Fans of Old Dominion’s hook-heavy anthems and clever, witty lyrics will be delighted to dive into their new album, Barbara. This time, though, the band is adding a more vulnerable, personal approach to the songwriting that has scored them a dozen RIAA Platinum and Gold single certifications, nine No. 1 Singles at Country Radio, and seven CMA Vocal Group of the Year awards and eight ACM Group of the Year awards in a row.
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American Songwriter’s Dean Fields caught up with Old Dominion band members Matthew Ramsey and Geoff Sprung to talk about the stories and songs behind their highly anticipated new album, Barbara.
American Songwriter, Dean Fields: Congratulations on the new record. I love that you named it Barbara. I think Dean would have been a better name, but Barbara is great.
Old Dominion, Geoff Sprung and Matthew Ramsey: [laughing]
DF: So, what is the deal here?
MR: It made us laugh.
DF: Yeah, that’s great.
All: [laughing]
MR: We always have a running list of album titles, and this whole idea came up of naming it a person’s name, and somebody was like, yeah, Barbara or something.
That was probably a year before we even knew we were going to make this record. Then, when it came time to name this one, Barbara came up. And it would get pushed aside. And then we’d think of other names – different title track type of names, and then Barbara would come back into the picture.
GS: Brad was kind of the last holdout. Every time we said, “This is going to be fun,” he’d be like, “Guys, I don’t really know.” And then at the last minute, he was like, I think we should call it Barbara.”
All: [laughing]
GS: And we were like “Great idea.”
DF: You say this is the most personal record. What makes this one more personal? And why a more personal record now?
MR: Yeah. We didn’t set out with the intent to make a more personal record. It just happened that way. And I think it’s just a matter of where we are as people and as a band. Our songwriting just got a little bit more honest, naturally, I think.
GS: These guys are so prolific that we’re calling from this huge batch of songs, and some of them were much closer to what we had done before, or maybe were a little less introspective or honest or personal, but they just didn’t make the cut.
But we’re all excited and gravitating towards this stuff that is new and again, just a little more honest.
MR: Like, “Miss You Man”, which is about Andrew Dorff, our friend and collaborator that we lost. And we truly missed him. So, we wrote a song about him.
Then, a song like “Goodnight Music City”, where we are just exploring our journey through Nashville, and we’re just reminiscing about all the ups and downs that we’ve had, and we put that down in song form.
Then “Man Or The Song” is one where we have reached this level of our career, and we’re looking at it all, what it’s created in us, and what it’s done to us, and what it’s given us at the same time.
DF: Let’s talk about “Me Most Nights”, the single from the new album. What do you remember about writing that song?
MR: Yeah, that was Brad (Tursi) Trevor (Rosen), myself, and Ross Copperman. And that was a fun day.
That was a true Nashville, like all our powers and knowledge combined over the years. I had that title, “Me Most Nights”, and the only concept was, you know, this is Me Most Nights; just feeling, you know, lonely or sad. And then it became this exercise of how do we arrive at that phrase, every different angle that we possibly can. That becomes a giant puzzle to put together and move pieces around.
And then the production of it… The demo wound up being pretty close to what we did in the studio, except we might have brought a little bit more of a rock kind of edge to it. But the whole kind of deconstruction at the end of the song, where different instruments are falling out.
We were almost done for the day and listening down to the song and the demo. And we just started taking things out just because we thought it made it a little bit more compelling. And then that’s what we wound up carrying over into the studio.
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Photo by Dove Shore
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