Old Dominion more than just another country band, and tonight, the audience at The Lyric will learn why.
“Obviously it’s country music, but I think we pull a lot from a lot of influences outside of country,” bassist Geoff Sprung said. “The goal is to always kind of write and perform the best song. We don’t set out to write or play a country song, that just happens to be the genre that we fall in.”
For Sprung, describing the style of Old Dominion is no easy task. After much contemplation, he eventually settled on a smorgasbord of rock, country, pop and just a hint of hip-hop.
Courtesy: olddominionband.com
This Jackson Pollock-esque genre mixture has proven to be very successful for the group, which tours around the country to perform their music. Old Dominion will be performing tonight at The Lyric Oxford as part of their “Meat and Candy.”
Old Dominion began as a mixture of friends who either grew up with each other or met during their college years. None of the guys had any major musical aspirations until they all ended up moving to Nashville, where the lead singer, Matthew Ramsey, asked his friends if they could help him get a publishing deal with a record label.
“We were all friends and wanted to help him out, so, we were his backing band,” Sprung said. “After doing that for a while, everyone kept telling us we sounded like a band. So, we kind of took it from that step and started playing shows as an actual group.”
This certainly proved to be the right move. Sony Music Entertainment label signed the band, and they have gone on to be nominated for two CMA awards and have performed on the popular late night show Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“I think a lot of it is just time,” Sprung said. “We always joke that we’ve put in 10,000 hours playing together and a lot of it was also us as a group developing a sound that was unique. We kind of just came into our own.”
Old Dominion put much of this time and attention into generating the band’s first full-length studio album, “Meat and Candy.” The album turned out to be the perfect example of the group’s unique sound and broke the top 20 barrier due to the success of their second single “Snapback.”
“I think [the album] says that we continue to craft and perform hit songs,” Sprung said. “That was our goal when we made that album. We wanted every song to be something that could be on the radio, and hopefully, we will continue to take that approach.”
This ambitious approach definitely payed off for the band, and now they will officially take that success to Oxford for the first time ever.
“A lot of energy. A lot of fun. A lot of smiles.” Sprung said about Old Dominion’s live shows. “We have a great time, and we always hope that the crowd feeds off of that because that’s certainly what keeps us going.”
As the band looks forward to 2016 they face an exhausting touring schedule. After concluding their own headlining tour, they will join Kenny Chesney on his “Spread the Love” tour.
“We’ve kind of built ourselves as a touring band over the years,” Sprung said. “We did 180-something shows last year. We’ll probably do at least 125 this year. We just love playing. We love playing for fans especially. We just love that people are coming out in such such large numbers.”
Old Dominion will take the Lyric stage at 9 p.m.
