In Conversation With… Old Dominion

For episode 90 of the podcast, we chatted to Old Dominion ahead of their headline show at the Apollo about their forthcoming self-titled album, their journey so far and reminiscing on their first writing session together.

This is probably the biggest UK show, you’ve done. You’ve been part of this wave…

(laughs) Trevor: … country invasion, right?

Yeah the forefront of the country invasion of the UK. Was that always an aim, making sure you have that international career? 

Trevor: I think we were excited when the opportunity was presented to us, yeah. It’s always great to travel.

It’s been a big year for you guys headlining shows and having your own tour in the US. How has that felt really different to just doing the headline standalone gigs? 

Matthew: It’s been nice, because first of all we get to play a lot more songs, you know we’re learning. You learn a lot about who your fans are and what they want to hear and what they enjoy. We’re constantly tailoring our set towards them.

You can play the deeper album cuts and get to think oh you actually know this? 

Geoff: It also gives us time to build a set list where there are kind of peaks and valleys, instead of when you’re an opener and you’re just trying to make sure you hit them as hard as you can with all the hits right out of the gate.

Yeah it’s a very different game, you’re not trying to earn the fans, the fans are coming to see you.

The album is out on the 25th. How excited are you guys to finally release it, I remember hearing even back in May time that you had the finished masters? 

Matthew: (laughs) It’s taken quite a while but yeah it feels very good. We just realised the other day that ‘Make It Sweet’ the first single has actually been out for a year, which is crazy.

That is mad. I know you’ve talked a lot about how much more personal this album is, was it a different experience writing a more personal project and do you feel that it pushed your boundaries both professionally and personally?

Matthew: Yeah I think that the writing process wasn’t as noticeably different, because it was just a natural evolution of ourselves as writers that’s just how we ended up writing I think, but then when it comes time to record those songs and put them out you realise oh that’s actually a pretty personal song… You start looking at it a little bit differently. Then as far as like challenging, as far as the recording process goes, it was less challenging I think because we just went in there with this confidence and freedom to explore what we wanted to do and we felt really good about what was coming out. So the whole time we were just happy.

Yeah it’s just revealing another side of your music… ‘Meat and Candy’ introduced you as a band, ‘Happy Endings’ brought you to the level where you can now play these bigger headline shows, so what do you hope ‘Old Dominion’ the album does for you and what do you hope your fans take away?

Matthew: (laughs) This one’s going to end it all… (laughs) Don’t lead with that.

Trevor: I think we just hope it continues this ride, I think we’ve stretched what it means to be an Old Dominion song now. I think the songs sound more timeless, I think we didn’t feel the pressure to make country radio songs per se, we just felt a comfort level of using all our different influences from country and not country, you know 70s and 80s music found its way in, so I think there are some songs on the album that just sound like timeless songs.

There is so much sonic differentiation on the album, ‘Midnight Mess Around’ is so different to  ‘One Man Band,’ so what would you describe as a classic ‘Old Dominion’ song – where do you think your heart lands on the album? 

Matthew: Ooh that’s a good question.

Trevor: That’s a hard question too, because I think this album shows all the different influences we’ve had.

Yeah none of them you think ‘that’s not really Old Dominion…’

Brad: That is my favourite part about it though, we can stretch it out and say different things, as long as we’re playing and he’s singing, on some level it’s going to sound like Old Dominion so…

And I guess now that you guys have that name and you’ve earned a bit more freedom to experiment with your sound. 

Matthew: Yeah and you never want to repeat yourself. We don’t want to make ‘Meat and Candy’ or ‘Happy Endings’ again.

You do want to go forwards rather than backwards. You’re all such prolific songwriters, everyone always comments on just how clever your lyrics are and how clever the songs are. Was that something that happened straight away? I know you guys met back in high school, if you cast your minds back, what was that first session like? 

Matthew: No, the first songs that we started writing together were terrible. It took years and years and years of writing songs together and writing lots of bad songs and figuring out that if we would just write what we felt like was cool to us then it would get attention, and stop writing what we thought people wanted to hear. So that was the big turning point for us as writers and as a band, when we decided let’s just do what we want to do and then people will respond to that.

It’s kind of cool that you met long ago and were able to evolve together as artists and songwriters, rather than coming together later and figuring out what works. It’s kind of this natural evolution.

Geoff: It also works that we were friends before, so there’s a certain level of comfort and trust and ability to take feedback good or bad from everybody in the band.

