Adam Doleac saw his music blow up when he released ‘Famous’ independently in 2019.
That song led to him signing to Sony Music Nashville and since then he’s been releasing singles including ‘Key to the City’, ‘Somewhere Cool With You’ and ‘Drinkin’ It Wrong’. With the pandemic finally loosening it’s grip on the world, Doleac is raring to go with a packed 2022 planned.
I spoke to Adam about his upcoming new music, his experience of the pandemic and his excitement to get back out on the road…
How is 2022 treating you? It feels like it’s going better than the last two years
Yeah, not very high standards as far as being better than last year, right? But it is certainly better than last year. I started this year off getting engaged, which was nice. We got engaged in February. I’m planning a wedding. We’re about to start tour… we’re going out with Jessie James Decker starting April 14th. I’ve got a brand new single going to radio on March 21st and I’ve got a whole entire record coming out for the first time. 13 brand new songs. It’s my first record on Sony and the first time that fans are going to get to really hear the project from song 1 to song 13 as opposed to putting out one song at a time. It’s a really big year. I’m really excited. Lots of great shows on the books as well. We’re going to have a big 2022!
You’ve been prolific in terms of putting out singles since you signed with Sony. You must be feeling good about getting a full album out there?
It feels great. I’m an album person, I’ve always been one. I don’t like this world where everybody’s putting out just one song here and one song there and only EPs. All my favourite bands and artists, they’re album people. I’ve got, you can see up on my wall, some of my favourite albums up there on vinyl…
Yeah, I can see John Mayer up there…
John Mayer’s where it all started for me. You have to hit kind of a certain mark of success or be doing well enough for the label to say, ‘let’s put this money behind a record and make a full record’. It’s kind of them saying, ‘we believe this is gonna work and we believe in you becoming a star’ so it’s good to feel that from the label side of things. It seems to be really great energy. I’ve been teasing a lot of new songs on socials and Instagram and all that stuff and the reaction has been great. Seems like everybody’s ready for it, and nobody’s more ready than I am for it. I’m excited.
Your name is one that keeps cropping up and I’m always aware when you have new music out. Each release seems to be building on the momentum of the last. How has it been for you?
That’s the thing that it’s been for us. Some people have this ride, where maybe they put a song on a TikTok and it goes viral and overnight they become something. That has not been my experience. I’ve put you know, 6/7/8 years in, playing shows on the road and traveling, really working hard. Luckily for me, it’s continued to do this the entire time. That’s what’s happened, even over the last couple years while they were tough 2020 was our biggest year we’ve ever had. 2021 was bigger than 2020 and 2022 is doing the same thing. It continues to trend upwards. That’s been my mentality since the beginning; do what I do, stay true to that and make fans one fan at a time and that’s what’s happening. This year is the first time we get to really pour some gas on the fire with the whole record, a lot of new material and then we’ll see what happens. I appreciate you keeping up over there. I’ve not made it across the pond to play yet. I’ve had a couple plans to do so but COVID ruined them. I cannot wait. I’ve heard there are no better country music fans in the world so I’m excited to get over there too.
It must have been bittersweet to see everything building for you but not being able to get out on the road and capitalise on it…
For sure. I would say most artist’s favourite part of what we do (is the live show). Even if you love writing and you love recording, the moment of the full circle from writing a song in a room to getting to play it for 5,000-10,000 people and hear them sing along, it’s always the pinnacle of what we get to do. That got stripped away and that was really tough. For everybody, the one silver lining is that we were all going through it together. It’s been really tough. There was a lot of bad but a lot of good because it made me take a break and spend some time with my family and my fiance, these people that are used to me being gone four days a week. I love my job and I love working, and I probably would have never taken that break. This allowed me to go back home to Mississippi for two or three weeks at a time and stay with my folks back there, and take a couple of vacations that I wouldn’t have been able to take. There’s been some good there but it was very frustrating. I’m so glad that it’s back. Our tour starts mid-April and I can hardly wait. The biggest thing on COVID for me was momentum. ‘Famous’ had just gone Gold independently before I even signed a record deal. It was really starting to take off and then COVID happened and it stepped on it just a little bit. I’ve been telling people, it feels like the momentum and the way things are kind of back to the way they were right before this whole pandemic thing happened. It’s taken a little time but I think we’re back. I think fans are more ready than ever. I think artists are more ready than ever. I think the shows and the crowds are going to be the best they’ve ever been.
Having had this unprecedented amount of time, did you take advantage of that to focus on your craft and your songwriting? It must have felt a little bit like a gift…
It was a gift in several ways for me. The writing, I think a lot of people really, really did not take to Zoom and they shied away from it because of the artistic nature of it where you want to be in person and be in the vibe. I was one of these weirdos that actually didn’t mind it too much. It actually was very efficient. We were writing songs in two hours instead of four hours, because we were there to write a song and that was it. I’m in my studio right now, which I’ve had in my house for years, but never really learned to use it properly. COVID forced me to figure out how to track and comp guitars and track and comp vocals, and do a lot of stuff studio-wise and producer-wise on my side that I’ve been wanting to do but I just didn’t have time or get around to doing it. I fell in love with that process too. I think I wrote 150 new songs over that period. There’s a lot of new material. You’ll hear songs that came from this COVID period, probably on the next two or three records that’ll stick around. It was a good time, musically, for me. I got a lot of stuff that I really love.
