Dan + Shay brings 'accidental' hit song to Oro Valley festival

Country music’s rising newcomers Dan + Shay — that would be Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney — scored their second No. 1 hit in August.

Rather than pop the champagne corks, the pair surprised their fans in Nashville with a pop-up concert.

“It’s going to be cool,” Smyers said in a phone call a few hours before they started tweeting about the surprise Music City show. “It’s crazy to hear fans and people come up to our meet and greet and say they are using (‘From the Ground Up’) in their wedding. That’s a big moment in someone’s life, and to use our song, that’s crazy.”

The pair might hear similar fan anecdotes when they join the country lineup for the two-day Oro Valley Music Festival on Saturday, Oct. 1, and Sunday, Oct. 2.

In the four years since they first started writing and singing together, “Ground Up” has been the song that has resonated the most with their fans, and with Smyers and Mooney.

“I remember listening to Rascal Flatts ‘Bless the Broken Road’ and thinking, ‘Man, those guys had to get so many requests for weddings and stuff’,” Smyers said. “Now we’re kind of following in that direction. That’s a dream come true. We wrote a love song about our grandparents and the love they shared, and to have people embrace it and apply it to their own life is a full-circle moment. Just shows the power of music.”

Smyers, 29, and Mooney, 24, penned “Ground Up” with songwriter Chris DeStefano almost by accident. Smyers had just come from his grandfather’s funeral in Ohio and the trio “got to sharing stories, talking about our grandparents, going to their house as a kid.” They also talked about their grandparents’ marriages. Smyers’ grandparents had been married more than 65 years at the time of his grandfather’s death.

It took the trio 90 minutes to write a song that Smyers said just wrote itself.

“We knew it was a special and emotional song, but never in our wildest dreams did we think it would reach as far as it did and get all the way to No. 1 on the charts,” he said.

Nor did they think it would resonate with fans as much as it has.

“Sometimes it’s scary to put out a ballad like that or a song that is that personal. The fact that country radio embraced it and fans embraced it is super rewarding,” he said. “We knew it was a special and emotional song, but never in our wildest dreams did we think it would reach as far as it did and get all the way to No. 1 on the charts.”

The hit follows their first No. 1, “Nothin’ Like You,” which was the third single released from their 2013 debut album “Where It All Began.” The album came a year after Dan + Shay formed after a chance meeting at a Nashville party. The pair initially planned to write songs for other artists.

“The first song we wrote got put on hold by Rascal Flatts, which was our favorite band of all times,” Smyers said.

In the first year after meeting in late 2012, the pair penned some 70 or 80 songs.

Instead of following the Nashville norm of recording a demo of the song for publishers, the pair would perform their songs live for the people who controlled Music City’s burgeoning song publishing industry. Smyers said the publishers would tell them that they had wonderful harmonies and sounded good together and should meet instead with record labels.

“It just kind of happened and that’s sort of when we knew that there was something there, more than just us having fun rocking out to these songs,” he said.

Sometime soon, the pair may add their own matrimonial footnote to “From the Ground Up.” Smyers said there’s a good chance they will sing the song at Mooney’s wedding when he marries former Miss Arkansas USA Hannah Billingsley. No date has been set.

Dan + Shay comes here to start their first big headlining tour, which ricochets them from California to the East Coast through December.