It was such a difficult time to figure out what the hell we were supposed to be doing.” What ultimately saved them, Ramsey believes, was inking a date on the calendar for them to regroup at Asheville’s Echo Mountain studio and begin hammering out what became Time, Tequila and Therapy. And then it started getting harder to even write songs. “Whereas at first we just thought it was a little break, then it got longer. “It was such a confusing time for us,” Ramsey admit of a stretch between March and September 2020 where the band gathered only virtually. Having spent more than a decade together – in the studio, on the road, just living life by each other’s side – last year Old Dominion were forced to separate from one another for nearly all of 2020.
![who wrote one man band who wrote one man band](https://i0.wp.com/news.band/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Senator-Ike-Ekweremadu.jpg)
What they also walked away with was a much-needed creative shot in the arm - a reawakening of sorts after the tumultuous and - as multiple band members admit - mentally challenging struggle through the first six months of the pandemic. In the end, Old Dominion left Asheville with an entire new album. “We’d just wake up in the morning, write the song, and then go upstairs and record it that evening,” Ramsey continues before adding, “It got to the point where we were like two weeks in and going, “I can’t believe we’re still coming up with stuff! How are we doing this?”” And that meant being together and being creative was nothing if not essential to their well-being Asheville, then, was the perfect solution. Over the course of their career, the band had also been notably named ACM “New Group of the Year,” ACCA “Breakthrough Group of the Year,” AIMP “Songwriter Artist of the Year” and Music Row “Breakthrough Artist of the Year” and in 2017, front man Matthew Ramsey was ASCAP’s “Artist of the Year.” The band has also received nominations for CMT Awards, American Music Awards, Billboard Awards, and iHeart Radio Awards.īut at the core of who Old Dominion truly are is collaborators. With their rollicking live shows and supreme songcraft they quickly established themselves as one of country music’s most beloved acts. They’d taken quite a journey to get there: in the years since they officially arrived on the scene with Meat and Candy, their platinum-certified 2015 major-label debut album, Old Dominion – five musicians who’d previously busted their asses in writing rooms and on dingy stages across the country before breaking big – had racked up countless awards, accolades and undeniable major success. The album, he adds, “is a perfect snapshot of who we are and who we were in that moment in Asheville.” “I think it probably saved us as a band, honestly,” Ramsey offers of the album, produced by longtime collaborators Shane McAnally and Josh Osbourne. To hear them now relive those thrilling few weeks, the experience was nothing short of life-affirming.Īsk Ramsey about how important this time spent together was and, in turn, why Time, Tequila and Therapy is a true turning point for Old Dominion, and he doesn’t mince words. Recently, Old Dominion got their long-awaited chance to do exactly that: for the entirety of what became their stunning fourth studio album, Time, Tequila and Therapy, Old Dominion - which includes multi-instrumentalist Trevor Rosen, lead guitarist Brad Tursi, bassist Geoff Sprung and drummer Whit Sellers - hunkered down in an Asheville, North Carolina studio, and wrote and recorded the entire LP in a multi-week stretch. “We always thought ‘Man, that would be really cool to make an entire album like that.”” 1 singles at country radio, surpassed one billion on-demand streams, earned several Platinum and Gold single certifications and headlined arenas and amphitheaters around the globe.
![who wrote one man band who wrote one man band](https://bestclassicbands.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Marsalis-Family-Archives-Photo.jpg)
“That was our first little taste of what that process could be like,” says Matthew Ramsey, lead singer for the chart-topping country band who to date has notched eight No. A few years back, when Old Dominion got together to record “Make It Sweet,” a beatific number that would appear on their 2019 self-titled LP, it was a definite change in their process: whereas before they’d typically written every song prior to entering the studio, that time around they instead wrote the entire track on the spot, quickly laying it to tape.