Rob Thomas

I thought it was just it was it was kind of unique for me to like find something that you know, like I don't when you stumble on something new, you stumble on something and when you have something that you grew up with, you kind of always just love the things that you loved about them to begin with, you know.

But I find that there was certain artist Springsteen being one of those, like when he went on that unbelievably prolific tear you know, after nine to eleven from the Rising on, like, you know, it's kind of great when you when you see that happen and you realize that you're just as excited about the new stuff as you were about some of the older stuff. Now I've seen him live and it's not my favorite thing in the world.

I don't. I mean, I can't remember the last time that I got excited about a brand new album and wore that record out like I used to do, you know where I like, actually listen to something, seek out the record and play it from beginning to end, over and over and over. I think I've just become a victim to streaming, and I've become a victim to song by song by song. You know, I now like my music like I like my people. It's just on a case by case, song by song base.

SoundHound and we both do it at the same time. Like,

but what is that that happened? That happens quite a bit, I think, you know, as you I've read an article somewhere that said that, you know, and I don't know if it was like thirty or forty, but there's a certain point in your getting older where you stop like really taking in new things in that you know, like you there's a certain point where culturally you like what you liked up until this point, and that's the kind of thing that always really excites you, and not that

a couple of them don't get in, but it I don't retain it in that way, Like like I remember there's a band called The Beaches, and I keep forgetting like until I see them, and I'm like, oh, that's right, I love the Beaches. I need to go check out that record. And I never fucking check out that record. I just keep telling them my isealf, Oh I got to go check out that record. But I probably know like four songs, but I'm like, oh, I'm a fan of the Beaches, which means I'm a fan of those four songs.

out or something to watch when I'm alone. But I mean, I'm a try I'll watch anything except for reality TV, Like I can't do anything. Like I'm just not a big fan of reality TV, And oddly I'm not really all my friends are big fans of biopicks. I'm more of a fan of like like retail you know, I really appreciate those a lot more. But I'm not as big a fan of documentaries as I used to be.

Not really sure why. I just find that when I see them, I'm incredibly turned on by them, and I really love them, But I just don't get myself motivated to like sit down and go I've got two hours. I want to watch this, you know. But then like my wife and I watched that I forget the name of it, but that that documentary about the volcano, you know,

the studio that was just under the volcano. And like that brought back such a flood of memories because you know, we were we came out of this era after that era, you know, I mean they weren't throwing that much money,

but they were still throwing money at us. So like we could still make a record and that could mean renting out the entire top floor of the Hit Factory and some of the bottom floor and have like a factory going just for your album, making that record and you know, travel away somewhere to get away for an experience to make a record, like and be able to do that and not realizing that we might be one of the last kind of musical generations that gets to

experience making music in that way. So when I saw that, I was like, ah, maybe I don't like Maybe I don't like seeing myself in these documentaries. You know, maybe I maybe it's just too much longing. Sometimes I'm not a competitive person, but I think creatively i'm competitive. So I think sometimes I see somebody and they're just so fucking talented that it just makes me feel immediately less. So, you know, and so I think that sometimes I have

a hard time. I just kind of want to be in my own lane doing my thing and be inspired by somebody else's art.

I just when I hear a great like when I hear a great song, I get I go through this whole problem and my wife can see it happening in my eyes and she's just like, ah, fuck, not again. Like I'll go through a whole process and luckily it usually ends with me creating something, but it starts with this feeling of like how does he do that? Like I'm still amazed at how I can listen to a new song and when I break it down, eventually I

see it. I see it. I see there's a verse, and I see there's a chorus, and I know the chords, and I see the makeup of it. And it's not magic. But I love the fact that when I first hear it, it sounds like voodoo. It sounds like something that I don't know, and it's realize it's because I understand the mechanics of something very very well, but still didn't see how they got there. It's like if I were a magician going to see a really great magician and still

getting fooled by the trick. And that's what it feels like sometimes when I hear something and I just go, oh, I've never been a good magician. I'm still fucking pulling rabbits out of a hat over here, you know, I'm still doing my verse in my chorus, and they're doing something amazing over here. You know.

twice about it. Like I I've actually caught myself now on the other side of it, like watching a movie and going, you know, that movie was pretty good, but it would have been better if it had been a series, Like they really could have got in there, they really could have dug into it. So like I'm and I'm still I'm so it's there's so much that I've got a sticky note that my wife and I refer to of like Okay, let's see where we're at, Like what

you know, what are we watching right now? Like I think right now it's all about dark matter on HBO, which is on Max I guess, which is fucking phenomenal.

And uh, but then we just went through and just went back were watching all of the Star Wars movies again, like or at least the main nine, right, And because my wife was so down on the prequels for so long, and I keep trying to explain to her that maybe there's shit, there's an argument to be had about the actual movies themselves, and are they overseegied and underacted or overacted maybe, but the story is so similar to everything else that comes after it that going back now watching

those prequels, like, she got emotional at the end of it, because these are characters that are part of our life, you know, and so that's been a fun thing for us to do.

console me because I couldn't go. And I remember that succinctly, But I don't remember when I first saw I remember going to see Empire Strikes Back, and I remember going to see Jedi, and I think even more, I remember leaving the theater after those movies and you're walking out and the credits are playing, and they're playing that iconic score, that John Williams score, and you're a kid, and you walk down the aisle of the theater to leave feeling

like a fucking Jedi, you know, like there was just it was it was it stayed with you in such a way. And uh, I've honestly, in everything that I do, have tried to find a way to maintain that, you know, Like how do I try and stay time? Like how do I take away the cynicism that comes with age and knowing things and just kind of give yourself over to what it's supposed to be. And I mean I fail at it miserably, but God, that was the best feeling ever.

than al Pacino during Cercroco period. You know, it's a maybe dog day afternoon, okay.

But I mean then we'll watch like Abbod Elementary and Welcome to Wrexham. I just started. We just started with The Big Cigar, which I think is pretty great. So, I mean it's pretty all over the place. I don't think we adhere to like, you know, any one kind of thing.

something that we're really into. And then on the weekends, this movie time is using when we set aside time to actually watch films.

But like, I mean, there's a line of like, you know, when the new Batman movie comes out, I got to see that in a theater. When you know, there's certain movies that the director all the time and effort that goes into making it the spectacle that it is, deserves that kind of format. I just don't need it for a lot of the small independent films that I'm watching, they'll they'll be fine at home, you know. And also

I just I'm good and old man. I just it takes a lot for me to get I joked that, you know, I moved to Bedford from the city, and I didn't want to move too far because I was like, you know, I want to be able to go in out of the city all the time because I'm you know, that's me man. I'm a social butterfly, and like I joke now that it's It's like if John Lennon and Jesus were playing at the Beacon, I would still need to make sure, like, well, I mean, am I getting

driven in? Do I have to find parking? Like? Do I?

makes sense. Like there are certain sensibilities that I grew up with and I have because I had a Southern mother, because I grew up in the South, and those things don't change, and I find there's a yokeleness around me in that, like like when I go to a party or I go somewhere like you know, and I'm I go to some you know, great premiere and you go to the after party and it's very swanky and it's a lot of very fanous, but I'm actually like, I'm really glad to meet you, and I'm really glad to

be there, And that comes across, as you know, as kind of like yogel, for lack of a better word, very and very uncool. But I think so you like, I don't remember what it's like to be in the South, and I'm sure it's much different twenty six years later than it was then, some some better and some worse. But uh, but I but I'll never forget what it's like to be from the South. And as soon as I go back home and I get a little buzz on the accents keeps back out because when my wife

first met me, it was thick. I mean it was like, you know, not big. I was like, you know, had it really deep and uh and she loved it because she was a girl from New York. She didn't you know, didn't really spend a lot of time with Southern guys.

