Old Dominion has been one of the most exciting acts in country music for the past few years. The band’s blend of traditional country sounds with modern pop and rock influences has earned them a devoted fan base and critical acclaim. Now, with the release of their new EP “Memory Lane” and the hit single of the same name, Old Dominion is taking things to the next level. Their upcoming Canadian tour dates as part of the “North American No Bad Vibes Tour” are sure to be among the most highly-anticipated events of the year.
The band is headed to Ottawa on January 27, Toronto on Jan. 28th, and London on Jan. 30th. Tickets for the shows are available at Ticketmaster (for Ottawa and Toronto) and Budweiser Gardens for London. They return to Canada for a six-city west coast trip starting in Vancouver on Feb. 28th, with stops in Edmonton (Mar. 2), Calgary (Mar. 3), Lethbridge (Mar. 9), Regina (Mar. 10) and Winnipeg (Mar. 11).
In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Old Dominion’s lead singer and songwriter, Matthew Ramsey, to discuss the creative process behind the new EP, the inspiration behind the single “Memory Lane” and what fans can expect from the upcoming tour.
DS: Old Dominion is back with some new music and on the road. First, let’s chat about the music. Memory Lane is more than just one new song, it’s an EP, which is a really great surprise. Why is the EP labeled as a sampler?
MR: Because there’s more coming. We’re definitely working on a whole body of music here, and we’re just tired of sitting on it. We wanted to put some of it up now and give a little sample of what is to come.
DS: You guys are very active songwriters. Since signing to RCA Nashville in 2015, you have collectively put out more than 50 songs just as Old Dominion. That’s a lot of material in that time frame.
MR: Yeah. We moved here to be songwriters. First and foremost, it’s what we love to do. We weren’t really trying to be in a band. It just happened. Songwriting is our true love, and we try to do it as much as possible. We’re always energized by it and inspired by other writers. It just makes you want to work. We would put out more if we could.
DS: What sparks a song idea in you?
MR: Oh gosh, it could be anything. You learn to have your radar on all the time. It could be something that you’re going through. It could be something that your friend is going through. It could be something that you saw in a movie or read in a book or heard on another song or something your kids do. It can just really come from anywhere, and you always have to be ready to write it down or sing it into your phone so that you don’t forget it.
DS: Taking a look at Memory Lane, how was that written?
MR: Brad had this little guitar loop and kick drum going with that tempo. We wanted something that was up-tempo. Believe it or not, it’s hard to write a good up-tempo song. It’s easier for us to write mid-tempo ballad songs, but this time we forced ourselves into that tempo and our co-writer Jessi Jo Dillon had this title called Memory Lane.
We didn’t really know what that meant at that time, but as soon as someone said, if I could buy a house on Memory Lane, it sparked everyone’s imagination. And we thought it was a unique perspective of being able to put your memories in some actual physical real estate and think about that way – at a place that you could actually go visit or live in even.
Our minds just started turning and everybody started looking back at their own lives and we just started getting out all of these ideas and before we knew it, we had the song.
DS: Once again, you guys are on the road. Why did you decide to call this tour the No Bad Vibes Tour?
MR: Well, that’s a line in one of our songs, No Hard Feelings. We were planning our tour at the time. It was the summer of 2022 just trying to put it all together. We went on tour with Kenny Chesney and we were selling these big flags on that tour that say No Bad Vibes and they would fly off the sales. People just love them.
You’d see them out in the crowd and one day, Kenny said, ‘have you guys named your tour yet, it’s right there on your flags – No Bad Vibes.’ And we were like, wow, you’re right. So that was a Kenny Chesney thing.
DS: You’ve got quite a few Canadian dates on this tour. A couple of them this month, Ottawa, Toronto, London. This isn’t your first time here.
MR: Canada has been really great to us. We were lucky enough to have a very smart team that way back in the beginning of this, said, we want you guys to make Canada a priority. We did it very early on and the first time we went up there was for a festival called Boots & Hearts, and we saw this huge impact our music had there and we were immediately hooked and committed to continuing to go back to Canada as much as we thought we could.
DS: I always found it rather funny and strange at the same time that many major tours come through Canada in the winter. Will this be your first Canadian winter?
MR: We have been there in the winter before. We’ve been stuck in the snow there a couple of times.
DS: Why is it, tours are always routed in the winter up here?
MR: I think there’s just a lot of big summer festivals and things like that there and in The States that we all try to work around, but I would only be speculating. At this point, I’m lucky to have people that just tell us where to go and we just go when they tell us to.
For more on Old Dominion, visit: www.weareolddominion.com.
Watch for the full interview, diving deeper into the new album, in the February issue of 519 Magazine.
