Old Dominion is currently on an all-star bill for Kenny Chesney’s 2022 Here and Now Tour, along with Carly Pearce and Dan + Shay. With some of country music’s biggest names sharing the stage with them, Old Dominion knows that the bar’s high — but they’ve got a winning strategy for entertaining fans this summer.
“Start with the hits,” says band member Trevor Rosen. “And that pretty much fills out our time slot,” interjects Matthew Ramsey.
All jokes aside, Old Dominion’s now at a place in their career when they can pretty much fill out a full set with hit songs. “That’s an amazing thing for a band or an artist to be able to say, that they can play a set full of hit songs,” Matthew says.
But it’s not just radio success that determines a hit: Old Dominion has learned that some songs are live smashes, even if they didn’t necessarily go #1 at country radio.
“We have been fortunate enough to have some songs that have streamed well, outside of radio success,” Matthew says. “So we just try to plug those in and eventually we’ll get bored and we’ll start taking requests.”
That’s one way to keep things interesting, even if it takes the group to some musical territory that’s pretty far-flung from their own discography or even genre.
“We end with ‘Freebird’ every time,” Brad Tursi jokes.
Next up, the Here and Now Tour will take Old Dominion and the gang to Nashville for an epic hometown show on Saturday night at the city’s Bridgestone Arena.
Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
