Adam Doleac

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Adam Doleac traded a promising baseball career for country music, leading a band named after himself prior to launching a solo career in 2017. A succession of increasingly popular singles and a subsequent deal with Arista Nashville resulted in the online hit single “Famous,” from his 2020 EP of the same name. “Famous” and such subsequent singles as “Drinkin’ It Wrong”–-many of which were collected on his 2022 debut album Barstool Whiskey Wonderland–found Doleac honing out a country-pop sound flexible enough to cover mellow ballads and bubbly drinking tunes while also being able to sustain electronic remixes of his tunes that didn’t erase his country core.
A native of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he was born on April 15, 1988, Doleac grew up playing both sports and music, learning how to play drums at an early age. When it came time to attend college, he chose to set aside basketball and golf to play baseball for the University of Southern Mississippi. During his time at the school, his team won three Southern Mississippi Conference championships and he played in the College World Series in 2009, but the following year he wrote his first song, “That Guy.” For a while, he played ball and music concurrently, but he found the allure of music too hard to resist, particularly after “Travel On” started to rack up hits on YouTube. He put out a self-released EP called Travel On in Hattiesburg, and its release party earned a sizable crowd, so he decided to move to Nashville in 2012.
Once in Nashville, Doleac began to write professionally and play music with a band named after himself. In 2015, the Adam Doleac Band self-released Dream Catcher, and around the same time he signed a deal with manager Jake LaGrone. Soon, Doleac landed a publishing deal with Sony/ATV, placing songs with Kenny Chesney, Darius Rucker, and Rascal Flatts. In June 2017, 287 Records released an eponymous six-song EP that showcased Doleac’s burgeoning easygoing country-pop. His star continued to rise over the next two years, particularly as singles like “Whiskey’s Fine,” “Solo,” and “Famous” put up big numbers on the streaming services. The 2019 EP Famous (Remixes) revealed his pop side, while the Famous EP, released the following year, collated his recent singles and was issued by the Arista Nashville imprint.
Doleac released a steady stream of singles through 2020 and 2021, a string highlighted by “Meet Me in the City,” “Another” and “Coulda Loved You Longer,” three songs which were given alternate mixes; the first two were stripped back to their acoustic bones, while the latter received a splashy dance mix by Petey Martin. In 2022, Doleac released “Drinkin’ it Wrong,” “Don’t it Sound Alright,” and “Girl in Love,” three singles that led to the September release of his debut full-length Barstool Whiskey Wonderland. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine