Old Dominion Share the Story Behind Their ‘Meow Mix’ Album
Meow meow meow meow meow....
Often artists will record a full studio version of their music, then come up with alternate versions of the track, whether it’s acoustic, live or instrumental. But when Sony Music Nashville asked Old Dominion for some new versions of their songs, the band decided to think a little outside of the box.
The idea to record their self-titled album with only meows stemmed from an inside joke, the band’s Matthew Ramsey and Trevor Rosen revealed during a chat with Sirius XM The Highway’s Storme Warren.
“There’s a couple things. You know how you’re on the road and you end up with inside jokes? The meowing just sort of happened over time. It was like we’d be sitting around having a conversation, a meeting about something, and someone would make a good point and then someone would go like ‘oh, meow meow.’ That’s sort of maybe where it started, and then you know starting soundcheck, slipping a few meows in there out of boredom,” shared Ramsey.
“And then the label’s always wanting you to release different versions of the song,” he continued. “They’re always coming at us like ‘we need an acoustic version or a live version or whatever,’ so as a joke, we thought ‘wow, we should just do a whole song that’s all meows and turn it in to them. And then it snowballed into the whole album.”
“We were already in the studio, might as well just go to the next song, right?” added Rosen.
After completing the full record from top to bottom, the band brought the ‘Meow Mix’ to their unsuspecting label home.
“We told them that we did the alternate versions they were asking for. We turned it in and they were furious and we refused to do any other versions. They’re still mad about it, but that’s all the versions we gave them,” joked Rosen as Ramsey laughed in the background.
“They were just thoroughly confused,” added Ramsey later. “We did it without them knowing because they see our calendar and we put ‘vocal rehearsals’ on the calendar so they wouldn’t know we were going into the studio. If they saw studio time, they’d be like ‘what are y’all doing in the studio?’”
Overall, the fan response to Old Dominion’s Meow Mix album has been positive and listeners have contributed the project to the band’s boredom from being off the road. But in truth, the project has been a long time coming.
“The great thing is everyone thinks this is quarantine boredom, but we’ve had this done for quite some time. This is something that we did … we actually carved time out of our busy touring schedule to make sure that we went and recorded all these meows. This has been done for quite awhile,” Ramsey admitted.
See Old Dominion’s interview with Storme Warren above and check out the Meow Mix below.
