As I greet Rob Thomas on our video name, he asks me if I’m getting any of “the climate” that they’re experiencing within the New York Metropolis space, the place he lives.
Unaware of the torrential storms that have been, on the time of our name, on the point of pound his area and leaving it in a state of emergency, I inform him that right here in southeast Tennessee, it’s lastly feeling like fall. As I sit on my giant entrance porch, clear blue skies are overhead with a reasonable temperature of 76 levels and virtually no humidity. There’s an exquisite breeze that’s inflicting the primary few brown leaves of the season to fall from the oaks in my entrance yard.
I actually didn’t imply to rub it in. However that’s okay. Thomas goes with it.
“Fall’s my favourite time of yr,” he says. However Thomas will quickly be departing on the Australian leg of his All Night time Days tour—supporting his sixth solo album of the identical identify, launched September fifth—and received’t have the ability to benefit from the fall foliage he loves a lot.
Accompanying the Matchbox Twenty frontman is his 27-year-old son, Maison, whom he just lately employed as his solo band’s guitarist. Thomas’ son additionally has his personal band, the Fortunate, which opened for Thomas throughout just a few of his U.S. tour dates.
“He’s considered one of my finest buddies on the planet,” says Thomas, sporting a black T-shirt, wanting just about the identical as he did nearly 30 years in the past, when Matchbox Twenty launched its debut album, Your self or Somebody Like You, in 1996. “It’s been probably the most enjoyable that he’s had. After I talked about it, the very first thing he stated was, ‘This would be the most time we’ve gotten to spend collectively at one time.’ I assumed that was the sweetest factor ever, as a result of I felt the identical manner.”
Rising up, nevertheless, Thomas didn’t have the identical expertise along with his personal mother and father.
Thomas’ mom, Mamie, was 16 when she gave beginning to his older half-sister, Melissa, and 21 and remarried by the point Thomas was born in Landstuhl, Germany. His father, Invoice, a sergeant within the U.S. Military, left when he was 2, resulting from Thomas’ mom’s alcoholism.
“Me and my dad weren’t very shut as a result of my dad couldn’t deal with my mother, and I perceive that, however on the identical time, he lumped me in along with her after which minimize us each off as a method of his survival,” Thomas says.
With little or no cash, Thomas, Melissa, and his mom moved to a trailer park in South Carolina to be near his maternal grandmother, who ran a small fuel station, the place she offered moonshine and marijuana beneath the counter. When he was 10, they moved to Florida.
Whereas Thomas says he and his mom could possibly be very shut, their family was removed from secure. “It was a really Jekyll and Hyde scenario,” he says. “[She was] the form of lady who would purchase additional items at Christmas, so if anyone got here by, she’d have one thing to offer to folks. The form of individual that, after I was a younger Dukes of Hazzard fan, got here into my room to elucidate to me why that big flag on my wall didn’t imply the Common Lee. Everybody beloved my mother. Once they met my mother, she was this mild, and he or she was a lot enjoyable, and all people thought that she was the very best. After which it might swing on a dime to those very bodily, violent conditions.”
Two years later, his sister left dwelling to get married, and his mom was recognized with Hodgkin lymphoma, which meant Thomas was compelled to be her sole caretaker at 12, which impressed considered one of Matchbox Twenty’s largest hits, “3 AM.”
Thomas’ mom finally went into remission, and Thomas felt his relationship along with her pressure as soon as once more due to her consuming.
It was despite his mom that he discovered music.
“It wasn’t one thing that she inspired,” he says. “It was one thing that she overtly instructed me I used to be by no means going to be good at, and I used to be by no means going to make it at, and I wanted to let it go. Which I believe in her personal manner was in all probability her defending me, as a result of it does seem to be a pipe dream to do one thing like that.”
Dropping out of highschool at 17, he hitchhiked across the South, slept on park benches and at buddies’ homes, and alongside the best way, met a bunch of musicians when he moved to Orlando.
“I’m unsure if it was that I used to be on the lookout for music or if it was simply one thing that was so comforting to search out, like a fraternal group that I felt like took me in and I might begin to construct an prolonged household, the place perhaps I didn’t have one at dwelling,” he says.
In 1993, Thomas, together with bassist Brian Yale, drummer Paul Doucette, and guitarists Jay Stanley and John Goff, fashioned Tabitha’s Secret. The band had a loyal following however finally broke up. Thomas, Doucette, and Yale fashioned one other group, this time with Adam Gaynor and Kyle Prepare dinner on rhythm and lead guitar, respectively: Matchbox Twenty.
With hits like “Push,” “Actual World,” and “If You’re Gone,” amongst others, Matchbox Twenty dominated the late Nineties and early 2000s. The band took a number of breaks through the years. Thomas put out 5 solo albums between 2005 and 2021, sporadically reuniting along with his Matchbox Twenty bandmates to tour and launch two extra information, 2012’s North and The place the Gentle Goes in 2023.
It was throughout the classes for The place the Gentle Goes that Thomas started writing the songs that would seem on All Night time Days. Whereas three of his solo songs ended up on Matchbox Twenty’s fifth album, “I Imagine It,” and “No Good at Loving You” have been tracks the band labored on that landed on Thomas’ new album.