When you’ve written that amount of songs, I imagine it’s not an easy process to whittle them down to the ones that make the record?
No, it’s not. What’s the old saying? A songwriters’ favourite song is the last one he wrote, which is true so often. For me, it’s always reaction. I love opinions. I love sending Dropbox links around to people and saying, ‘Hey, let me know what what sticks with you and what sticks out to you’. First listen is something that I don’t really get to have because I spend so much time with these songs by the time I’m really listening I’ve already heard it 10 or 15 times. That first initial reaction from a fan or a family member, whoever it is, is important and you can always tell if it’s a big reaction, it’s a good reaction, even if it’s bad because you know you get something out of that listen. There’ll be 13-17 songs on this record. There’s easily 15 other songs that I love and could fit on this record. It’s (got to be about) the timing, what I’m listening to right now, what seems to be sticking with me and the test of listening to these songs hundreds of times, and which ones still sound fresh and you still look forward to listening to.
One thing that’s been a little harder is I normally pick songs by crowd reaction. I’ll throw them into the live set and see what the crowd says about the song. If they love it and I’m getting a hundred messages after the show saying, ‘hey, what was that new song?’ that’s kind of me going, ‘okay, well, that’s sticking with these fans. They love it for the show’. These last couple years we didn’t have that. We didn’t have the reaction and we didn’t get to try songs out anywhere except social media. The fans are kind of the boss. I don’t really like to put anything out there that I don’t love, just in case they love it. If I put something I didn’t like out, that’s a bad situation. The fans are normally kind of the boss and that’s why we do it and who we do it for. That’s my process on picking them.
Your fans are loving ‘Drinkin’ It Wrong’, which came out at the beginning of the year. It’s such a feel-good and catchy song. How do you feel about the way it’s been received?
Well, that’s actually why I wrote that song, exactly what you just said We were in the middle of (the pandemic) and it seemed there wasn’t a light at the end of the tunnel. We didn’t know how long it was going to last. We were all missing shows and crowds and our lives. I was with Jordan Schmidt and Carrie Barlow and that was the idea – when we do get back, whenever that light at the end of the tunnel happens, I want to have a song that is about forgetting about it… about having a good time. That’s where that lyric came from. ‘If you got work on your mind, if your troubles ain’t gone, if ain’t hitting you right, well you’re drinkin’ it wrong’. That was my thing, when the world opens back up and you’re in the front row at a Country show with a beer in the air, if you’re sitting there thinking about your job or the long week you’ve had, well you’re drinkin’ it wrong. You’re supposed to be having a good time. It ain’t that hard. Just be where you’re at and have a good time. That’s what happened with the song. The feel good-ness of that song and the summer feel of it, I think is going to be really great. We’ve seen a really great reaction from social media and also a few shows that we’ve played this year and last year, the crowd seemed to really love it.
What was it like returning to the road after having so much time off? Was it emotional?
Being on the road is very much like family to me with your band and your crew. We all live on that bus and we’re all very, very close and spend crazy amounts of time together so it was a little emotional as far as that goes. The whole time we weren’t playing I wanted to be out there with them and also I’ve got people to feed. I’ve got a whole crew of people that I want to pay and get them money, and they bring their families out. I feel protective over that. Getting back out with those guys and being able to look at each other and be like, ‘we made it through this crazy time’ was kind of emotional for me. Show-wise we just couldn’t wait to get back out there. We actually started back with Zac Brown Band. We went back out there, after a year and a half, in front of about 20,000 people every night which was pretty awesome. I have no complaints there. It was certainly a bit of an emotional experience just because nobody’s ever been through anything like that. Before we took that for granted and that got taken away for the first time. I think that’s gonna help coming back in because everybody has seen what it’s like without music and without shows, and nobody liked it. I think there’ll be a lot less taking it for granted. I think people will be a lot more in the moment this year. I’ve heard it’s going to be the roaring 20s again just 100 years later so that that seems like a fitting way to put it.
Here in the UK life seems to be back to normal again pretty much. I bet you can’t wait to just get out there and do all these exciting things you have planned?
It’s very exciting. Like I said, there was a lot of good that came from the downtime but if you do this for a living, it’s in you to be out there and to be performing and meeting new people and new cities. I love that side of things. I still go out to the, the merch booth after the show and take pictures with the entire line until the line’s gone and meeting people. I actually love that part of what I get to do. We are all very, very excited, not only for the new music, but to get out and play the new music for people this year. It’s good to see a lot of tour dates on the schedule, and I can’t wait to see everybody.
Adam Doleac’s single ‘Drinkin’ It Wrong’ is available to download and stream now. Listen to it below:
