Old Dominion keeps winning!
At the ACM Awards on Monday, the musical group is celebrating after taking home the award for group of the year for the fifth year in a row.
During their acceptance speech, the group expressed their excitement — but also used their time to pay tribute to the people of Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian invasion.
“Wow thank you guys — this is our fifth year and that’s no small thing,” Mathew Ramsey, the band’s lead vocalist, said. “We do not take that for granted. We have so many people to thank, our families and people that we love and our management team … and our label … our fans. Thank you so much.”
He continued, “I’m so thankful that Dolly [Parton] said what she said at the beginning because I was feeling a little bit strange because we’re in this beautiful bubble here where every person whose name is mentioned tonight has fought for their dreams, but there are people fighting for their lives right now and it felt a little weird. I’m so thankful she said that. Thank you, we’re so grateful for this award.”
Old Dominion consists of members Ramsey, Trevor Rosen, Whit Sellers, Geoff Sprung, and Brad Tursi — though Sellers was not in attendance.
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Denise Truscello/Getty Old Dominion
The “One Man Band” singers were up against Little Big Town, Lady A, Midland, and the Cadillac Three.
In October, the band spoke to PEOPLE following the release of their fourth full-length album, Time, Tequila and Therapy about making music during the pandemic.
“It was so strange to go through the pandemic where we were still operating as a business,” bass player Sprung told PEOPLE. “We’re still making all these decisions together, but without doing the thing that brought all the joy. The reason that we have all these business decisions is because of this 60 or 90-minute portion of the day where we have the most fun that five friends can have. But you take that away for a year, and it weighs on you.”
Ramsey, 44, said the multi-platinum-selling band was never in any danger of breaking up, but the five bandmates still knew they desperately needed to do something to dig themselves out of the doldrums. So they returned to their roots, simply tapping into those first garage-band impulses.
“As kids growing up, that’s the way we were — a band of friends getting together and jamming it out until we came up with something,” Ramsey said.
The ACM Awards, hosted by Dolly Parton, Jimmie Allen and Gabby Barrett, are streaming live from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas exclusively on Prime Video starting at 8 p.m. EST.
