Adam Doleac Interview | “Biggest Fan” & Working w/ Rock Producer Colin Brittain

Intro/Sold Out Tour what's up y'all it's Adam doliak and I'm hanging out with Rob on front row lives [Music] what's up Adam good morning thank you so much for hanging out with me I'm super excited to be talking about this new single but before we really dive in to the to the track uh I really want to talk about this like sold out show that you just wrapped up uh sold out tour that you just wrapped up so um first ever sold sold out headline run what was that like for you and you know how did that kind of impact your tours moving forward now that you see like this amount of new fans that are coming to your shows yeah um it was awesome man we we have I've opened for a lot of people you know I've been on the road with uh Kane Brown and FGL and Zac Brown Band a couple years ago and so it's really fun doing that but this was our first time headlining and so it's definitely a more it's a more special feeling um you know even like we were direct support for Zach Brown playing for 20 000 people but you kind of have to go out on stage a little bit and say you know scream your name and try to get somebody to pay attention at those shows and um because they're they're there to see Zach Brown and for this show we were able to go out and you know some nights we'd sell five or six hundred tickets and some nights or so and 1500 tickets and uh depending on the size of the venue but either way they were just really special it was cool to see that many people show up um and know all the songs everywhere to the songs and and got to meet so many people that have been waiting for a headlining tour uh for years now kind of messed up when we were originally going to do it so we finally made it out there and uh I'll tell you what I wish I'd have done it a lot sooner now that I've done it it's a little scary when you announce it he's like who's gonna show up but um luckily so many people did and I can't wait to do it again we're definitely going to do another run this fall now the fact that you had the opportunity to open up for so many amazing amazing acts and go from small shows small venues to like Arena type of shows what would you say that you learned from those experiences that you brought on to your own headline tour well I think you learned something from everybody um every I feel like every artist is if they're playing an arena um or they're headlining in any sort of way they've probably figured something out I think everybody has their own kind of thing on how they want to play a show or there's always some little nook and cranny of how they interact with a crowd or a cool moment they that they come up with in a show so I think even if it's somebody that you didn't necessarily grow up listening to or you don't listen to or their kind of music's not your thing I think you can always kind of learn stuff from other artists so I always try to pay attention to that and um just kind of add things that I might like to what I already do um I'm not one of these people that just started singing on Tick Tock and these are my first live shows though I've you know I've played thousands of live shows so um I have had a lot of experience before any of this happened so it's live is kind of my favorite way to do things and interacting with crowds and putting on a show so um I've had I've had a lot of practice always room for improvement obviously but it's fun to it was fun to put all those things kind of into play in my own “Biggest Fan” headlining set you know now let's dive in and talk about the new single because uh this is such a beautiful track biggest fan um I love this piano ballad that you that you've just dropped in um on top of it like I feel like this is such a even brighter sound compared to your previous material um this song also hit me different because I just got engaged earlier this year and we just locked in a venue over the weekend so listening to this track I was like man like it's really really like hitting me um so you know I want to dive in and talk about this creative process and like what really kick-started that initial process of the song for you um kind of that exact thing congrats on getting engaged by the way thank you I we I got married six months ago to my wife and and that's that whole song this is this is my wife's favorite song first of all she's always said that about this song and if it's in our wedding video um so it's it's always been a special song for us and I think that song I mean that's what marriage and that relationship is I think is basically being your person's biggest fan for the rest of their life no matter what really happens what comes along good or bad and that's kind of where the song came from and I wrote it from a perspective of you know the choruses I'd stay all night watching you in the bright lights and you know put my hands up for a little more of your love um I kind of wrote it from the perspective as if she was the artist on stage every night and if if that were the case I'd be in the crowd because um you know I'm her biggest fan and I want to see her do whatever she loves to do and that's that's what she does for me she's been um in in my crowd so to speak before there was a crowd to be in she's been in the Crowd by herself at times but that's that's kind of the that's kind of the love that it takes and and obviously it's a learning process the big getting married and figuring out how to make somebody happy for the rest of your life is a long time but I think as long as you um are that person's biggest fan you have their back and you know no matter what happens that that's still going to remain the case that's kind of what that song says so um yeah I've actually snuck it to several people to use for their first dances already a lot of people have been hitting me on Instagram like Hey we're getting married a week before it comes out can you send me and I'll like secretly send it to them I've gotten some videos of people using it already so it's been really fun and I think this song is also it doesn't have to be a husband and wife you know I think it could be a mom or dad cheering for a son or a brother or sister or best friend or whatever it might be I think that everybody needs a biggest fan or two it doesn't really matter who that is I think everybody needs a couple of them yeah absolutely and the fact that this was such a personal topic to you like do you feel like that's why it was so important to have the piano as the lead instrument uh as opposed to the guitar yeah I think so actually the the lick you hear at the beginning of the song on piano I wrote on guitar um but there's something about the piano something about piano just makes you feel it just a little bit more you know and so this song is cool it actually is recorded a band in a room you know it's just a piano drum set a bass um a guitar player and then a little bit of steel guitar and that's it and and just the vocal the vocal is from the day that we wrote it never changed it um so it was just something about it that I was I was scared to mess with it kind of It kind of was immediately uh touching people when they heard the song and so I was like why would we change it they love it already so um yeah it's it's very true to me it's very true to my style it's really not I mean it could be a country song it could be a a pop rock song you know it could be kind of whatever it wants to be which I think is really cool with this song um you know a lot of my influences like John Mayer Gavin DeGraw Ben Rector Amos Lee that kind of stuff it could be in that genre which is kind of what I love anyway so I'm excited to see where it lands I love that because uh there's there's Parts uh during I mean the piano just gives me uh Gavin DeGraw um yeah it reminded me of Gavin DeGraw and you know there's certain guitar lines that you have throughout um throughout the song it just gave me John Mayer Vibes as well and I was like I really love the way that you kind of mesh it together um but I also love the fact that like I feel like your vocal uh register is a little higher on this song um was that something that just naturally flowed out of you during this recording process or or would you say that like you were um you were actively trying to hit these like new vocal ranges for this song because of the piano um out your I mean it is it is a pretty high range on this song it's like it's also a more bluesy scale on this song that I've done yet um which is my again my favorite way to sing I think a lot of times in Nashville you're kind of sometimes you try to impress the wrong people right you're like oh hopefully my label likes this or hopefully it's country enough or whatever it might be uh this is one of those songs that this is just exactly what I wanted it to sound like I didn't I didn't try to alter it to make sure it was in this genre or that genre or it said the right buzzwords or whatever it was I just it just came out and it was beautiful and I loved it and we didn't really change much about it at all um I I stayed pretty rangy in my vocal but you're right this has some big notes in it and I think they're even more noticeable because it's so stripped down there's not a lot of electric guitars in the way of the vocal there's not a lot going on all you hear is is the note you're hitting on the vocal which I think is cool and the the more music I write the more I kind of lean into that just because my vocal is kind of the the thing that's gonna set this apart if you know if it's not gonna be nobody's gonna listen because of an electric guitar they want to hear somebody singing so um I think I think it's cool I don't know what it is about it um but it makes me feel some type of way every time I listen to this song and I've heard it hundreds of times so everybody out there is just now hearing it for the first time um hopefully hopefully everybody loves it I love to see where it goes is this Undercover like undercoverly like that's gonna be my new work undercoverly is this that's your new username exactly is this like an undercover duet like I I hear another vocal uh throughout this song or is this just you on a different kind of range as well this is that's Sarah Buxton you hear singing in the background um I've written a couple songs in the past with her she is was an artist she's more of a writer type now but she has her own music as well um it is not an undercover duet situation it's just that she was in the room that day and anytime that you get to use Sarah buxton's voice uh you should do it it's it's probably actually I won't even say probably it's my favorite female voice I've ever heard Sarah's is and it's so she's so so talented um I have another song I put out a couple years ago called meet me in the city that I wrote with her as well so it's the same voice you hear on that and uh again my favorite female voice and so I wrote I wrote the song with her and so um all right uh you weren't going to talk me into taking her harmonies off of it when it came time to release it now in Producer the past you've worked with with Andy and Jordan uh as production as your producer so like are they back on this track uh did you do this yourself or did you work with a different producer like what who or what was involved in this production process yeah Andy skip uh is both a writer on the song and produced the song with me so he is very very much involved in this song and uh Jordan was not on this one um but he will I'm sure be involved in once once album two is done I'm sure he'll be here and there on it as well I I kind of I like to take the magic of the demo from the day we wrote it and uh kind of whoever started that is who I like to finish the song out um so we wrote this song Me and Andy together and uh he finished it out we took it in the studio added some you know some real drums and and bass other than that but it's it's pretty much what you heard the day we wrote it is pretty much what what's out now how would you Andy Skib say that your uh your Chemistry with you and Andy has kind of evolved throughout every like new track or record that you guys have released and how would you say that he he helps you to like step out of that comfort zone whenever you're recording whether it's vocals or like or your guitar or even just like in the writing process uh I would just say trust is something I have a lot of in Andy he I trust his let's call it a cool meter I like his I like his cool meter he knows kind of what I do well I mean I've been working with Andy since some of the first demos I did in Nashville I would write them with Tom Douglas and Tom