Old Dominion has always been a band rather than a solo act with backing 
musicians, but it took a little while for its members to embrace that fact.

Full-fledged bands are less common on country radio, where solo artists (think Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill and more) are the norm. And the members of Old Dominion, who put in a decade in Nashville’s songwriting machine composing for artists such as The Band Perry, Chris Young and Chesney, initially performed under lead singer Matthew Ramsey’s name.

“We always functioned as a band, but no one was really trying to make it big, you know what I mean?” Ramsey said from a tour stop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The band plays the Deschutes County Fair on Aug. 5, the final concert in the four-show series (see sidebar on Page 6 for more information on the series and Page 32 for other fair activities). “We were writing songs and playing shows. We’re probably lazy, and just — it was easy to say my name.”

One night, the young band was performing at a bar in Alabama. A woman approached Ramsey after the performance and grilled him about the band’s name.

“We got done playing, and we sat down at the bar, and this woman was drunk and said, ‘What’s the name of your band?’” Ramsey said. “I said, ‘Ah, we don’t have a name.’ She was like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Nah, I mean, it’s just my name,’ and she said, ‘That’s bulls—, you’re a band, pick a name.’ And we were like, ‘Man, we kind of are a band, huh? I guess we should pick a name.’ So this drunk woman somewhere in Alabama made us sit back on our heels and think, damn, I guess we should be a band.”

The past three years have seen Ramsey and the rest of the group — guitarist Brad Tursi, bassist Geoff Sprung, drummer Whit Sellers and multi-instrumentalist Trevor Rosen — finally hit country-music pay dirt after a decade as a band.

After charting with a self-titled EP in 2014, the band’s 2015 debut album “Meat and Candy” peaked at No. 3 on Billboard’s U.S. Country chart, spawning hits “Break Up With Him,” “Song For Another Time” (both reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart) and “Snapback.”

The band has been on the road since the EP’s release, with only a week-long break at the end of June, Ramsey said. A good chunk of those dates have been county fair gigs, where the band feels right at home.

“That’s kind of who our music speaks to, the people that show up for these fairs,” Ramsey said. “I grew up in a really small town, and when the fair came to town, that’s what everybody waited for.”

Going from songwriters ensconced in Nashville to touring musicians has been a challenge, though the band had time to gear up to it.

“It kind of gradually happened, because before this, we were still touring in a van and stuff,” Ramsey said. “We were writing songs a lot, but we also for the past five years have been touring pretty hardcore. It was definitely an adjustment that we all had to learn how to live like this, but now it feels like normal.”

The group is gearing up to release its sophomore effort “Happy Endings” on Aug. 25. Three singles from the record have already been released — “No Such Thing as a Broken Heart,” “Written in the Sand” and “Shoe Shopping” — and a fourth, “Be With Me,” drops Aug. 4, the day before the Deschutes County Fair gig.

The album was recorded quickly out of necessity, with basic tracking completed with “Meat and Candy” producer Shane McAnally in just four days and vocals finished up on the road. Fans have been reacting positively to the new songs, which expand on the pop/rock leanings of “Meat and Candy” with electronic elements and more piano (especially on “Shoe Shopping”).

“It’s so funny, I actually got the idea for that song in the shoe department,” Ramsey said. “We were shoe shopping in Nordstrom’s at Chicago, and it was really busy. There were a lot of ladies in there trying on shoes, and I was like, man, look at all these girls shoe shopping. And for whatever reason, the way that rolled off my tongue, I was like, I gotta write that down. I don’t know what this is gonna be about, but I gotta write it down.”

The band members’ backgrounds as professional songwriters helped them deal with the pressure of composing their second album while on the road. Ramsey, Tursi and Rosen, who worked together as songwriters before the band formed, have much the same approach to writing for Old Dominion as they did when writing for other artists.

“Maybe in some ways it does change a little bit, but really our goal is to write the best song we possibly can every time,” Ramsey said. “We don’t really think about who’s it for — is it for us, is it for someone else? Does it sound like a country song? Does it sound like a rock song? We don’t really think about that. We have an idea, and we try and let the song lead us where it wants to go. And then after it’s over with, then we can kind of sit back and try and play it and see if it sounds like us or not.”

Though country is an obvious starting point for Old Dominion, the band members’ wide-ranging tastes include classic rock, grunge and even hip-hop (“Trevor, when I first met him, he just couldn’t stop talking about Eminem,” Ramsey said).

It all comes together in the band’s sound, but the lyrics keep the band tied to the country genre.

“There’s a focus on story, a focus on real life, and I think that’s what makes it country,” Ramsey said. “We always said that we’re a rock band playing country songs, so I think really the songwriting is really what is gonna, in the end, make it a country song.”

“We were shoe shopping in Nordstrom’s at Chicago, and it was really busy. There were a lot of ladies in there trying on shoes, and I was like, man, look at all these girls shoe shopping. And for whatever reason, the way that rolled off my tongue, I was like, I gotta write that down. I don’t know what this is gonna be about, but I gotta write it down.”— Matthew Ramsey, 
Old Dominion singer

What: Old Dominion

When: 7 p.m. Aug. 5, doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Where: Deschutes County Fair, 3800 SW Airport Way, Redmond

Cost: Free with concert pass and fair admission. Passes for all shows available at any area McDonald’s from 2 to 7 p.m. Wednesday only. Fair admission: adults $22 for full fair, $12 for daily pass; $13/$7 for kids ages 6 to 12 and senior citizens ages 62 and older; free for kids younger than 5.

Contact: expo.deschutes.org or 541-548-2711