So I think it helped took her in. But eventually it went away also because I hated it kept I hated that it came through in my singing voice, like my first record, all deeply in the first record, a little bit in the second record, everything had the Southern twinge to it. You know, it was cold house harm mariink like. It was just it was this southernness that was in there, and I like, I don't know how

to be someone else. So it took, you know, years of traveling around the world and being in New York and living there for it to kind of work its way out. I guess into like whatever my accent is now, which is just kind of like a non specific Northeastern kind of a thing.

She was like, big fucking deal. And to me, I was this guy that had a song on the fucking radio. It was a big fucking deal. And so she showed up that I was immediately her friend somehow.

hang out after the shows. And we've always known that, Bob, you know, like we've always you always notice that, like there are a lot of hot girls at shows, but they're not hanging out backstage because when the show's over, they go do hot girl shit. They've got us to do. And so my wife didn't want to be there. She was there begrudgingly, and then I was also I was about thirty or more pounds heavier than I am now. If you listen to her, I only had one eyebrow,

my teeth are a little fucked up. And she's like, I don't know why. She's like, I just saw you and thought I see something in there, And I walked over and just said hi to her and managed to

get her phone number and then left. We only talked for like maybe ten or fifteen minutes, and then like four days later, I went to Europe for like two weeks, and so I just spent that whole time talking to her on the phone, like she was going to college at the time, so we would just go, like, you know, whenever her late night and my after show, I'd go

straight back to Hotell me. We just talk on the phone, so that by the time I got back and she came to a festival, I had her fly on to a festival in Boston, which like the first thing that we did when we came back. And she came to that show, and we felt like we really knew each other because we had spent hours and hours talking about our lives and everything, and so I was like, I even told her, like on the first date that we

were going to get married. I was like, we watched one of my other favorite movies, Basquiot, the Julian Schebel movie, and there's a song, the version of the Nearness of You by Keith Richards is in there, and I said, oh, this is the song you're gonna walk down the aisle when we get married. And she didn't run, and so I knew that was a good sign. And so now this year will be our twenty fifth wedding.

you know, eventually whoever you are. And to do that with another human being isn't necessarily the most natural thing in the world. It doesn't always work out that way. These two people go on these different paths sometimes and they verge, you know, tremendously, and they wind up just not recognizing each other anymore. And I think her and I have stayed friends, and that's been the main thing. I mean, I'm from the South and she is Puerto

Rican and Spanish. So we've had fucking fights. I mean we were we were in Detroit and got into a fight. It was like right before Christmas. I remember, because it was right She as like it was like ten minutes before the show, and she's like, get I want you to get your ship and get off the bus. Just get your ship and get off the bus. And I took my suitcase or whatever, and I got off the bus and I'm just like, you know, this will blow over.

And I played the show. And as I'm walking back, I go to the backstage door and I could I go to the woman working, I can you do me a favorite? Can you look outside and just tell me as they're a big black bus right by the door, And she's called, no, no, that bus left. It left about two hours ago, and so she she takes she takes the bus, and I've still got two weeks on tour to go down south, so I have to like jump

on the band bus for two weeks. But then by the next day, her and my bus driver are here at my house, like write to me sweet messages because they're gonna go out and they're gonna go buy Christmas trees and like you're all excited. And I was just like, I think she just wanted to go home. I don't

even know if she was mad at me. And I find that one of the things about being married as long as we are, as we can be in the middle of a crazy fight and then something could come on the TV and I could be ho pause out and she'd be like, oh my god, we'll go and we'll we're laughing, and then we'll go okay, okay, fight back on, go go.

And that was I think. In fact, so I had a song on my second record, Matchbok second record called if You're Gone, and I wrote that song to night my son was born, because that night my wife broke

up with me. My girl up she was my girlfriend at the time, and broke up with me because it just it seemed too much for her, this idea that she was in love with this guy, but he was about to embark on this other journey that she wasn't a part of and something that was very important to her, the idea of having kids and the idea of being married, and so she didn't know. She thought maybe I already had this and didn't need her for it, and she

broke up, and then I wrote, if you're gone. I don't think that's what got her back, but that was kind of the headspace that I was in at the time. And then you know, I think her she's had myriad health issues for the last twenty some odd years and because of those things, it just wasn't in the in

the cards for us. And we're okay with it, Like we were never people who were going to be defined by being parents, and we are people who do it like our time that we have, you know, so we're never like all the pitter patter of little feet and her and my son are super close, and you know, my son is now my son is now the guitar player in my solo band as of this this year, so you know, it's it's just never felt like something

that we really missed. I think if I had to think about it really hard, you know, I wasn't around for all of my son being an infant, and I kind of maybe that would have been nice to be a part of watching that evolution and watch someone kind of become a person. But it's not something that we lament about too much.

so it wasn't like I was fifteen or sixteen. It was just a sense of like, I don't know if I'm as a person prepared for this task, and I need to. I need to, you know, kind of I need to be better quick.

guitar player. I mean, I remember just before I met my wife on a plane, just wasted and looking at each other and going, you know, there's more to it than this, right, Like it feels like we're kind of like in this cycle of like play, let's play a show, Let's get fucking wasted, wake up, let's do it all over again. You know, girl show, wasted show, Girl show wasted, girl show, and and so I kind of feel like I got to experience a lot of what that's about.

But when I met my wife, she was young and I was young, and so we spent the next couple of years traveling around the world, you know, on this fucking grand adventure and you know, we did the drugs and we did the drinking, and we went to the parties and you know, like we Michael Littman is my original manager, Michael Littman from back in the day you

just managed George. Michael managed Bowie for a while, and you know, he was one of my big role models when I first started in this business, and him and his wife in particular, because they had you know, we would go to London and they would take us to Cambridges and you know, they take us to these spots and be like, oh, this is you know where me and George did this, or me and David did this, and they would tell these great stories and it was

the two of them that had done that. And she used to say, you know, oh, her name's Nancy Liman. She would say, oh, yeah, I'm a rock chick from wayback. And so now that's the joke from my wife. You know, my wife's like, you know, she's a rock chick from way back. Like we got to do that together and experience that together, which I think is so much better than the idea like me meeting someone and ten fifteen years later and having this whole other part of my

life that they're not a part of. You know. It almost like we've been together a really long time and we got to be She got to be through that part of it with me, So it's not some you know, fairy tale that she hears stories about later on.