would have this demo guy that he would send the songs to and I would send him a vocal and I'd get this demo back and it sound incredible I'm like who is this person and ended up being Andy skibb and so we started writing and so he's he's been hearing me sing since probably before I knew how to sing I think I figured it out a little better now but he's been working we've been working together for a long time and he's really good at knowing um you know my tendency is what I what my misses are what my best moments are and he's really cool uh in knowing which which direction to go and he another thing about Andy is he doesn't really ever want to make something that sounds like something else so he's always kind of taking bigger swings as far as you know an idea that I'm like what if I did this I mean no that's too crazy he'd be like no do it absolutely do it it sounds awesome so it's a good reinforcement of um somebody knowing what I want to do is he's a good kind of backboard to be able to throw these ideas off of and so uh it's it's no coincidence that all my biggest songs I think are are me and Challenge Andy Skip it's kind of cool to see what would you say like has been the biggest challenge on this track Alone um I mean it seems like you and him just have this you guys have basically become the the same person in the studio like you understand each other to that to that extent so what would you say was like the challenge that you kind of faced during the either writing or recording process of this song um the same challenge that I always face I would say is just letting it be what it is even if it's simple keep it simple you don't have to change it just because it's simple you don't have to change it just because it's what came out the first time sometimes a song will come out so easy that you think oh that that can't be right I have to go work a little bit harder on it but the truth is I think sometimes that first initial thought is is the Magic in the room and I think we did a really good job um we have a thing called demolitis which means we have a demo and we've listened to it 200 times and then you go take it into the studio and it starts sounding a little different and your brain says no no no no we hate this immediately because it's not what you're used to in your head and I think we did a good job on this as far as letting all the parts that we loved about the demo stay and just adding very minimal stuff into the final recording and it it turned into a version of the song that still sounds like the day we wrote it but it's just a little bit better and a little bit a little bit more magic that was added to it so I'm Vocal Recording really excited about it in saying that how important is the vocal recording do you try and keep it to that first original take or do you try to keep it keep it to as as least takes possible like what is that process like I back to the demolitis thing I I normally I like the day of vocal and I'm aware of that so like when we're writing a song and I'm singing the vocal that day I will be aware that like hey this this may end up being the final vocal and that's fine but there's something about the day you write it and it's not just like a Whimsical magic thing the day I write it I think what happens is you don't have a vocal to try and beat it's your first time singing the song You're just laying it down for the first time whatever comes out that's it and and so if if you live with that and when you go back in and you try and I do re-record vocals sometimes sometimes you speed a song up and you have to re-record the vocal sometimes I just think I can beat it but it's harder to go in and seeing a vocal when you have this other vocal on your head and you're trying to beat something you're not singing quite as uh free spirited as you would have been the first day and I think that's kind of what happens for me I just I don't like going in and trying to beat something that I already love just for the sake of re-singing it I think a lot of people think oh I gotta go re-sing it this song's going on the radio now it's not just a demo in my Dropbox but oftentimes like with biggest fan I teased it on the line it's got the same vocal online that people you know millions of people reacted to so why change it that that you know people are loving that vocal there's no reason to go change that they they hear some magic in it already so we just left the same exact vocal and changed some of the stuff with the track and here you go would you say that uh whenever you record a demo vocal you try and just make sure that that happens in the studio or do you still try and just record a demo vocal on your phone or whatever you have available to you know it's always awesome it's always yeah it's always on a proper microphone but that doesn't mean I'm not sitting on a couch holding it in my hand you know it's it doesn't have to be this Studio situation and there have been so there have been actual cell phone vocals make it on records I didn't know how to record vocals and guitars and everything I do now and I love it but I was kind of sending like cell phone stuff and they would they would put it in the recording and some of that actually made it in there and nobody really knew um I think I think there's just it's either it or it's not with the vocal and you just kind of know it you know what I mean you hear it and it either sounds like the final vocal or it doesn't so there's not much you can't you can't try too hard with it you just gotta let it come out and um and and live with it for a while and sometimes you just don't change it there's several songs famous there's a gold record hanging right there for famous that was the day we wrote it we never changed the vocal um neon fools was the same way I mean there's a lot of songs of mine I'd say probably more songs of mine than not we left the demo vocal on instead of re-singing it that's really cool that uh you're able to do that uh that that one initial take is like the one that's like been heard all around the world at the same time like how do you go about as far as trying different vocal runs vocal vocal ranges like knowing that you know this is the first take so I'm just gonna go all in so do you think about it ahead of time or you just let literally let your vocals just flow throughout