past couple of years that we've accepted that, you know, we've gone like, wow, we really did create something pretty large here. I think it was. I think it was really our first big
arena headlining tour. You know, when you're traveling with seven eight buses and twelve semis and they all got your name on them, it's pretty hard to ignore, you know, it's pretty hard to ignore that you have established a foothold, you know, in this business. And I think too, I think we're a little bit. When you're in a band, it isolates you a little bit. There's a lot of you know, inner artist relationships, not that we don't have them, but it's easier to work together as the solo artists.
You know, they can jump in and collaborate on stuff a little bit easier than you know, a band of five guys can collaborate. So we end up, you know, not not through any anything, but just the nature of it being a little bit isolated from from the main group. It's at least what it feels like sometimes. I don't think anyone views us that way other than ourselves, you know.
Okay, some people write songs in fifteen minutes. Other people write songs over years, same song Leonard Cone Hallelujah. You know, Nashville writing sessions and they could be three hours one song. Old Dominion is going to make an album? How many songs do you write and how do you ultimately get the songs to the degree complete that you say these are the songs for the album.
Yeah, it's always an interesting process. We write constantly. We write on the road together, we write when we're home. So you know, over the years, we're writing hundreds of songs, and you know, we have a pretty good idea. Uh, you know, we we can write good songs all day long, but it's the great ones that we're looking for. So and then not only is it the great ones that you're looking for, it's the great ones that five guys agree on. So so that really whittles some down. We
write pretty quickly, you know. We we typically complete the song in the same day, so it's usually from around eleven or ten in the morning till three in the afternoon, we pretty much are done and then we've We've also been fortunate enough to make some albums where one complete album and some songs on some other albums where we just go in the studio and write them right there in the studio. So that was that's always an interesting
experiment too. But it is a long process of once it starts, get it down to we know we're going to go start cutting, Then the text messages start flying and everybody starts throwing out songs. What about this? What about this? What about this? There's usually probably two or three that everyone immediately knows that on that one's one for sure. Then it's rounding it out that becomes a conversation.
And sometimes it doesn't happen until you're in the studio that moment, you know, where we're like, what are we going to do next? And then we pull up a list of songs that we think we might want to do, and then somebody might go, oh, I just remembered this one, and you'll play it, and everyone goes, yeah, let's try that one. So it does become it's a little bit of a fluid process.
How do you end up splitting the songwriting credits.
It's just because of the nature of our of how we got here, because we all moved here, or at least three of us moved here to be songwriters, and we established ourselves as songwriters with publishing deals first. That's just the way it's stayed. Whoever wrote the song gets the songwriting credit. There are bands I know that just split everything, but we never have really done that. It's always just been if you wrote the song, you get the credit.
Okay, five guys in a bus in the van. You know. Legendarily there are band members who heed each other. How do you keep it even?
Yeah, No, we don't eat each other. We actually get along quite well. It's it's quite a funny bus to be on. There's lots and lots of joking and laughing. And again, I think a good proportion of it comes from our age. You know, this all happened at a at an age where were drawn to conflict. You know, we all know we're all after the same thing. It's not to say that we that that we don't have conflicts. We certainly do. But it's much like a family, you know.
It's it's like when your family comes to visit and you love them so much you also want to kill them sometimes, but when they leave, you know you're sad they're gone, and we get along quite well. It's a pretty it's a pretty spectacular thing that we've been able to spend that time, that much time on a bus together. You know, we still are all on the same bus Okay, let's.
Go back specifically to your songwriting for higher era. A lot of people look at country radio and where these songs were hits and say, it's very cynical. To what degree are you sitting there writing songs and say, oh, I have to mention a truck, I have to mention church, I have to mention kids. Is that in your mind at all?
No, that's not in my mind at all. I'm you know, if it calls for a truck, then okay. But I think, and maybe I've only written one or two songs will drug in it, and if anything, I try to avoid it. I try to I try to personally find the weirdest angle I possibly can and make it palatable.
You know.
That's the challenge for me, is that you're only in any songwriting, whether it be for country radio or or or any any style of music, you're telling the same story. There's only a handful of there's only a handful of things that people listen to songs about. It's it's just like, you know, it's the most important things in people's life, so it's there. It's the human experience. So anything that kind of speaks to the human experience is what I
want to write about. I don't really I don't really try to aim it towards towards country, you know, I just want to follow. I just want to follow that idea wherever it goes.
Okay, we live in a very divided country politically and to great degree musically. Country music is bigger than it's ever before. But there are people in principle will not listen to country music. What the people who are not fans not get about today's country music?
