To say that Old Dominion has been on a roll over the past two short years would be an understatement. Since NECM started working with the guys in 2014, the band has released their amazing debut album (titled ‘Meat and Candy’), had huge success with the first two singles, opened up for Kenny Chesney in back-to-back summers and just announced their own headlining tour. Recently, NECM caught up with lead singer Matthew Ramsey to discuss the band’s third and most recent single, ‘Song For Another Time.’
Old Dominion found huge success on country radio with their first two singles- ‘Break Up With Him’ and ‘Snapback.’ Both singles are amazingly fun and upbeat songs which set the tone for ‘Meat and Candy.’ ‘Song For Another Time’ is by far a horse of a different color from those first two single and should bring the band even greater success as it’s one of the strongest songs, lyrically, that they have recorded. The single was written by Ramsey, Brad Tursi, Trevor Rosen and Matt Jenkins. Jenkins, who has been working with Old Dominion for years and helped write nearly half of the songs on ‘Meat and Candy,’ is even referred to as the ‘6th member of the band,’ according to Ramsey. Matthew talked about where the concept for the song came from,
“It just kind of happened, I heard somone say like ‘you hear people all the time say that’s a different story, a story for another time’. I thought, ‘Man, what if it was a song for another time?’ I don’t know why that idea popped into my head and I didn’t even know what it meant but I wrote it down as it was cool sounding. That’s the beauty of co-writing with your buddies as you can say, ‘ I don’t know what this means but let’s figure it out together.’ I brought it to them and we just talked through it and eventually through our conversation we said what if we tell this whole story with other songs and use other song titles. So that’s what we went for.”
Things got brought back around to what went into the decision of releasing this as the third single with the first two being so different in style and sound. It’s always a gamble when artists release a single that is a 180 from their previous songs as you never know what the fan and radio reaction will be. However, it now seems like ‘Song For Another Time’ was the perfect song to be the next single as Ramsey explains how the decision came to be,
“We wanted to come with something alittle more substantial as far as subject matter goes. We had ‘Break Up With Him’ and ‘Snapback’ which were alittle more towards the lighter side, so we wanted to come with some of the meat off of ‘Meat and Candy.’ Me and the guys love this song so much and last year after we wrote it we were on tour with Kenny at a stadium and played it at sound check and it sounded huge. We thought… ‘Man, this is a song that we need to record on this album!’ Though we were done with the album, we flew home for a special trip just to record this one song as it almost didn’t make it onto the album. Flew home, recorded it and then flew back out onto the road and it felt so big and so right. The song seemed like the right choice and next step for this band.”
(Fun Fact: New England Country Music has our own connection to the single. The guys were going to be playing Gillette Stadium last summer and NECM had the pleasure of booking Old Dominion to play our day at the Marshfield Fair. The day before playing in Marshfield was the day they flew back home to record ‘Song For Another Time.’ They flew from Nashville to Boston to play in Marshfield and Gillette Stadium.)
‘Song For Another Time’ is full of great song titles from the past which give the song it’s unique sound and theme. And for Matthew, there is one lyric in particular that stands out as his favorite, “There is a moment about halfway through the chorus and for some reason, I don’t know why as it’s nothing extra special. But for some reason, whenever I sing ‘before you lose that lovin feeling’ I get chills everytime I sing that line for some reason. I just feel this whole story is so important to tell and when I get to that point it really starts to sink in. That push and pull of the happiness and sadness of the song comes to a head.”
Opening up for Kenny Chesney last summer and this one have allowed the band to experience some amazing moments both onstage and off. Easily one of the greatest has to be when Chesney invited both Matthew Ramsey and Brad Tursi onstage at Gillette Stadium to sing, ‘Save It For A Rainy Day’ with him. Both members of Old Dominion had co-written the song (along with Andrew Dorff) and was the first time they ever sang it with the man who recorded it. For Matt this was certainly one for the books,
“That was one of those moments that I will never forget. We had been waiting all year for him to play that song and he never played it. We were like ‘Dude, what’s up? The song is in the top 10 and you gotta play your hit.’ He kept saying, ‘I’m gonna play it tonight, I’m gonna play it tonight’ and then he wouldn’t. He held out and it turns out, he never said this to us until after but said he really wanted to save it for Gillette as he knew we’d be on tour with him again this year. We didn’t know that but he wanted that to be a moment and let Gillette be the moment where he said we’d be doing this again next year. It was a special moment then and is a special moment everytime we go out and play with him.”
Old Dominion has delivered one of the most cleverly written songs we’ve heard in along time and the video is top notch to match the single itself. With the release of the first album already in the rearview mirror, Ramsey let us know fans might not be waiting too long for new music, “We have a lot of songs in the can and we’ll hopefully start recording in the early fall, get in there and record the first round.”
We’d like to thank Matthew Ramsey for taking the time to speak with us here at NECM. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to have worked with Old Dominion over the past few years and to see the success they have achieved. We look forward to seeing what comes next for Old Dominion and love that they let us come along for the ride.
Make sure to catch the guys as the open up for two shows with Kenny Chesney this weekend at Gillette Stadium. You can still purchase tickets for Friday’s show here and limited number of seats left for Saturday here. You can also follow the band on all their social media pages: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
This interview was conducted by NECM contributing writer, Mike Sullivan. You can follow me on Twitter here.
You can purchase their album, ‘Meat and Candy,’ which features ‘Song for Another Time,’ on iTunes here.