OLD DOMINION’S “TIME, TEQUILA, AND THERAPY” AVAILABLE NOW (Audio & Video)
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Matthew Ramsey: So the album “Time, Tequila & Therapy” was just really you know, it’s born out of the pandemic. We were in lockdown, we had all this time on our hands and we thought, why not go outside of Nashville and try to create something and you know, give it a little bit of time to really just ruminate and be creative. So, we spent three weeks in Asheville, North Carolina, writing songs in the morning and recording them in the evening just to see what we came up with. And what we wound up with was 13 songs, that’s “Time, Tequila & Therapy.”
Trevor Rosen: “Why Are You Still Here” is a song, actually a few weeks, I think about a month before we went out to Asheville, we got together and just jammed together really in a room and just started coming up with different musical parts and recording them. And we didn’t really use any of them when we went out to Asheville. Most of the songs were born in Asheville, but “Why Are You Still Here” that was actually born out of a little musical part and melody that we had made in Nashville and brought there. And we just, you know, when we started playing out, I think we got to a certain point and we started trying to rock the course out in a sort of Coldplay way and then Shane got there that day and we all sort of huddled back up in the room and started writing the lyrics and just started crafting out where the chorus went. And that’s one of my favorite songs on the album.
Matthew Ramsey: I don’t remember who had that title “Walk On Whiskey.”
Geoff Sprung: It was Josh.
Matthew Ramsey: Josh Osborne songwriter extraordinaire apparently had that title which he typically does he’s a really great songwriter but that’s just one of those things I feel like that’s a title you’re like, “how come we haven’t written that yet?” You know, it’s just really familiar sounding and such a country thing. And that was really fun for us to kind of explore those really country like images, like swinging doors and Honky Tonks and things like that, that we’ve never really gotten into as a band, but they are a part of our makeup you know, listening to old 90’s Country and all the like outlaw country. Even though it doesn’t sound like that, lyrically, we got to kind of explore that a little bit.
Matthew Ramsey: There was no title for this one I don’t believe I think we were just kind of writing right?
Trevor Rosen: Yeah.
Matthew Ramsey: And we had all those like cool phrases like, you know “lost you like car keys” and we were just kind of compiling a bunch of those and it finally landed on “you fit me like blue jeans.”
Brad Tursi: I always call it the “Honey Bee.” Like you know, Blake Shelton’s “Honey Bee.”
Matthew Ramsey: Yeah.
Brad Tursi: Like they just call the last thing that they landed on. Go head Geoff.
Geoff Sprung: I’m just gonna say, I remember when that blue jeans line showed up, that was definitely the title everyone kind of lit up in the room. This is it.
Matthew Ramsey: Solid country title.
Matthew Ramsey: “No Hard Feelings” was a title that I’ve had you know, had for probably a year or whatever just carrying it around it’s something you hear people say. Those are typically the ones that catch my ear is, you know, you hear people say it throughout their daily lives. I mean no hard feelings and I just thought that seems like an interesting idea. I didn’t know where it would go but I knew my friends would help me get there. So we sat down and, and what we got was, you know, a breakup song about someone trying to move through it. And just, you know, all the like, stages of grief really, that you have to go through until you get to the point where you truly have no hard feelings, and you could say, you know, “I want you to be happy. I love you. I wish it was me. Do I wish it was me? Hell yeah. But it’s not and I’ve got no hard feelings.”
Matthew Ramsey: “Lonely Side Of Town” the inspiration for that again, I believe was Mr. Josh Osborne.
Trevor Rosen: Yeah.
Matthew Ramsey: I think he had that title and he was singing it to us. And he so good at, you know, Josh has been around us for I don’t know, since we had no success whatsoever. So basically decades we’ve been friends with Josh and he knows us so well and he knows what’s going to speak to us. So I know he saves ideas, and melodies and things to bring to us when he’s going to write with us. And that one I know he was like, he called me and was so excited about it when he thought of it. So grateful that he didn’t give it to someone else because anyone else could have had a hit with Josh and that title. So, but it just kind of was one of those things where we, we wrote it out and that was that was one where Brad was like over here working on the verses while we were over here working on the choruses, and then we all sort of met in the middle and had a song. And went and recorded it and then yada, yada, yada, Gladys Knight appears on it.
Brad Tursi: “Drinking My Feelings” is your title, right?
Matthew Ramsey: It was a title. I mean, that’s another thing you hear people say they’re eating their feelings or drinking their feelings and it just felt like a fun like, kind of song with a wink. And you know, I think we do that really well in this band. We always like to have a little wink in our music. So that just seemed like a really fun one to kind of dive into and it wound up being like a math problem. I remember like trying-
Trevor Rosen and Geoff Sprung: Oh, yeah,
Matthew Ramsey: Trying to get that phrasing down.
Matthew Ramsey, Trevor Rosen, and Brad Tursi: “Drinking and drowning and downing. And chugging, shot gunning, nipping.”
Matthew Ramsey: It was just like, very mathematic, writing session which normally doesn’t happen but really fun song.
Trevor Rosen: “Something’s The Same About You” was a title that Whit had, it was a complete joke. I mean like we were never planning on actually writing it we were always joking about what if you wrote a song that way.
Matthew Ramsey: Cause like what a ridiculous thing to say
Brad Tursi and Trevor Rosen: There’s something the same about you.