You know, I don't spend that much time thinking about that because there's plenty of music I don't like, you know, so you know, it's just not for me. And that's kind of what I always say, you know. It's kind of like what if the label wasn't gonna sign us, we weren't for them, So you know, if they don't like it, I get it, you know. And there are some things about just like what you mentioned, some of
the citical songwriting can be. It can be a bit formulaic sometimes, so I can kind of get why that might turn people off. We like to pride ourselves on being One of our favorite compliments is there's lots of people that come up to and say we don't like country, but we like you guys, so we're pretty good. We're pretty happy with that. You know, country music has always kind of been this melting pot, no matter how much
the traditionalists want to swear it isn't you know. At the same time that you know, Johnny Cash and all those guys were out there, there's like disco country happening, and you know, there's there's all kinds of different just variations on the genre that have always been there. So I think if you don't like it, you don't like it, that's that's fine, Okay.
While you've been in the business, the business has changed. Traditionally, country music was a very controlled market. There were a lot of gatekeepers in Nashville, and it was all driven by terrestrial radio. You mentioned earlier that you originally broke on satellite radio. In addition, although at first country fans weren't streamers, they're big streamers now, bigger streamers than rock people.
So from your viewpoint to what degreed has changed, listen, it's great to have a terrestrial radio hit, but is that the end on be all?
It's not anymore. And we talk about this a lot all the time, because it is important to us. We were one of the you know, the door was closing behind us when we got over the radio. Streaming was just starting to happen, and you know, we had a large success because of radio, and that relationship is still very important to us, and it still directly affects us. But we spend a lot of time going what the
hell is happening? You know, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out, you know, why a song, why a certain song does get on the radio and gets up to the top of the charts, and why a certain one doesn't. And you know, sometimes they look at the streaming numbers and that's why they play it. Well, sometimes they do their old school kind of research and that's why they don't play it. It's we are in a strange spot right now trying to figure all that out.
And there's newer artists that are coming along. Some of them don't care about the radio and they're getting they're getting all they need through streaming and TikTok exposure. We just starnt that band. You know, we certainly still need to rely on both worlds and streaming and radio, but it certainly isn't to be all end all anymore, to what.
Degree are you in demand on social media? TikTok, Instagram, wheels, x, et cetera.
Yeah, we're on it a good bit. But we've luckily that sort of exploded after we had enough money to pay somebody to do it for us, because there's just no way, you know, you know, I'm forty seven years old. I'm not going to whip out my phone and try to make content. I'm just not going to do that. So and none of us are very good at it. So luckily we have people that help us do that, and it's our it's our job in that respect to
keep it authentic. You know, if they come to us and want us to do some trend, we're going to go, no, that's no, we're not doing that. But it isn't necessary
evil unfortunately, and I do feel bad. I do feel bad for the newer artists that can't afford someone to help them like that, because it's a it's a whole puzzle in itself and a full time job in itself to figure out what kind of content to create, the timing of the posting, how to post it when they should really just be con you know, concerned with creating good music, but now they have to think about what it looks like and what fifteen seconds to post to
grab as much engagement as possible in order to get there, you know, their likes or hits or streams.
To what degree is the country music world in your audience red as opposed to blue?
It's a good question. I think our audience probably leans more blue, but I don't really know. You know, there's certainly the more vocal, more vocal artists are probably red. But in our crowd, that's not that's not even in the conversation. It's never something that we see at our shows. We don't see political stuff at our shows or or
hear much of that at all. So and I don't know if that's our fans are just the vibe that we're trying to create in the environment that we're trying to create, but that's never something that we ever see in our shows.
Okay. In closing a lot of people who will be listening to this are not familiar with Old Dominion's music. So you don't have to because you're all idiots. Star of the bands well established, But if someone is interested in checking you out, what is Old Dominion selling and where should they start.
Uh, you know, we're selling. We're trying to sell positivity and relatability and trying to bring some some levity into people's lives. With our shows especially, we're trying to leave people feeling better when they walk out of the building than they did when they came in. It's our goal to give people a break. There's enough crazy shit out there, so you know, we're trying to just put some smiles on faces. Not to say we don't have sad songs.
We certainly do, but you need those. So we're just trying to create something that speaks to as many people as possible about their life and about the simple, simple aspects of it, whether that be their relationship or their job or whatever. We just want to We just want to be a nice accent or a nice little addition to their life, whether that be in celebration or in sorrow. We want to be there for those occasions.
Well, Matthew, I want to thank you for being so open and honest. Really a lot of people are guarded. You're laying it all out there. You've had a ton of success. I wish you more success, and I want to thank you for taking this time.
With my bidding. Yeah, absolutely, thank you Until next time.
This is Bob left six