By Chuck Yarborough, The Plain Dealer
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on May 17, 2016 at 7:30 AM, updated May 17, 2016 at 7:32 AM

PREVIEW

Old Dominion

What: Kenny Chesney's Spread the Love Tour.
When: 8 p.m. Thursday, May 26.
Where: Blossom Music Center, 1145 W. Steels Corners Road, Cuyahoga Falls.
Headliner: Kenny Chesney.
Tickets: $31 to $82.25, plus fees, at the box office, Ticketmaster outlets, online at ticketmaster.com and livenation.com and by phone at 1-800-745-3000.

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Kenny Chesney will have a lot of fans in the seats and on the lawn at Blossom Music Center next week, and he'll have a few more backstage, too.

Matthew Ramsey and his Old Dominionband mates are touring with the country superstar for a second time - which speaks well of them and of Chesney. And for Ramsey, the lead singer for the band whose single "Break Up With Him,'' off their debut album "Meat and Candy, hit No. 1 on the country charts this past January, it's a fantastic experience. That's not always the case in an industry where egos sometimes can be measured in the comparison of how many of whose tractor-trailers are on the backstage lot.

"All of the people on this crew who work for Kenny -- I've never met one in a bad mood,'' Ramsey said in a call from a tour stop in Connecticut. "He treats them with such a big heart and he treats us the same way.

"When we first started, we were this rinky-dink band nobody had ever heard of,'' Ramsey said of being a part of Chesney's 2015 Big Revival Tour. "But when you show up, he treats you like stars.''

Tours like that and this season's "Spread the Love Tour'' are primers for bands like Old Dominion.

"We definitely have our ears and eyes wide open,'' said Ramsey. "Kenny's already shaping the band that we are and he probably doesn't even know it. We've grown so much because of him.''

But it's not like Ramsey and his band mates -- Trevor Rosen (guitar, keyboards), Whit Sellers (drums), Geoff Sprung (bass guitar) and Brad Tursi (guitar) â are babes in the woods. All of the guys - who, by the way, have ties to Virginia, which is why the group is called by the state's nickname - have been around Music City for a long time.

"I had some great advice when I moved to Nashville,'' said Ramsey, who traded Virginia for Music City 14 years ago. "I met Darrell Scott, who's written a bunch of hit songs for the Dixie Chicks and asked what he thought about moving to Nashville.

"He said, 'If you're moving down there to be a star, don't do it. But if you're moving down there to be around the best musicians best writers, by all means, go for it,' '' Ramsey recalled.

And he has done just that: The entire band is comprised of songwriters, which is why they've done so well that Old Dominion won the Academy of Country Music's best new vocal duo or group, and why "Meat and Candy'' is performing on the charts.

"When we write songs, we don't ever sit down to write an Old Dominion song,'' Ramsey said. "We just sit down to write the best song we possibly can.

"Once we started to do that, we started getting attention for our songs'' he said.

Sometimes, though, they surprise themselves.

"Our next single, 'A Song for Another Time,' when we wrote it, we weren't thinking about it for us,'' he said. "We tried to get Kenny to record it,'' Ramsey said.

"Kenny emailed me back and said, 'It's not for me right now, but you guys should record it,' '' he said.

The guys played the song at a sound check and realized that Chesney was right. Though they'd already finished - or thought they'd finished - "Meat and Candy,'' it went on the album.

And in their set list. So it'll still be heard at a Chesney show, even if it isn't Kenny singing it.