After my time working with Willie was when I we really up and we started we got our when it was just her and Eye on a bus alone. We stopped getting hotel rooms all together, and just every every day of tour was on the bus. We would just live off that bus, and he got life was so much easier once we started to do that, and it wasn't those three o'clock in the morning, back and forth to the hotels, pack up your ship, go get a room, come back down to twelve for the you know, it

was just a nightmare. And now it was just like wherever we went, we were home and it was perfect. Like I, you know, WILLI used to tell me that he would take his bus to his house, but he would still stay on his bus, like he would just do his laundry in the house, but he would just still stay on the bus and like, you know, hook up the power and the phone lines and shipped to the bus. And I was just like, oh, you're my fucking hero again.

it was felt like a victory. And then you moved the theaters and then, you know, if you're fortunate enough like that, that one record had like three or four different lives over like a three year period that ended. It started with us in tiny clubs playing to nobody, and ended in sold out arenas all over the world, and so everything about that was special and new and exciting, and we were you know, and I think, just like anything else, I think, you know, when you're a race

car driver, that's speed. It is exhilarating, and then over the years, everything else inside of the car slows down a little bit and you see it a little bit differently, and you're you know, like, so now when I'm on stage, it's not the show coming at me in a million miles an hour. I'm inside of it, controlling the apparatus to some degree. I'm thinking about where I'm going to be.

I'm thinking about how I'm singing. I'm thinking about physicality and where I'm placing myself, thinking about what the rest of the band is doing. I'm thinking about how this is coming across. And so I think that now it's more just like, hey, everybody. Let's if we have a really great show, we all get together, we're all excited,

let's toast it. Let's you know. But there's a lot of times where we can have an amazing show sold out, you know, at some amphitheater, twenty two thousand people, and I am on my bus in the shower before the place is empty, you know, because I'm also there. When you were younger, there was no tomorrow, and now only aware that that tomorrow we have to do this again. I want my voice to sound as good like if I had a great show. My first thought is, oh,

wouldn't it be great if I had another one tomorrow? Like I want my voice to sound as good as it did. I want my body to have that kind of energy. I'm way more aware now than I was then of like what it takes for someone to come to see a show, Like when you see all these people and that every one of them represents somebody that chose to

be there. They paid money for a ticket, they had to get parking, they had to get babysitters, you know, especially as we get older, well now as we got older, a lot of them now have kids that can be their babysitters or they're bringing their grandkids. But you know, I think it's just a different mindset that you're in. It's still exciting, but you you're I think you're you're just a little more responsible about the whole situation than you used to be.

I come out. And then we're always like, there's a couple, you know, let's have some let's have a couple of drinks on the on the bus, you know, you know, get maybe a little somebody to eat while and then you know, we're all usually streaming something, so we go back to whatever we were watching. You know, whether it's that's when we might be a little more pull out, like the old Ken Burns jazz documentaries and shit like that.

We still, like somehow exist on a lot of DVDs on the bus because you because sometimes you don't have signal, so you still have to, you know, like be tethered in some way to DVDs. Uh. So you know, I think you know you don't go to sleep, But luckily it used to no matter because your whole life worked in a cycle. Like you you can go to bed till five in the morning, but you woke up at two in the afternoon. My body, now, in my fifties, I can't sleep past nine if I try, you know,

and usually I'm up at seven thirty. So even if I go to that are like three, my body's gonna get up at seven thirty. My dogs are gonna wake me up at seven thirty. I'm not gonna go back to sleep. So you know, again, that's where the responsibility has to kick in.

just like, fuck you. You don't know my life ring. So yeah, I don't know how long I'm going to have it. I have My manager now is Nick Litman. He's co managers with his son with his father, Michael, and he swears by this thing. So in Australia they I fucking bought into it and now I've got it, so I'm going to live with it for a while. And see. I don't see any giant insights into my life that this ring is giving me. But I am fascinated every morning with how I slept.

in r EM sleep, you know, and that's out of eight hours. So I'm not But again, Bob, one of the things is like I could do something and be like, oh, I had like a sleep score in the forties, which is kind of abysmal, and then I do something I changed something up, and I'm like, oh, you know, I didn't. I had like a couple of less glasses of wine and I didn't eat late, and I had like an eighty six sleep score. And you would think that that's the purpose of the ring, and I would go, oh,

that's what I need to do now that. No, I don't change my life in any way whatsoever. I still do whatever the fuck I do, and then I just wake up the next day and go like, oh, how to go? I'm not using it the way I'm supposed to.

six thirty seven o'clock have some wine. I mean, like I come from a world where it was shot shot, shot, shot, shot, blind line, line shot shot, smoke, smoke, line, line, pill, pill, and so so it feels pretty moderate in a relative way, you know, compared to like the gears that I but I don't have those gears anymore, you know, Like I traded that model in for a slower model. Like I don't have a sports car anymore. I'm more of a nice four door sedan. Kind of a body happening.

this day I'm charting my progress. I'm like because I started to do it, and I was like, oh I want to. I want to do it. You know, I started to learn something, I'm like, Okay, I want to fucking learn it. I want to, you know. And so anything that I like, I don't want to get. If I buy a book and I start to like it and there's you know, sequels, I would just go buy all of them at one time now because I am now all into this. You know, do you.

talk Bob. One of the things is like, you know, at fifty two years old and I you know, I don't want to I don't want to see the big bloated pictures of me at the casino and my ed hearty T shirts and all, you know, and you're and you're like metal jewelry every you know what I mean, like still trying to hang onto that rock dream with your gut hanging out Like I mean, first off, I've never been like rock and roll guy anyway, but yeah, I know for a fact that nine the time if

somebody goes, oh yeah I went and saw Rob Thomas, or I saw mashbox swinning the other night. Somebody's gonna go, oh, how do they look? How do they do it? You know? And and or at least if they if we look like shit, people are gonna stay in their noticing like, oh man, they look fucking rough. God damn like I. I I don't want you know what, I'll when we stop recording, I'll call out. I don't want to. I don't like talking about people, but I'll tell I'll give you a great example of it.

It was from Glastonbury and I just looked bloated as fun and it said it said two things that were just fucking brilliant. It said one that it said Rob Thomas apparently has grown as a performer. And then it said apparently the road that success leads to the deli trade. So we got to charge out of that because at least it was clever.

of that, like I you know, because it went deeper than that. It was also me I used to hate, like you know, there were always photo shoots and I fucking hated photo shoots because I felt fat because photo shoots always come with wardrobe fittings, which you hate even more because at some point there's some stylist that you don't even know, going, hey, you need to hit the gym.

