On November 6 RCA Nashville will release Meat and Candy, the debut full-length from Old Dominion. It’s been a busy 2015 for the five-man group with the first single from the set, “Break Up With Him,” topping the Country Airplay chart—a rarity for a new group. We recently caught up with lead singer Matthew Ramsey to get the scoop on the album…and the interesting title of the project.

How does it feel to turn on a radio or look at a chart and see your name on it?

It’s definitely more than a little weird. It is very surreal to see your name on the charts with all of those other people. There’s definitely a feeling of disbelief, and you wonder if you belong here. For a debut single on a new act, I think we would have been happy to get anywhere on the chart. Now that we’re [at the top]; we spend a lot of time just shaking our head, thinking, I guess we’ve got a hit.

Nashville has been buzzing about Old Dominion’s stage show for a couple years now. How important is the live aspect of what you do?

It’s so important to us. We’re a true band. We play music with each other, and we love doing that. We were friends first, before we were ever a band. We were just playing the songs we had written just to do it. We weren’t really expecting it to blow up or anything.

I understand that this band has a deep history with one another—explain.

In high school especially, Whit Sellers and I grew up in the same areas and went to rival high schools, and were in competing drum lines. We were all in bands since we were teenagers, and were all playing the same circuit. Being in a band was nothing new to us before we came together in this one…this just happens to be our favorite.

You guys have had a heck of a run so far as songwriters, with hits by Craig Morgan and Kenny Chesney. Talk about that success.

It’s been a real amazing run. That’s a big part of why we moved to Nashville—to focus on songwriting. Trevor Rosen has had a huge run with “Sangria” and “Say You Do,” while Brad Tursi and I wrote “Save It For A Rainy Day” together and Brad wrote “A Guy Walks Into A Bar.” You work so long to get these other artists to cut your songs, and it finally starts rolling, so you have to keep going at it while the iron’s hot. Now, there’s a little bit of thought that maybe we should have held one of those songs back.

The name of the album is Meat And Candy. What led to that title?

We were sitting there trying to figure out which songs we were going to record. We had a list of songs, and we thought, We had a lot of ear candy type songs on here. We need to throw a little meat and candy in there. Shane McAnally heard that, and said, “You guys should call the album that.” We thought about it, and there was never any other discussion about it from that point on. It’s really about the songs, and what we’re capable of as songwriters and a band.

In listening to the record, it’s amazing how well you fit into what country radio is doing now. How does that make you feel?

I don’t think we were really chasing radio. I think the idea is that when you’re a writer, you get to the point that you’re writing something that you think is great and cool, you’re pulling radio to you. That’s the idea. Right now, it seems that we’ve landed in that space. Hopefully, we can maintain that and grow with the format as it changes. There’s so many influences that come into play. We draw from a lot of places.

One of my favorite cuts on the project is “Song For Another Time,” which from what I understand almost didn’t make the record. Is that correct?

We thought we were done with the album, and we were out on the road. Matt Jenkins came out with us to write, and the more we listened to it, we thought it was so special that we had to record it. So, we booked a special flight home just to record that one song to make sure it made the album. It was definitely worth it.

You worked with red-hot songwriter/producer Shane McAnally on the record. What was that like?

He’s incredible. He’s one of those people that we’ve been friends with for a long time before any of us had any success—even him. To watch his success has been amazing. It was a natural fit for us because he knows us and has seen what we’ve gone through. He’s very good at knowing the direction that we want to go, and helping us get there. He’s good at making quick decisions on what is working and what is not. He’s a great person to have in the studio.

Not just the album title is a little bit of a standout, but also the cover, with the meats and sweets? How did you approach the art work?

We didn’t want to do the same old type cover with us on it. We wanted it to stand out. When we came up with the title, we thought about all of these bright combinations of meat and candy that’s a little bit gross. We just wanted to make it interesting. We found this photographer whose work jumped off the page at us, and he got what we wanted to do right away, and knocked it out of the park.

And with the holidays around the corner, what is your favorite sweet libation?

Oh, man. I love them all. A little Egg Nog with some bourbon in it is good…