From bar band to BJC: Old Dominion’s ‘Happy Endings’ tour to stop in Happy Valley
Old Dominion frontman Matthew Ramsey said his band was started with no ambitions of stardom and fame.
That’s not just Ramsey being modest. In fact, he said it wasn’t until a certain event this past April that he and his bandmates fully decided it was time to start taking the band more seriously and realize Old Dominion has a chance for a real future as a major act in country music.
“It’s sort of a joke and sort of not. I always say it was when we won the ACM Vocal Group of the Year, (that we decided) OK, we better take this seriously,” singer Matthew Ramsey said in a late-August phone interview. “We had two albums out and a bunch of hit songs and yet that’s the moment when we went ‘Whoa, we’re not a bar band.’”
Indeed, Old Dominion had already made a mark in country music when the band won that Academy of Country Music award in April (beating out Little Big Town, Lady Antebellum, LANCO and Midland), having by then notched four No. 1 country singles, and taken home a Country Music Association award for best new group in 2017.
The casual attitude toward the band, however, makes sense considering its beginnings. Ramsey, a native of Roanoke, Virginia, who moved to Nashville to pursue a career in songwriting, met Josh Rosen in 2003, and the two began a writing partnership.
That collaboration yielded “Say You Do,” a song recorded by Dierks Bentley, and “Wake Up Lovin’ You,” recorded by Craig Morgan. Ramsey, meanwhile, co-wrote “Chainsaw” for the Band Perry, while Rosen shared writing credits on several notable tunes, including “I Hate Love Songs” (Kelsea Ballerini), “Better Dig Two” (the Band Perry), “I Really Shouldn’t Drink Around You” (Blake Shelton) and “Neon” (Chris Young.)
Ramsey and guitarist/singer Rosen formed Old Dominion in 2007 mainly as a way to play songs they had written around Nashville. They were joined by a high school friend of Ramsey’s, drummer Whit Sellers, and bassist Geoff Sprung, whom Sellers met during college at James Madison University.
A third classmate from James Madison, guitarist Brad Tursi, completed the current Old Dominion lineup when he joined in 2012. Like Ramsey and Rosen, Tursi has had considerable success as a songwriter, with credits that included songs for Luke Bryan (“Light It Up”), Cole Swindell (“Remember Boys”), as well as cuts for Kenny Chesney, Randy Houser and Tyler Farr.
“We didn’t have an ambition for this band,” Ramsey said, looking back on Old Dominion’s beginnings. “Our ambitions were to write songs. And we were friends before we were a band, and before we ever moved to Nashville most of us were friends in some capacity. So it was really about being in the same town with your fellow musician friends and creating music and playing the songs around town just for fun. Then we realized we could make a little bit of money if we played just about an hour outside of town, we could probably make some money to pay our bills.”
As the band pushed forward, the number of concert dates increased and in 2012, Old Dominion released a first EP, “It Was Always Yours.” A 2014 self-titled EP, came next, and then a single from that release, “Break Up With Him,” changed everything for the band.
In late 2014, “Break Up With Him,” was picked up for play on Sirius-XM’s “The Highway” program and Kenny Chesney announced he had chosen Old Dominion to open his 2015 Big Revival mega-tour. In quick succession, RCA Records signed the group which went into the studio to record the 2015 full-length debut album, “Meat and Candy.” The album, of course, featured “Break Up With Him,” which reached No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart right as the album was released in November 2015. Two more hit singles followed in 2016 — another Country Airplay chart topper, “Song For Another Time,” and “Snapback” (which peaked at No. 2).
For the most part, Old Dominion stuck with the same general sound that characterized the debut on “Happy Endings,” delivering a solid sophomore effort that features easy-going pop-inflected country tunes like “Shoe Shopping,” “No Such Thing as a Broken Heart,” “Hotel Key” and “Be With Me” and agreeable ballads such as “Written in the Sand” and “Stars in the City.”
“Happy Endings” has been another winner for Old Dominion, adding three more No. 1 singles — “No Such Thing as a Broken Heart,” “Written in the Sand” and “Hotel Key” — to the group’s collection of hits.
The group is already working on album number three, and has a recording session set for December to further that process. One of the new songs, “Make It Sweet,” has just been released as a single, and Ramsey said a new song or two might be included in the group’s live shows this fall.
“It’s always evolving,” Ramsey said of Old Dominion’s set list. “We play stuff off of both albums and some new stuff and sometimes we throw in something we wrote for somebody else. Those are the songs that got us there, so we definitely want to play all of those. Sometimes fans will be there and throw out requests and we’ll do those. It’s pretty loose.”
If you go
What: Old Dominion
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Bryce Jordan Center, University Park
Info: bjc.psu.edu