INTERVIEW: Old Dominion on Time, Tequila and Therapy

MATTHEW: We were in Asheville, North Carolina, decided that maybe it would be a cool thing to try to get outside of Nashville and make a record somewhere else. We have all kinds of obligations and responsibilities here and no matter how much you try to separate yourself from that, when you’re in Nashville, that’s always going to be there. We thought maybe we’d go somewhere else. I’m sure you’ve been to Asheville and seeing how beautiful it is and it’s such a cool little creative community and there’s a great little studio there called Echo Mountain. They’ve got a nice little band house for us to hang out in and so we just kind of lived out there for three weeks and did our thing.

MATTHEW: We talked a lot about how just being in Nashville, your head is in a different space. I was telling Geoff earlier, when I’m outside of Nashville, I hear music differently, especially music that was created in Nashville. We’re so close and we’re so inside that sometimes just being in a different town, watching how people live and make that music a part of their lives really hits me differently. So I think some of that probably just bled into us. We didn’t think about it too much, but we were just in Asheville, not thinking about Nashville, not caring too much about anything other than was it creating excitement in the room at the moment. That’s really how we followed the song to completion was just to be excited about it continually there in the room.

MATTHEW: I don’t know how I went so long without [going to therapy] quite honestly. It’s such a beneficial thing just to take that moment, an hour or whatever, to just take a breath and talk things out. You do so much talking that you talk yourself, you teach yourself really. And if you can just kind of learn to do that and talk to yourself a little bit, that’s really… I think, what I’ve learned is that sometimes I need to just speak to myself or speak to that child in me that’s afraid like I would speak to my own child.

GEOFF: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I was going to say, that’s the big thing, the big takeaway. I feel like the moments when I’m in therapy where I’m like, “oh, that’s why I’m here” is when I’m reminded to just be kind to yourself and that’s always like the, “oh, man.” Yeah. It’s easier said than done.

KELLEIGH: How the h*** do y’all get Gladys Knight mixed up in this party?

MATTHEW: You know what’s crazy is you just ask apparently because that’s all we did. That was one of those moments where we were like, I remember the conversation when we were talking about. We were standing in the hallway at the studio because we found out—we were in Asheville making this album—and we found out that she lives there. We came up with the idea of her singing on it before we realized that she lived right down the street. So we’re talking to the studio manager who knew her about it, and she was like, “Yeah, I’m good friends with her and her husband. I can call and ask.” We were out in the hallway with Shane and we were like, “Make sure to tell her that we actually are legitimate. We have hits on the radio and that we’ve won some awards. We’re not just some rinky-dink band.” And so they call and she was like, “Of course, I don’t even need to hear the song. I know these guys. I know their music.” We were in and we were like, “Oh, oh, okay!”

GEOFF: I remember that conversation. Shane’s like “Lead with Grammy nominated, lead with Grammy nominated!”