Old Dominion’s No Bad Vibes Tour came to a triumphant end on Friday (December 15) with a sold-out show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. For two hours and over 20 songs, the band proved why they’re the six-time CMA and ACM Group of the Year with a dynamic set that spanned their catalog of hits and showcased their adept songwriting.
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The night was a special one for the band of songwriters, who had learned their No. 1 single “One Man Band” surpassed 1 billion streams moments before stepping onstage. Old Dominion frontman Matthew Ramsey explained that the song came together while the band was writing on the road for their third album, adding many of the tracks at the time embodied a “bubbly, bouncy, reggae-twinged” vibe.
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“You would think after all of the success we’ve had as writers and all the success we’ve had as a band, that we would know what kind of song is gonna connect with you guys,” Ramsey said. “The truth of the matter is we just overthink the sh-t out of it. We don’t know. We’re always like, ‘We just gotta write what’s on our hearts,’ and then we give it to you and you decide whether or not it’s any good.”
Ramsey said he wanted to “write something real” instead of the more upbeat, reggae-styled songs they had penned that day. It was guitarist Brad Tursi who told him they had already written a “real song.”
“We just have to approach it differently. I think we’re playing it wrong,” Ramsey recalled Tursi saying at the time. “He said, ‘Well, let me show you then.’ So we were in the dressing room before a show one night, and he picked up his guitar. He said, ‘I think you might change your mind about this song if we played it more like this.’”
Tursi then kicked off the slowed guitar intro to the heartfelt ballad and 2019 single for the sold-out audience. As the band performed “One Man Band” live, fans lit up the arena with their cell phones.
Between playing their many hits, the band paused to take fan requests from the signs they saw in the crowd. Early songs and fan favorites like “Wrong Turns,” “Snapback,” and “Can’t Get You” were requested. Later, Ramsey would collect hotel keys from audience members in the pit as the band performed the appropriately titled 2018 hit “Hotel Key.”
The hometown show was a reflective one for Old Dominion. The band, who first cut their teeth as songwriters in Nashville, shared their gratitude for fans in attendance who had “been with us since Day One.” Multiple times throughout the night, Ramsey paused and told the crowd, “I just want to stare at you for a while.”
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“I know it’s Nashville and there’s a lot of aspiring writers, singers, and players out there with the same dream that we had,” he said. “When we moved here a long, long ass time ago we didn’t really have all of this in mind. We were coming here to be songwriters. We thought maybe if we moved here and surrounded ourselves with the best writers in the world because, make no mistake, this is where the best writers in the world are.
“We thought if we moved here that maybe it would rub off on us and we could somehow make a living writing songs for other people,” he continued. “After about 12, 13 years of writing sh-t songs, it eventually happened. We made that dream come true somehow and that allowed us to keep writing songs for ourselves.”
Now with nine No. 1 songs under their belts, Old Dominion reminisced about “slugging it out in the bars here.” Ramsey recalled playing a bar in Midtown called Blue Bar in the early days. It was a place they would practice when they couldn’t afford rehearsal space. To give back to the community that raised them, he announced the band would open a bar called Odie’s.
“The good news is we’re opening a bar in Midtown, so that’s cool,” he said. “So we’ll see you at Odie’s next summer.”
The band also gave back to the state, which was devastated by several tornadoes last weekend. Ramsey informed the audience that $1 from every ticket would be donated to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee’s tornado relief fund. More than $40,000 was donated from Friday’s show.
“Money helps, but music is the best medicine,” Ramsey said before the band segued into “No Such Thing As a Broken Heart.”
The band’s stellar songwriting and nostalgia-fueled songs were showcased throughout the clever “Written in the Sand,” tender “Memory Lane,” and Kenny Chesney cut “Save It for a Rainy Day.” Set highlights also included a surprise appearance from Megan Moroney on “Can’t Break Up Now“; “Never Be Sorry,” complete with a Meow Mix lyric slipped in; and “No Hard Feelings,” with a xylophone feature from Ramsey.
Old Dominion closed out their two-hour set with a spirited three-song encore, including the feel-good “I Was on a Boat That Day.” Before the final chorus, where the venue erupted in a sing-along, Ramsey thanked the audience one more time for its support.
“When we moved to Nashville, we could have never imagined seeing something so spectacular like this,” he said. “This is beyond our wildest dreams that we get to come here and create together. We are really good friends and we have been friends for a long time and we get to make music together. If you’re out there and you’re a writer or musician, find your friends and start a damn band. Do it together and then come out on the road with us. It’s an unreal feeling. Thank you guys so much. By listening to our music, you are making our dreams come true.”
Photos by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
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