Huh is this? You know, You're just like ah, and so just pile And then I'm the kind of guy who will never let you know, so I'm always I'm laughing it off to your face and then the you know, drinking it back away, and so you know, it stuck with me pretty hard. My wife, I think, you know, ever since I met her, it was just on a much healthier path, you know, not just for aesthetics, but just you know, aesthetics are a lucky byproduct of that, you know, being healthier.

cocaine was easy to give up. I think it was just one you just have to be have one time where you look at the people that are in your life, that are only in your life because you're doing cocaine, and how fucking how just how much you hate them, and then you see yourself in them and you go, oh my god, that's who I am, you know, like I'm hanging out with this person that I've never met before in my entire life, and we're talking about opening

a club together tomorrow, you know, those kind of nights. And so that was pretty easy to be like, yeah, I'm okay with Without that part of my life happened anymore.

a little while. Now I have one who I like a lot. Honestly, I think that she agrees with me a little too much, you might, and so I still might be in a phase now where I need to someone who challenges me a little more. So that might be my next stage in that evolution.

a little bit. I wanted to kind of explore, h explore my reasons for why why I'm you know, why why the drinking and why sometimes I let it get out of control to a certain you know. And I just had questions that I wasn't and that I couldn't answer myself, even though I was the only one that contained the answers. But I just did have a key to figure out how to find that answer.

It was the local gas station where all the tobacco farmers would come on their lunch break and they could get you know, they would get get a coke or a hot dog or whatever. People would be on their way to the beach sometimes were stopping get gas. She brewedleg liquor from a room under the stairs and had

sold weed out of her room in the back. So when I was like ten years old, I could, I could, I was separating stems and seeds out of this weed, making like in like weighing out dining bags and nickel bags. Like at least once a year somebody got shot at this place. It was like it was like one of these kind of a shack of a store where like there's a wood floor, but if there was a hole in it, it went straight to the ground kind of thing. You know. It was very much a very you know,

very modest to say the least place. And so we that was my grandmother's uh play, And she was a character who had never she never drank. And then once a year, once every two years, she would go on like a two week vendor that would somehow like end up with her out in front of the store with a gun. Like she was you know, she was either like the nicest, sweetest carrying person or just a fucking

you know, powder cake. So it was interesting, it was you know, it was just it was a very interesting thing. And then my mom moved us out to Florida. So it was at a time where like she got a job as a computer programmer, but nobody even knew what that was. So they were just hiring people off the street and sending them to school to learn because they were still doing it with computer cards at the time.

And if you remember that, time punches all. Yeah, so she was learning cobalt and all these and then as soon as she'd learned it, there'd be a whole new operating system and she'd go to where met And when she was sixteen, she lied about her age or for a first job and said that she was nineteen. And I was born when she was twenty one. My sister was born when she was sixteen, and she just kept working her way up through these so by the time she had passed away, you know, she had moved us

to a really nice, middle class neighborhood. Like we went from living in like the dingy, shitty apartments on that side of town that nobody wants to go to to like a really nice place in Wakaiva, Florida, which was like middle class, beautiful neighborhood. She was the head of Q of Quality Assurance for City Bank and for their security team in banking. You know, she was very respected, and then I think she probably drank herself out of a job and then drank herself to death later on.

mother had a sister. Her name is Marcella Summers, and we used to call her Monkey and she spent she spent most of my life in prison in South Carolina because she hired a serial killer named pee Wee Gaskins. And there's a book about him that's out and she actually has a chapter in it. She hired pee Wee Gascons to kill her boyfriend over a Dodge two eighty Z that like he had given her as a gift

and they broke up and he took it back. So she met with Peewe Gaston's had him killed and then shoved into the trunk of that car and then pushed the car into the river. But then she got arrested for it, and so she spent most of my life in prison. So that's the only other family member that I knew.

know any of this. I took my wife, I think we weren't even married yet, and we were going on a trip through South Carolina and we reren in her car and I was going to go show her, you know, this visual history of my you know, my past, and we got to the spot where the store was, it

was just ashes, Like I had no idea. That was a devastating moment for me too, Like I just I think you just always, like I, throughout my life, I would check up on it, Like I would leave home when I was like sixteen seventeen and hitchhike from Florida up to South Carolina and kind of check in on my grandmother and that you know, that little contingent in my family, and so I like, I just assumed, I guess like people do, that it was just there waiting for me always, and then one day I went there

and it just wasn't there anymore. My only people that I in my family really that I still have or my sister, who I'm very close to. She's the only person in my family that I'm really close to. My father, who I have somewhat of a relationship but was certainly not close. And that's it. I mean, really, I think I've got a cousin that once every two years might stop by, know, say hi at a show or something. But yeah, that's pretty much my sister and sometimes my dad.

going home in a couple of days. My mom went by the apartment. She cleaned it up, and she like restocked the groceries and she, you know, just stuff there. And I was legitimately thinking like, like what's her fucking angle, you know, like why would somebody do that? And she's like, well, she loves us, and she's doing it because you know, she cares about us. And I that was just foreign to me. And I, you know, when I grew up,

my mother was young. She admitted, you know, she had like I said, she had my sister at sixteen, had me in twenty one. There's a whole part of her youth that she felt like she missed out on. Then when I was like twelve, she got cancer. They thought she was going to die. They give her six months to live, and she beat it, and then she got it again, and then she beat it. And I think that all the time in between those moments, she was

just out there making up for lost time. And so that required her to be really really selfish at a time when I needed her not to be. And so I just never had the experience of someone maternal having that kind of care, like maternal care and so ever. You know, ever since, like my mother in law has become one of my my dearest friends in the world. We spend a lot of time together, just her and I. We go to shows together, we go out to dinner,

we hang out all the time. And so I, you know, got to got to really estee what I was like. So it just my I never really mind my actually with except my sister. I never really found it in my actual family.

And then I think I got I got to a certain point where I learned how to live on my own. I mean, like literally on my own. Like I left home at like seventeen, I was living, you know, in friends cars and on friends park benches. And the next thing I knew that I was in a band. I was living on friends couches, and then we were playing shows, and then I never I learned how to not need someone, and so then by the time my dad kind of came back around, which honestly wasn't until I started to

do well in music. By the time he came back around, I just didn't need that anymore. That wasn't what I was looking for in a relationship, you know. And I don't know, I'm sure I missed out on some things, but I learned to be pretty self sufficient as well. And I learned how to make a lot of lemonade out of limits when I needed to.

hunkering down together. That makes you really really close, and so the two of us, it drives her husband insane. So my sister ran away from home at seventeen years old married her twenty one year old boyfriend, which is a recipe for disaster, except for the fact that they've now been married for over forty years. They're one of the closest couples I know. They have kids, their kids

have kids, They're a great success story. And so it drives them insane because when the two of us get together and we just start telling these stories about our childhood but with a very nonchalant kind of thing, and he's just like, the fuck, where the fuck did you look? What is this your life? You know? So we both realized that we kind of we kind of share that.

lot in school. I didn't it really hit me. I think when I was in like ninth grade and a guidance counselor pulled me aside and had me come into her office and said, so, you know, you can answer this however you want, but are your parents alcoholics? And I was like, I don't. My mom drinks a lot, you know, and she just kind of pegged me as this very this is this is this type of personality, the type personality comes from this kind of a situation. I was definitely every I went to a lot of schools.

