There’s a period in life – usually in the 30s or 40s – where people make big decisions about their identity. The world is changing around them, and they control their reaction: Do they resist those changes and hang on to the past? Or do they accept society’s evolutions and try to adapt along with it?
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The former world view leads in its most extreme version to the stereotypically angry old person. The path for the latter viewpoint skews toward the wise, resilient soul that most would likely aspire to be in their senior years.
Both kinds of people are shaped by their past experiences, like the protagonist in the new Old Dominion single: “Making Good Time,” released by Columbia Nashville to country radio via PlayMPE on July 14. The protagonist flashes back to a teenage relationship full of rebellion, joy and excitement, lived out with the newfound freedom that comes from a car and a first driver’s license. The couple had been in the early years of their respective life journeys, and the supporting music takes a parallel trip, reflecting on the past with an upbeat attitude while changing with each section of the song. It’s written as if the singer is at ease with his evolution, but appreciates the history that brought him here.
“Change is just inevitable,” band member Trevor Rosen says. “That’s growth, so I think looking back positively is a healthy thing.”
Rosen developed the first sound of “Making Good Time” while watching TV. Noodling on his daughter’s compact Baby Taylor guitar, he broke into an easy-going, fluttery pattern and recorded it on his phone. When he and two of his Old Dominion band mates – guitarist Brad Tursi and frontman Matthew Ramsey – had a writing appointment at SMACKSongs on Music Row, Rosen brought up that guitar part on the way to the meeting and sent the file to SMACK writer Ross Copperman (“Dancin’ in the Country,” “Living”).
By the time Rosen arrived, Copperman had put a beat behind the guitar lick, and the rest of the day’s writing crew – including artist-writer Ross Ellis – was already toying with it. As conversation around it progressed, Rosen threw out a title that was also sitting on his phone, “Making Good Time.” It seemed to fit. It easily applied to both loving and driving, but instead of shaping it with a current storyline, they worked through the prism of nostalgia, paying homage to “Nowhere Fast,” a song from their first album that also mixes romance and automobiles, and nearly became a single.
They wrote “Making Good Time” chronologically from the first line, picking out specific images from the past relationship – a concert, a Chevrolet, the girl’s braids – while providing zero clues about the current setting. The former lovers could have bumped into each other, he could be carrying on a conversation in his head, they could even still be a couple – there’s a mystery about who these people are now.
“Sometimes being a little more vague helps people be able to bring it into their own lives,” Rosen reasons.
It’s the opposite tack from the Dan Fogelberg classic “Auld Lang Syne,” which etches out the details of a chance meeting between two exes, never giving any specifics about the time they were together. That Fogelberg piece is a guiding light for Ramsey.
“I think about that song obsessively,” he says. “It’s the simple vignettes like, ‘We bought a six-pack at the liquor store / And we drank it in her car.’ Those are just real intimate moments that are just like, ‘Holy shit. How do you get that granular?’ And we try to do that a lot.”
“Making Good Time” unfolded by moving from the serene reflection of the fluttery acoustic riff and the opening stanza into a pleading pre-chorus: “We were 17, we were making moves / Burning gasoline, I was on fire for you.” After those few lines, it broke into an anthemic chorus. Copperman shifted the sound beneath that pre-chorus into a techno-like bass part that telegraphs a new stage in the song’s journey.
“It’s like a pulsing synth,” Rosen says. “It’s like, ‘Okay, let’s create some tension here.’ How do we do that? Sometimes the best way is to drop the beat and have less going on. You know, set them up for the drop.”
The chorus recaptured their youthful energy, brimming with enthusiasm all the way to the final “making good time” hook over a spiky rhythm guitar. Verse two offered more specifics from the past – matching tattoos, love in a clover field – but filtered through the sands of time.
Instead of a bridge, Tursi chipped in a guitar segment that would become a new theme for the back half of the song.
Old Dominion took “Making Good Time” into its first session for the new Barbara album, released Aug. 22. That initial tracking date with producer Shane McAnally (Sam Hunt, Carly Pearce) didn’t quite go as planned.
“That was a difficult session for me personally,” Ramsey notes. “I wasn’t sure about any of the songs, except for ‘Making Good Time.’ We had maybe four or five songs that we wanted to knock out, and we honestly missed on two of them. We just abandoned them. And for whatever reason, it didn’t feel great, except that song might have been one of the last ones of the of the session, and we finally kind of fell into a groove.”
They had originally tried to cut “Making Good Time” without referencing Copperman’s demo, but it didn’t quite jell. That changed when they used pieces of that demo to seed the performance and found a new energy on top of it. Keyboard player Dave Cohen beefed up the synth bass part in the pre-chorus, with bassist Geoff Sprung layering additional sound. Tursi further developed the guitar section with a skippy, carefree vibe while dialing up a new wave-era tone and reverb, with drummer Whit Sellers continuing a relentless backbeat. McAnally encouraged Tursi to cut out some of the quiet spaces in that guitar part, creating more melody.
Ramsey was challenged again when he cut the final vocals, reaching to his upper register on the pre-chorus and battling a crowded chorus lyric.
“There’s at least one song every record that I’m going ‘Why do we put so many damn words in the song?’” he says with a laugh.
As confident as they were about “Making Good Time” going into the sessions, it wasn’t a slam-dunk for a single. Ultimately, it drew a strong reaction from the public when it went to digital streaming providers, and that made the difference. It’s at No. 55 on Country Airplay as it begins its journey into the future.
“People love this song,” Rosen says. “We love this song. It has the classic elements of Old Dominion, you know. It sounds fresh, but it has that ‘Snapback’ throwback pop chorus. And people love it. When people are telling you they want to hear a song, don’t ignore the obvious.”