Nevertheless it’s the tune “Thrill Me” that holds explicit weight with him at this stage in his life, a tune that’s about his spouse, Marisol Maldonado.
“I’ve been with my spouse for 27 years,” he says. “We’ve had spectacular fights. However she’s the closest individual on the planet to me. And I really feel like ‘Thrill Me’ is the form of love tune that I in all probability couldn’t have written after I was youthful. I believe as I become older, there’s no worry of sentimentality.”
With sentimentality comes vulnerability. And “Laborious to Be Completely happy,” the album’s third observe and lead single, which peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Grownup Up to date chart earlier this yr, is an ideal instance of that. With lyrics akin to, “So if you happen to see me crying / I don’t want no comfort / I simply want a while / And I do know that I’m gonna be high-quality however I can’t say why,” I ask Thomas if he’s glad.
“No,” he says. “I imply, I really feel like I can discover happiness fairly simply. And that simply means discovering some peace and solitude in your personal head. The tip is hurtling at us at a better pace daily. And all the things that we do to a point is simply to try to not take into consideration the truth that that’s occurring. So [to] that diploma, I don’t belief anyone who simply says, ‘Oh, I’m glad,’ since you’re hiding one thing.”
He admits, although, that at 53, he’s glad extra occasions than he’s not. And that’s partly as a result of he’s all the time surrounded himself with male buddies who assist one another, like his Matchbox Twenty bandmates.
“The largest joke we all the time have is any individual says, ‘Oh man, you look nice.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, however I’m useless inside,’ and I’m solely half joking. Not being conscious that that exists inside you means you neglect it. And if you happen to neglect it, then it grows and it turns into a good greater a part of you.”
He tells me that earlier than his mom handed away in 2007 at 55, he lied to her over the cellphone about not having the ability to go to her. “I simply couldn’t take the drama,” he says, “After which, when she handed, I believe there’s a bit of me that stayed there. Like my emotional progress simply form of stopped in that little zone, a lot in order that it’s palpable. There was additionally this responsible, responsible feeling of how a lot simpler issues have been going to be. That took a very long time to only be okay with feeling that manner.”
Thomas believes emotional stability is one thing it’s a must to discover in your personal manner. For him, ever since he was a runaway teenager, music has been the reply. He’s a person who feels comfy baring his soul. No topic is off limits. He doesn’t save his vulnerability for his songwriting. He’s fully trustworthy concerning the results of being a toddler of an alcoholic.
Thomas admits that he’s a heavy drinker. “It’s not wholesome, and you work I’d study by now,” he says. “However I believe I didn’t additionally come together with the unbelievably unstable character that was connected to my mother; it all the time simply form of comes throughout as like, ‘Effectively, take a look at Rob. He will get so pleasant when he drinks.’”
It’s one thing his spouse and therapist have talked to him about, although he tells me he’s not fairly able to cease. He additionally talks to me about his OCD, his compulsive counting and touching tendencies, the entire little ticks he’s adopted in an try to manage his setting out of a worry that one thing unhealthy will occur if he doesn’t; a typical affliction from childhood trauma as a method to manage. His songwriting, he says, is a product of that as nicely.
“I believe that writing manifests itself in the identical manner that I can’t have too many unanswered emails, I’ve to undergo and I’ve to ensure that they’re cleared out in my head if I’m writing,” he says. “And finally I have to get that valve launched so I can add extra songs into there. If not, I actually really feel like a bodily buildup in my head of all of those songs and melodies and concepts which can be floating round.”
With the thirtieth anniversary of Matchbox Twenty’s debut launch approaching subsequent yr, Thomas and his bandmates have been chatting about easy methods to commemorate the event, although no plans have been made but. He seems again on the band’s success as a present and the way their definition of success has modified through the years. Once they began out, success meant getting a file deal. Then it meant having considered one of their albums go gold. After, it meant persevering with to churn out extra hits, yr after yr.
That’s a Herculean process for any band to attain.
It was Bruce Springsteen who helped Thomas change his perspective whereas the 2 have been at Rock in Rio 2013, that there have been going to be intervals the place the music doesn’t really feel prefer it’s connecting, that the band might not appear related. However Springsteen urged him to be affected person and to maintain going, as a result of music is handed right down to the subsequent era. In different phrases, the pendulum will swing again the opposite manner finally.
Springsteen, in fact, was proper. Matchbox Twenty’s 2023 Gradual Dream tour was one of many band’s most profitable, grossing $35 million from its North American dates.
Thomas realizes that many of the followers coming to Matchbox Twenty reveals aren’t coming to listen to new songs. And he’s okay with that.
“I had a very nice second in my profession the place I used to be a part of the zeitgeist,” he says. “In case you have that second and also you do the suitable factor with it, then that may be a profession as you become older. However finally it’s a must to let that second go. There’s nothing cooler than seeing an previous biker singing each phrase to ‘3 AM’ subsequent to an 8-year-old woman who’s crying as a result of she’s singing ‘3 AM.’ It’s a bit of success that feels very actual, but it surely’s not one thing that we might have ever anticipated.”