We moved around a lot within Florida. But every school I went to, I was the kid who was squandering his potential, you know, because I was the kid who tested through the roof whenever we do aptitude tests. But I never applied myself in anything whatsoever. I you know, when I showed up at all, I would I was more disruptive than anything else. I would already like starting

to play music. I had someone I ran into that was in a class with me in ninth grade that I was explaining to my algebra teacher that I didn't need algebra because I was going to be a musician and so I didn't really have to worry about that. And then she's like, well, who's going to count all your money? And I was like, my accountant is going to count all my money. It turns out I was right about that.

together and meet up and go to the beach. I was never part of that group, but they would get together on Friday night and go to movie. I wasn't part of that group. But if there was like a general collection, I was always welcome in any of those studies. You know.

holy fuck, and he put the gun back. So because there now there this was a break in, but a gun was involved, which made it an armed burglar not an armed robbery. There's a very big difference. And so

I got arrested. I remember, I remember what this is one of the few moments where I and I think it was again because my mother was dating a respectable guy, and so because of that, he went the guy she was dating on my court date to find out what my fate was going to be, went out and got me like a suit, the jacket and a tie, you know, court suit, and then then let me know as we're about to leave that they just were holding on him to make me feel nervous because they had already gotten

the word back. I wasn't going to jail I had a certain amount of community hours and this thing on my record up until I was like eighteen, and then that was the only thing that was going to happen. And I just remember, like I still had the picture of me in that suit with this look on my face and just like ah, like you know, and that was one of the I think. I mean, I'm not sure. I don't think that was a seminal point in my life.

I mean, I didn't change anything at that point, but it was definitely it's a vivid memory that I what.

and there's cops beating on the bedroom door. So then it's just me, and I'm like, so I just tell the cops that I'm from Alabama, that I just came in to meet a friend, you know, and I'll go get my friend. And I went out the door and I just ran as far as I could. And that's the last I've heard of that situation.

a high school diploma, so you have to go. So I went. I didn't I didn't take the class or anything. I just went and got a ged and then luckily in that time, I met this group of guys. They were older, they were seniors in high school age, and I was in freshman in high school age, maybe a junior, because at this point, at some point I left school. But then I tried to come back, like in the tenth Like I left like maybe the beginning of tenth grade, and I tried to come back by the beginning of

junior year kind of thing. But it didn't last long, and I wound up, you know, meeting these guys. One of them was graduating that year and going to Berkeley the next year.

that and doing that. I wasn't really writing yet. I was singing songs that these guys were writing, or we were doing covers and playing like eighteen and underclubs in Florida, you know, those kind of a and it just I mean, that was just it. That was I felt like this was what I wanted to do. I knew it immediately from the first time that I just started playing. I was like this, they just spoke to me, you know, And yeah, I mean I think it wasn't for that.

I mean, honestly, I was the only reason I wanted to join the Army was because when you were in when we were in high school, where did you grow up?

I was like, oh, I could be this this, but I can all but I can join the Army and and have a you know, figure out what I'm going to do with my life and my even though my dad, who was in the Army, the only piece of advice he ever gave me was never joined the army. And I was this close to. I was this close to doing it. Like those recruitment videos, man, they really do work. If you're out of options.

but I there's no other way to tell it. So, like one of the things was, like, you know, growing up, when I was in like, you know, eighth grade, beginning ninth grade, my mom, you know, she'd be out, she would meet some guys. She'd bring them home and then wake me up at you know, one in the morning to like keep him company and like go play a song on your keyboard. So I'm like performing for some

stranger while my mom goes and changes I goes. It was a weird kind of thing, but it it gave me the sense of like, oh wow, like this is this is where my mom has her pride in me, you know. And so when I perform that mean you know that that's I get this rush of endorphins of like, oh, you know, I feel and that never went away, that you know, that need for you know, for that I

that what is it? Robin Williams caught it like the the kind of love that you can only the kind of a hug that you can only get from a stranger, you know, like I learned to I learned to really crave that, uh during that time. But I think it was, you know, maybe the fact that it was these guys that I met to me they were really cool. Like

they weren't degenerates like my other group of friends. They were they still had fun, They still were out drinking, they were partying, they were doing but they there was a wholesome noess about it, and there was a camaraderie and a fraternal order to it that was really really cool,

you know. And uh and so and they like when I would talk about, you know, well, we're gonna go out and we're gonna you know, like we're gonna vandalize this, and we're gonna do this there would they looked at me with like such disappointment, like, oh, come on, man, that's not not cool, you know, And I wanted to I wanted them to like me, you know, this older group of guys that thought I was cool. I wanted

them to like me. So I think, you know, just like everybody else, I you could trace everything back to needing some you get something you need from from a situation, and you keep chasing that feeling, you know. And so music really I felt I felt that like that that little missing piece they kept every time I was around music, every time I was playing music. It kind of filled that hole for me a little bit, and still does.

on the guitar. You know, Like, now I've got it down to a science where I could play in front of twenty thousand people, and if I know the song, I will fool even you to look like I know what the hell I'm doing, you know, but I tell everybody.

You know, when you always get asked questions about advice for young musicians things like that, it's like, no matter how uncool it seems, go take the lessons, learn the road, you know, like learn and learn all of these basic things that's going to make your life so much easier. And no matter how cool the guitarist, start on the piano, because if you start on the piano, you can pivot to almost any instrument because the music makes more sense to you. It's laid out on the piano the same

way it is on the page. And you know, if you know what I'm saying, like there's a there's a certain sense where the skills are all just right there in front of you.

One of the fun of the times I quit school is because all Right, the keyboard player, his family knew how had family friends that owned a sheraton in Vero Beach and needed a band to play by the pool. And so we were the pool band in this sheraton in Vero Beach. And then we got to stay at the hotel and we imploded within a week. Within a week, we had figured out how to break in to steal all the liquor from the places I was. I was, I was sleeping with the owner's daughter. Like the whole

thing just fell around us. And I remember the owner she had like broken English, and she was like pulled us in and they're just so disappointed and yelling at us across the dead and she's just going, you you are not the stars. Maybe one day, one day you will be the stars. But right now, you are not the stars. And we got fired from that. So we were doing these kind of gigs and then I like they went off. We had a band called Tidal Wave, which was a we would play metal clubs and it

was all like punk versions of like surf songs. So it was like like the covers would be like Wily Bully, but like these like amped up versions of Willly Bully. And it was a bunch of these guys from Jersey that had come down. So this was like after the guy went to Berkeley the first year, he came back in the summer and brought some guys from Berkeley back.