I think my favourite track from the album is ‘Some People Do.’ What was the inspiration behind that track?

Matthew: We were writing – it was me and Jessie Frazure and Shane MacAnally and Thomas Rhett – that was the second song that we wrote that day, I was getting ready to leave and just in our conversation somebody made a comment like ‘some people do that’ ‘people don’t do that… well some people do.’ I think Thomas Rhett was like ‘that’s a cool title’ and sat down at the piano and just started playing these chords and then just vomited all this emotion out. (laughs) Shane was like ‘I can’t look at you right now, but just keep going’ and then once we were done we tried to record that in a lot of different ways and then Trevor was like ‘let’s just do what the demo is’ – basically just the piano and vocals – that’s what makes the song special.

That’s the other hard thing. People always think that once you’ve written the song you’re done, but in reality it can take years to find the right production and find the right landing place for a song.

Matthew: Yeah it’s hard, you can have a really great song that is not translated well.

Are there any songs on the album that you did write years ago and never found their right home till now? 

Matthew: There’s some older songs on there yeah, a couple of them.

Trevor: ‘Do It With Me’ is a song that could have been on the first album, seven years ago now. We’ve always loved it, it just didn’t fit or whatever. Then when we brought it up in the studio this time it worked.

I mean you guys have written so many songs… You’ve also written so many songs for other artists. Is there ever a point when a song blows up – like ‘Sangria’ went so big – when you think damn we should have kept that one? 

Brad: (laughs) No because the cheque that comes from that one isn’t too bad…

Trevor: But you know like Sangria I don’t think that that would have been an Old Dominion song, we might have tried to record that and it might not have even made it onto an album of ours. You know sometimes the songs find their place. It’s funny too, because I remember Sangria, pitching that song, and then heard Blake Shelton was going to record it and thinking ‘that’s cool but that doesn’t sound like a Blake Shelton song.’

And now you think who else could record that song? 

This album as well, with ‘Make It Sweet’ and ‘Hear You Now,’ you wrote and recorded those in the same session, that must have been a wild experience writing and recording in the same day? 

Matthew: Well there was no pressure. We didn’t put any pressure on ourselves, we just thought it would be a cool thing to try and the first one we wrote was ‘Make It Sweet.’ We were listening back later that evening and thought ‘dang this is pretty good.’

Do you feel that pressure ever now that you’ve had a string of number one hits and you’ve done pretty well for yourselves, to make more hits and more success in the studio or do you have a sense of contentment knowing that some things will land and some won’t?

Matthew: I think the further you go into your career it’s inevitable that some songs will fall flat. We’ve known that from the beginning, you know from the first song we knew that the odds were against us and it’s such a tough field to get something to work in. We have a good guess but you never know if something’s going to work or not, so you just put out what you think is right.

Trevor: The ultimate I think you go back to what he said in the first place, you just put out what you love. If we put out music that we think is great and we love it, we’re just going to trust that it will continue to work out.

That’s the main thing I guess, if you continue to put out music that you believe in and you love and feel like that’s us…

Brad: Got to go down with the ship right?

______________________________

Final Few

Can you describe each other in one word? 

Matthew: each other? Asshole, asshole, asshole, asshole… (all laugh) That’s pretty much it. No, we’re kindred assholes (laughs)

What are your favourite tracks from the album? 

Matthew: I’m going to say mine right now is ‘My Heart is a Bar,’ but then it’ll change, it could change tomorrow.

Brad: I’d say mine is probably ‘Hear You Now.’

Trevor: I’d say ‘One Man Band,’ I know it’s been the single for a while but it’s still.

Geoff: I’d say for me right now it’s ‘Midnight Mess Around,’ because it’s the newest one, it’s being introduced to crowds and we’re settling into it, so that’s kind of always a magical moment when that all comes together.

Whit: I like that song too.

Do you have a pre-show ritual? 

Matthew: Shot of tequila, every time.

Who has the weirdest tour bus habits? 

Trevor: I sleep on the couch, most of the time…

Matthew: With his full show clothes on, whatever he played in is what he sleeps in.

Trevor: At least if there’s an emergency and we have to go I’m ready.

Complete the sentence.

Music is… 

A powerful thing.

Country music is…

Story-telling

Old Dominion are…

Assholes. (laugh)

 

Old Dominion’s third studio album is available to download everywhere on October 25th.

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