this recording process yeah there's no sneaking ahead I think it's just kind of where you are that day what what your thoughts are that day come out I will say one thing that happens sometimes is you have a demo and then maybe that demo reacts online you take it out start playing it live on the road and that's when you really get to dig into the song in my opinion you can start you're playing it for people in a live setting the adrenaline's flowing you for me personally I'll go after bigger notes than I normally would when I'm playing live just because you have so much more adrenaline going so that's where I figure out little nooks and crannies of where maybe I can do this run here go a little higher here drop it there and it's almost like practice you know you're singing the song every night and you're getting used to it and the band has a different feel and you're kind of getting different ideas on what maybe you could have done in different parts of the song so sometimes if there's time to go out and play it live like that I'll go back into the studio and resync some of these parts that I landed on that I think are a lot cooler Colin Brittain than what I did the day of I've noticed I mean we we talked about Jordan and Andy how they've been around with you for some time but I've noticed that you uh also uh on social media you also follow Colin Britton who's another incredible Rock producer has there been any collaboration between the two of you or is there any potential collaboration between the two of you there because I would love to see that happen yeah we Collin's kind of a new buddy of mine we we started writing uh middle of last year I'd say we've written I think three songs um and we've got some good stuff I haven't reported anything just yet that we've done together that's going to be coming out for sure but uh we'll definitely continue to continue to write keep working on it he's done some really cool stuff in his career so it's cool to get to work with him he just moved back to LA though so I'm gonna have to catch him on his trips back from from LA to Nashville um I know he was living here for a little while but um yeah hopefully I'll get to work with him again soon now the fact that he's more on like the alternative Rockside what was your experience writing with him and what do you feel that you learned from that um from those sessions together um I love that personally I I like when people come together from different genres or different areas um because you know we write a song every single day and so it can get sometimes it can get a little bit stale and have somebody's a perspective of somebody who was it hasn't really been in country music is always kind of nice and refreshing and out of the box so it kind of allows you to try some different stuff um even if it doesn't work it's fun you get you go in there and try some stuff and you know land on some stuff that you that you love maybe you missed by a little bit but you kind of keep rolling with that so um he's also kind of a in the room full band guy which was really fun because we I'm a drummer as well so I remember I got to I went in and played drums on the songs that we wrote which was fun and um got the track of vocal kind of got to be the band that day he's got a live room and a studio and so um it was really fun I wrote with him and another guy named Kevin Bard who uh is another he lives out in La as well one of my favorite Riders so um it was great got to got to go to his house meet his family meet his kid um it was a good hang I'm looking forward to to that music to to be released because I really want to see like how that Dynamic really was between the two of you um and I'm excited that you guys connected that's awesome he's one of my favorite producers right now um and like super excited about this Upcoming Tours / Outro um now that the singles out you're gonna have a pretty busy rest of the summer and year pretty much um with some one-off shows festivals and obviously the the Old Dominion tour um when you come into these to these uh shows what can fans look forward to and what do you feel will be different with your sets this time around um well the the festival season obviously we have uh some new music which is really exciting and I've got more coming this year so we're going to be teasing some new songs for those crowds out there playing the ones that they love as well um Old Dominion tour is really exciting I've been wanting to tour with them for a long time I feel like I don't have a lot in common with a lot of country acts but Old Dominion is is a band that I've always always loved uh Matt Ramsey I love his voice and and their their way of writing a song is really cool so um I think that's gonna be a really one really fun one to open I think those fans are going to be there for Old Dominion but I think what what I do will be really it'll be a nice pair for what they do as well so excited to get out there with them and um and looking forward to some more headlining runs too I think we only made it to Dallas on the first leg of the tour that's as far west as we went so we're gonna try to get out um towards the West Coast do Phoenix and La San Diego and I think maybe Vegas Salt Lake maybe try to get up to Portland um a lot of these West Coast markets that we didn't get to tour with and that have been sending me hate mail since then um I gotta get out there and play some shows for them and I love it out there um you know my stuff was not the countryest of country so I we have a big following out on the west coast because I think it's a nice you know people who maybe don't realize they like country music uh we have a lot of fans in that in that category that's like oh I actually like this this is good um so I'm excited to get out there and play for them too and see see a few thousand palm trees that always makes me happy awesome well I'm looking forward to that and I hopefully uh once the LA show is here we get to catch that so um Adam thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me congratulations with biggest fan and I'm looking forward to more music from you thanks man likewise thanks for taking the time and yeah are you out in L.A I am yes perfect well we'll let you know as soon as we get out there we'll get you out to the show perfect looking forward to it