We started Tidal Wave, these guys from Jersey that had never been to the fucking beach, writing all these songs about like Johnny's Got a Wave and me and my surfer girl. They were all these you know, and we would play these metal band metal clubs, and the metal clubs would love us because we had so much energy. We were just fucking running and jumping on the bar and just like fucking ah, and they just thought it was, you know, the greatest thing in the world. They didn't

like the music, and so we had that going. Eventually, that whole thing, you know, it was it was just kind of dependent on them when they were home for the summers and things like that. And so I started to just get jobs, like normal jobs, restaurants, a lot of construction in Florida, like working as a roofer and drywall and painting and those kind of things. And then I started writing again on my piano. I was hitchhiking

a little bit here and there. I had this little keyboard that I still have over here that I was like on the I remember, like three o'clock in the morning, I would sit on the side of the road my little keyboard, you know, working out songs. Three Am was a song that came during that time. And so I meet with a couple of guys that are local guys who we started talking about starting a band. I really

really started to get into the idea. I started writing a few more songs, and we put an ad out in the local jam magazine, which was like the regional you know, rock magazine for a drummer. I had met Brian, our bass player already, this guy John and Jay who are these two guitar players when we'd just gone to Berkeley, and Paul, who later again became my best friend, who was our drummer for twelve years, answered the ad and that was how Matchbox twenty we were tabbing the Secret

at the time. And then that was like that was when we were the first like band where it was like we were doing gigs on the rag. We were playing regionally. We'd get the band and trailer and go play gigs in Tennessee and go play gigs in North

Carolina and South Carolina. We had become like kind of the big local band, which doesn't mean a lot, It just means that like sometimes if like Hoody and the Blowfish, you know, they were just blowing up at the time, if they would come through town and didn't have an opener, we would be the band that they would get called

to come in and open up. So we get to do it like we put like we opened for Ween one time, which is great, we opened for Cake like there's things great, you know, for us, and then that band imploded as bands due but luckily the three of us still me, Brian and Paul still kind of shared a vision. And then that's when I meet Matt Serlenik, who at the time it just had some success with Collective Soul and was looking for a new band. His brother went to college in Orlando, saw our band. Matt

came to check us out. He signed me to a production deal, and then Atlantic Records wanted to sign me to deal through him, and I was a little scared to sign my own deal. So my only prerequisite was that I would do it, but I had to do it with Paul and Brian. So the three of us had a deal before we had a name, and then we uh, we signed. We signed the deal. We find we go in a search, We find these two guitar players that that we really like and we get along with.

And then I it became very litigious this situation with the other two guitar players. I didn't understand copyrights, and so one of the guys in this band would take all these songs that I had written, draw up copyright forms and bring them in for us all to sign, and so I just would sign away, you know, three quarters to you know, to everybody else in the band. And so they were kind of holding those songs over me when I got the deal, and like, we're gonna

sue you because these are our things. And and so the only thing I could think to do was I just wrote another record, so like and thank god, because that first record wasn't great. Like they always say that you have your whole life up to write your first record and that's why the second record is so hard. But in all honesty, Bob, I wrote my first record was my second record, and I had six months to

write it. So we would just spend all of our time because we knew that we didn't have a lot of money to be in a studio, even though we had more than we thought, like we got like four hundred thousand dollars or something, you know, for the deal to go make the record. We spend it all almost all in the record in gear, but we wanted to be able to step in there, so we would spend hours every day in like a actual shed, shedding these

songs so that we could play them live. I would write a new song, we'd bring it into the band. We would learn that song so we could play it off book like, you know, not spend too much time in the studio. And so by the time we went in the studio that that whole first yourself or someone like you was all written. And the only thing that I kept was three Am, just because that song meant a lot to me. And you know, it's funny is to this day like Pooky from Matchbox all them any

proceeds he gets heat because he thinks it's ridiculous. He didn't write it. So any proceeds gets from three Am, he gives it to charity.

had already had some success with Matt. So that was where the production deal had come in. Was they weren't ready to secure a straight deal with US in Atlantic, but they were willing to do it as a production deal.

have to read you know. But you know, to Matt's credit, he did change his payment fee so that because it turns out like if we were splitting money and he was getting paid like on the gross, he would make more money than any individual member, right. And when we kind of sat and talked with him, because it man had him with us for many years. Matt restructured his deal so that he was just a six member and

then everything we do would be equal. And that was fine because you know, we were and now this is the time, you know, we were playing live. We're making most of our money live and merchandising and publishing. That was money he wasn't seeing. So that was I thought that was really big of him.

for me to kind of be a part of a smaller family that was thinking about me a little bit more. And Evan Lamberg had already left and gone off to Universal, and Evan, you know, was my main reason for signing with EMI in the first place. So it you know, it was an easy decision to make. Even though the EMI guys, which later on became EMI Sony, they've always been amazing. So what you do with the money, I don't have to tell you that.

take vacations with my family and take people out. I love being able to go to nice dinners and bring everybody together and have this moment. But I don't really need to own very much. You know, we have a nice house, we have a nice car in the garage. That's we're good, you know where we need to be. I don't like, I don't mean much status symbol.

because I can get your greatest hits. I can just go on Spotify and I make your greatest hits, which every way I want to, I can find everything that's out there. The the value is probably you know, it still exists in sync and things like that. But for that for that stuff to be valuable, people need to be working it and people need to you know, to be actively working on your catalog. And so that to me was I think was the reason, Like it just

doesn't have the value the ownership of it. The songs are still there, and that connection that I have every night, like we're gonna have a show at the Prudential Center Thursday, that connection is still going to be there. That doesn't go away. And that's the one you know, that I own forever. There's not really more that I have the benefit from from owning that publishing, and I think a lot of artists are starting to realize that now as well.

You hear about these maze you know, people like Springsteen, you.

just something's going to be like I do. I don't like that look for me, you know, Like I'm not like Carlos and I always joke like we're not we're not ready for Smooth to be an x Lax commercial just yet, like we gotta we gotta call once where it was like it was a commercial for Smooth and it was like a Mercedes commercial, but it was kind of like the Vibe where the guys listening to Smooth and then the hot girl goes by and listening to

Maria Cabo or whatever, you know, and and we're like, yeah, no, like that's you know, that's that's We're not ready to put that nail in that coffin just yet. You know, we're still we're still trying to keep the illusional. But the third time, when smooth comes back around, you know, and it's cool again.

He came to see us the first time he ever saw us play live, walked backstage and said, well, how much money did you get from your publishing And I said, well, I think I got about four hundred thousand. He goes, My advice to you is put that money away and invested, because it's all the money you're ever going to see. If this is how you think a show should be played. And then he quit and he walked out of the room. And then and then we called him and begged them

to come back. And then I think like a week later he I got into a fight because he I just didn't think that it mattered what clothes you wore in a video. I was like, nobody cares about what they you know, you wear, and Mike was like, last night, He's like, he tell me always the story, Like, you know, you know Bruce Springsteen. You think that Bruce Springstein just wears any jeans and any T shirt. He's like, you don't think that he's got the exact right teams and

the exact you know is the trust me. Everybody cares. It just depends on how you show it, you know. And I remember walking out of the restaurant fucking you, fuck you. You know. We quit on each other quite a few times. But he's been very much a paternal figure throughout my entire life.