Trevor Rosen: But, that’s also part of the fun of this band in just writing with each other is sometimes you have a puzzle and you go, “Huh, how could we actually turn that into something that makes sense?” And so you just start talking it out, what could that be? And then you just sort of chase that rabbit down the trail until you end up at the end of the song. So, it was really fun. I’m glad that you threw that out there jokingly.
Matthew Ramsey: Another joke title our buddy Whit over here had was “I Wanna Live In A House With You Forever.”
Brad Tursi: Isn’t that just funny?
Whit Sellers: Hilarious right?
Matthew Ramsey: Like, I mean, that came from you know, honestly, Whit making fun of a particular country music song that we won’t divulge, but he didn’t he didn’t care for it too much.
Whit: Little idealistic, I thought. I thought the narrative was a little bit, little farfetched.
Matthew Ramsey: Yeah, so he proposed the song “I Wanna Live In A House With You Forever,” with hate in his heart for that song. But we actually turned it into a sweet song. And the whole time we were writing it, unbeknownst to Whit, he thought we were writing this like super sarcastic angry song, but we actually wrote a really sweet song. And he was disappointed to find out that it’s actually kind of fun and not angry at all.
Whit Sellers: I was fooled, but I like it.
Matthew Ramsey: “Don’t Forget Me” was that your title?
Brad Tursi: No
Trevor Rosen: Was that Jenkins?
Matthew Ramsey: Maybe Jenkins? I can’t remember.
Brad Tursi: I don’t even know if that was written from a title to be honest.
Matthew Ramsey: Maybe not, maybe not. Yeah, I remember you know, that’s one that Matt Jenkins, Matt Jenkins is such a great songwriter and has been such a huge part of this band and you know, wrote half the songs on the first album with us. And it was so cool to have him there again and in the mix. And that one, I think, it was another one where we were just sort of following the song wherever it went, there was no clear objective. We were just kind of painting a picture that we weren’t sure what was going to look like when it was done. And until it was done, you know, even recording it, we didn’t really know. All these different sounds and things kept coming up and suddenly it sounds like this 80s jam and you know, has all these like, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” vibes to it.
Matthew Ramsey: “Ain’t Nothing Wrong With Love” is a title that I’ve had, you know, kind of bouncing around. I’ve been trying to ride it actually for a couple years and had pitched it in different writing sessions and never could, you know quite land it. But, you know, it’s just this whole this whole feeling of, you know, people fall in love and make it work all the time. So, you know, I think there’s a lot of people out there that feel like “how come it’s not happening for me, you know, so if there’s nothing wrong with love, well, then it must be me.” So that was sort of the sentiment behind that song, which is really kind of a sad, you know, theme, but the way we wrote it, it’s just like country rocker sort of aggressive thing, which kind of takes the edge off of the sadness a little bit, so it’s a really fun song.
Brad Tursi: “I Was On A Boat That Day,” that’s the title that has been kicking around since the days of “Breakup With Him.” We actually started working on it a little bit during the writing of “Breakup With Him” and just never finished it, never finished it, kept trying, kept trying, and then finally eight years later, it stewed the pot for long enough and it was ready to go. So we’ve tackled it that day, and it was it was done pretty quick wasn’t it?
Matthew Ramsey: Yeah.
Brad Trusi: I mean, so ya just another Old Dominion sad song to a happy beat.
Matthew Ramsey: “All I Know About Girls” is the last song we wrote of the whole trip. Just one of those days where, you know, we’re kind of dragging, we’re tired at this point, just limping across the finish line. And Brad had this little guitar lick that he was playing, as he does sometimes and it sparks you know, the last bit of inspiration that you have in there. And we started kind of riffing on that idea all I know about girls and you know, it’s really nothing. They’re, ladies are mysteries. Or either that or we’re just dumb so you know, that’s what that songs about.
Trevor Rosen: “Hawaii” was really cool. It was it was cool, I was watching back the footage of like the genesis of that. And Kelsey who works on our crew, she was there cooking meals the whole time we were at the studio cooking these amazing meals, and she was cooking a Hawaiian meal that day. And it was funny, we were just sitting there and you were like, “We should go back to Hawaii.”
Matthew Ramsey: Yeah.
Trevor Rosen: And then it was like the conversation just started like, wouldn’t it be cool to write a Hawaii song and that little lick thing that I had on the resonator, I was like, when rolls reverse, usually, you’re the one that goes, “I haven’t titled that fits that.” But I was like, “I think I have this guitar thing I was playing.” And it just started coming out. And I think at first we were like, in my mind anyway, thinking like, “does that justify a whole song writing about Hawaii?
Matthew Ramsey: Yeah.
Trevor Rosen: But it just kept coming out and sounding so cool and we just went for it. We thought, you know what, why don’t we just go for it and write this whole Hawaiian theme song and even try to record it that way. And the funny thing about the song was we got done writing it, and we weren’t really sure, like, is this really commercial?
Matthew Ramsey: Yeah we all felt the same thing. Hawaii? Who’s gonna care?
Trevor: Yeah, and we didn’t record it at first. We sort of put it aside and worked on something else. And then we came back to it and Shane was like, “Really? Are you guys not even gonna try “Hawaii?” So we just sat down and Brad made that little loop on the ukulele and Whit you found that that drum sound. And when we kicked into the groove, instantaneously, we were like, “Oh man, this this sounds amazing.” And just really happy with how it ended up sounding.