It wasn't formatted what you needed to play. And he on his own, like we put that long day, the label put money into it, we made a video, it was on MTV. The song just tanked, it didn't do well, and Dave Rossi just started playing Push on his own and in Birmingham it became the number one song. Like we were playing everywhere to like moderate people. And then we showed up Birmingham. There's a line around the block

to see us play. And Atlantic was we were on the chopping block to begin with, because the day our record came out was the day lava folded into it. Atlantic. It was Jason and Atlantic took Jason Flohm into Atlantic, and they absolved just a couple of bands. It was

like Us, Sugar, Ray, Kid Rock and Edwin McCain. I want to say I like the bands that they kept, but we all knew that we were on the chopping block, and so when long they didn't work out, it was like, oh, like we were just waiting for the call any day, and because of Push, they were like, let's let's just give this single a chance. And then everything from that moment on was just exponentially. Every week we just started to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

wasn't anything that we did. Michael was just always trying to find a way to get somebody to write about us, you know, and like I remember like seeing that, like I guess in Touch magazine or in Style whatever, they would always have like a loser of the week, and we were the loser of the week because we we made a joke that we thought was clearly a joke that we were we were so tired of being compared to bands like Some forty one and Blink one eighty two,

which was so obvious we'd never have in our entire life. And so I guess whoever heard that rote like as if da da da da da, and we're just like, oh, you have no sense of humor at all, you know, you don't get us at all. So yeah, it was that was an aesthetic choice, just purely an aesthetic choice. And we and we still keep it. We just like the way it looks better. We like twenty written out, and we like it in a lowercase bawd. That's just the kind of people we are.

So it was kind of like written as a third third party, you know, like she said, I don't know if you know it's fact. It was almost like a fly on the wall of me looking at this relationship, you know, And there was a little blowback I think at the time. I mean, it was a pretty aggressive I think in that kind of nineties manufactured angst kind of way that a lot of us were, you know, it was in that kind of like well this is

how we expressed ourselves. No no, no, no, no, no no. But it was genuine, you know, like it came from a real place in melody and lyric wise, and it scratched that it's at the time, it's it's a I mean, obviously for so many reasons, it's been a really important song. It's an amazing thing now to see, you know, fourteen and fifteen year olds like kind of light up when we play it at a show, maybe partially because of Barbie.

be the guy just living on my friends couches. So any relationship that I was in, I didn't have a whole lot of control over it, you know. I was always just kind of being led by my emotions and just lucky if somebody felt like somebody liked me and wanted to spend time with me, and so that would always put me in a position where I could be manipulated very very easily or discarded, you know, because I

didn't really I didn't. I wasn't someone that I think that I wasn't so many that people took like a serious person.

what it is you have to say. And you have to like suspend disbelief to some degree because you have to believe against all odds that you're you're going to be the one of the ones that make it. Of course you are. When the first record, though, did so well, it worked the opposite way because when you get that kind of success right off the bat, everybody is like, well, that's not going to happen, and it doesn't. I mean, they're right, you're not going to sell twenty million records

again and fifteen million records again. But it's pretty much a guarantee that oh that's a you know, if not a one hit wonder, that's a one record you know moment and that was that time in the nineties. There's a lot of bands selling ten million records. Back then, the presidents of the United States of America just on Lump and Peaches sold ten million records, you know. And then so everybody would like to let you know, it's probably not going to happen. So then you're like, oh, well, shit,

maybe it's not gonna happen. I knew that I was writing some really good stuff. I had already written Bent. I knew that Bent, you know it was a good song. I knew that if You're Gone was a good I knew that these songs were solid. I also knew that that didn't necessarily matter. I think that magic moment of smooth right in the middle was a huge thing that kind of kept people's eyes on, well, let's give it a chance and see what happens. And then so then

we're at the very beginning of the early odds. We put out our first single on the second record, and it's our first number one hit, like our first actual number one song, and that felt good. And then that record did amazingly well for especially for that that being in that situation as sophomore record and going, ah, you know, four singles deep in there. That was the moment where I kind of felt like we really started to build a career. You know, like if you on your first

you have some success on your first record. I mean, that's that's a journey, that's an adventure, and it buys you a ticket to get in to see how you could if you can take the ride, and then you get on the ride, and then you know, we didn't throw up. You know, we held it together, We mastered the ride, and by the time we got into our third record, we were the band that we wanted to be.

Like that third record with bride lights and unwell and sounds like so sad, so like that was like all we felt like, this is this really feels like we've kind of settled into the adult versions of the band that we want to be and we were allowed that.

We were allowed allowed to do that, by the way, which is you know, it doesn't you're not always lucky enough to you know, a lot of bands find their stride, you know, three four records in, but they don't get that opportunity to now as much as they used to then.

So we're really really fortunate because even then, I mean then wasn't now, But without that success that would have happened, we would have been dropped probably what you know, if Push had never happened, we would have been dropped and never really gotten to figure out what our true potential was.

you know, it's kind of in there. But you don't have to be a genius to to listen to music and go like, oh, well, this isn't what we're doing, you know, like this this is not this aesthetic like we give part of it, you know, having talent, having good songs has to be it. But also for some sort of success, your aesthetic has to fit the aesthetic of what kind of what's happening right then in the zeitgeist, and that was something that happened for us at that

time when it went over like we we didn't. Also, we didn't love everything those popular, so we were kind of glad that we didn't sound like that, and we

weren't going to go chasing that sound. And so I think one of the things that we did early on was we we were very very conscious of trying not to sound anything like what was happening on the radio, but also not sound like our previous records, and realized that at this point we'd love it if you know, if you can if you have some success on the radio. But we had massed a group of people who had an interest in what it is. We had to say, you know, let's just let's tend to that garden all

the time. Let's make sure that we keep these people to good with us. And over the years, those people have brought their kids, and their kids are bringing their kids. And I mean when we were really, really young, if you would have told us at the very very beginning, when we were super hungry, that you know, eventually you're going to have a career, but it's going to come

along with a sense of nostalgia. We would have thought that was sad, and then we realized that, like, you know, that's that is ninety percent of the favorite music and bands that we've grown up with that have a career to this day. There you know, so many bands out there, there are still they go out on tour, they're still selling ten thousand seats, They're still enjoying a really good life. Their songs are being place to put you know what I mean. They're just not a part of this immediate

conversation anymore. And almost nobody, I mean you have. I call them the one percent, you know, these beyonces, these tailors that are usually successful, and every time they do something, they maintain a part of that conversation, right, And that

seems tiring. It seems like it takes an entire village to make that happen, you know, and it certainly doesn't sound like something that happens by doing the thing that I love, which is sitting in my studio writing and writing until I get a song that really excites me, following that thread, making that into a record like that, to me is the thing that I love about it. And that's how I wound up getting to where I

got to. It's just that no matter what I do, like, I'm not going to be that part of that conversation anymore. And that's okay. In fact, I don't even know what it would be like, because that conversation now is happening on such a broader, wider level, Like you know, I

think about it like how we used to. We used to have this point of entrigue when you put out a record of music that was kind of like a funnel, and you and your label and your team would get together and you'd be like, well, we're gonna release this song at this time on this place, and then we're gonna put it out everywhere, and you have control over every little aspect, you know. And it was so even when you you were like really really famous, you were

in a smaller playing field. Like what you and I talked about earlier in this conversation was a much smaller playing field that was out there. Now that that funnel is a callnder and you put something in it and it just goes where it goes and it comes in and you don't have really I don't know what. I don't know what it's like to be famous. I know,

what it's like to have some famous music. I know what it's like to be famous in the room that I rented, you know, I know what it's famous to be like to be famous in front of that twenty thousand people that came to see me do this thing. But I don't know what it's like to be famous in that sense where like my life is scrutinized this whole, you know, like it's your brand. Somebody the other day was like, why don't you have sneakers with the name

on because I'm not sneaker famous, motherfucker. Like that's not something you just do, you know, you just side and I'm mak a sneakers, I'm a name on them.

George Michael. I really wanted George to do it. I think bon Jovi's name came up at some point and it was Carlos, who had no idea who I was, but liked my voice on the demo. That was like, well, let's does he sing? And they're like, yeah, he's in a band, you know, and it call us a like He's like, I I believe him, Let's just have him

do it. And then that was kind of it. I Mean, the funniest part of that whole thing is the twenty five years later now, you know, I'll still have nights till midnight where my wife's laughing because me and Carlos are still up texting each other, you know, stupid videos and songs and you know, fucking strange emojis and making plans to to do things that you know, records that were never gonna make. He's just become like one of

my like one of my brothers. And in the relationship that I've wound up with with Clive Davis, who is my neighbor. But you know, Clive is like, if I make a new record, I've never I've never been on his label, never had anything to do with him, but he had me help honor him at Carnegie Hall about a month ago. If I make a new record, I go to client's house or his office and we sit

and we listen to the record, you know, together. Like He's just been a real great mentor that I met at a time where I was much more porous than I probably am now and much more spongy, and so I you know, it was a really good time to meet those people in my life because I learned from Carlos early on the difference between being a famous musician and being a celebrity, and that being a famous musician is what you've always wanted. I want people to hear

my music. I want more people to hear it. I want, you know, I want my song to be part of people's lives, and the way that my favorite music is a part of mine. And then the rest of it is all bullshit, like none of it really matters except for that.

We want to do something. We just toured last summer, which because I think because we hadn't been out in so many years, we hadn't been out since like twenty seventeen. I think it was one of our most successful tours in our entire career since the very very beginning. So the idea of like but we also made a record which we were planning on doing, but then COVID happened and we canceled a summer and we're like, well, if we're not going to tour, but we know that we're available,

let's make a record. And we made a record that we're unbelievably proud of. But we also realized that we fucking hate making records together. Like it is just like a one giant argument. Like we as a band and get along unbelievable. Like if you come out you see us at a show, you would think that we all just became best friends, you know what I mean, Like we are this family. We're joking all the time. I don't think we've ever had a personal argument amongst us. Ever,

it's always about creative direction. It's always about this will I see something this way and I see it this way? And you know, Paul always jokes that a Matchbox twenty song is the result of an argument between four people. And so I don't know, as we get older, that's something that we I mean, I'm not saying we wouldn't never record music, but we're not making an entire record again. Doesn't seem in the cards for us because we don't

enjoy it. And frankly, we've worked hard enough in a teeth enough now where we don't have to do something if we don't enjoy it. But we enjoy playing, So I mean, maybe we'll maybe, you know, the landscape is different. Maybe for Matchbox that means we've put out a song and we just go out and tour maybe something special, maybe your residency at a casino, you know, maybe a specialty tour where it's just like one big show in

big cities, you know, event shows. Like I don't know what that means yet, but right now I know that I just got to get this fucking record done by the end of this year. For my solo that's like, you know, like at the end of the day, you're still jobbing, you know, like you're still like, Okay, I've

got this. I've given myself a deadline, and now I'm going to make that deadline happen because now Atlantic Records is going I want that record, and I'm lucky to you know, still have a label that wants that record.

That's really my driving force now is I want to I want to write songs. I would love for people to connect with them, you know. I mean I love when I write a song and it's still something that somebody uses that they're their wedding or it's still something you know. But that's really the only success now because you never really know for the rest of our lives and my life, I can we can go out and play to shows. We can get people that are going

to come see us play. Most of my favorite artists, you know, like like sometimes you're playing it, you know, you're playing like this casino and you're like are we casinos? And you look up like, oh, well, fuck, Elvis Costello was here last week. Fucking love Alice Costello and you know John legend was just here last you know, like, all right, you know this is I'm not the I think the the litmus test isn't isn't that anymore? Now? It's just like I just want to do good work.

I just want to write, you know, I just want to write good songs, and I want to do well enough that I keep getting to do that. Like I guess one day if like I don't have a label, I don't know, Like, I'll tell you this, if for some reason, music stops being a viable career option for me, you will never see me again. I won't be on Dancing with the Stars, I won't be on you know, celebrity houseboat or fucking whatever. You know, like, I will not find another means for people to know who I am.

If people stop knowing who I am because I make music, well, then lucky for them, they will never see me again. I will just be I'll just be quietly rich somewhere else.

that's not always true. And the fact is, without the luck factor, Like I believe that I write good songs, and I believe that I worked my ass off, and I believe that Matchbox twenty is, in my opinion, one of the greatest pop rock bands of all time, especially if you come see us live. But there's a lot of great fucking bands, and there's a lot of great songs, and there's a lot of people that with all of those things, they just didn't have that one lucky component,

you know. And so you're still like, I could be fifty two years old having a conversation about my you know, my dad band that I'm in while I'm sleeping on my friend's couch, or you know, taking time for my dentistry practice or whatever, only I didn't even give. I didn't have a fallback, man, I like, you know, I didn't even have the dentistry practice to fall back on. I would have been working at my cousin's cleaners, you know, while I was still trying to get my band to

work out. And it's never lost on me that it's a very fine line and that luck is that line between that happening. But the drive is just that you let everything else go, You let college go, you let getting into the ground floor of a career go. All of these other options are kind of going by, and you're like, no, I'm waiting on this. I'm waiting. It's kind of like you're just you're sitting at the at the bus stop and waiting for your friend to pick you up, and all of these buses come by and

you're just like, no, I'm good, he'll come. He'll come, and you're just like, oh fuck, if he doesn't come home, I'm stranded, you know. And then for us, we just got lucky and he showed up and picked us up, and you know, we went on the ride.