He’s one of the biggest singer-songwriters of our time, from his band Matchbox Twenty to his stellar solo career.
This week, Rob Thomas joined WTOP en route to a special concert at the Kennedy Center on Friday, Sept. 6.
“It’s my second time playing there,” Thomas told WTOP. “Years and years ago, I actually played at the Kennedy Center Honors and we honored The Who. I got to do ‘Baba O’Reilly’ in front of The Who, I think Jack Black was the host, Dave Grohl was there, Chris Cornell was there, that’s such a cool thing just to watch and it’s a bucket list thing to be a part of and tick off.”
This time, Thomas will be performing during Ben Folds’ “DECLASSIFIED” series alongside Grammy winner Madison Cunningham, singer-songwriter Yasmin Williams and the epic National Symphony Orchestra.
“It’s a little Matchbox and a little solo,” Thomas said. “I sent Ben a list of 12 or 13 [songs] and I was like, ‘Any of these I think would translate really well if you’d like to do them,’ then I got a text from him saying, ‘Listen, I can send you the arrangements that we worked on, but the more irresponsible, fun way to do it is to just show up the day before at rehearsal and we’ll just wing through it,’ and I was like, ‘That sounds way more fun.'”
Born a U.S. Army brat in West Germany in 1972, Thomas spent his early years in South Carolina before his family moved to Orlando, Florida. His band “Tabitha’s Secret” included drummer Paul Doucette and bass player Brian Yale before adding lead guitarist Kyle Cook and rhythm guitarist Adam Gaynor to form Matchbox Twenty in 1995.
“I got a bunch of label interest in my songs,” Thomas said. “Before we even had a name, we signed our record deal, so that’s why our name is not great. We were watching people walk into a bar. One guy had a jersey with a ’20’ on it and a bunch of patches and one of the patches said, ‘Matchbox,’ so we looked at the drunk frat boys next to us and said, ‘Hey, would you go see a band called Matchbox Twenty?’ And the guy yells, ‘Matchbox Twenty!'”
Their first album “Yourself or Someone Like You” (1996) was a slow-starting smash phenomenon that eventually went 12-times platinum thanks to a series of hit singles like “Push,” “3 AM,” “Real World” and “Back 2 Good.”
“The label was really disappointed the first week,” Thomas said. “We put out a single and it didn’t do well, but we had a song on the radio and a video on MTV, so we thought we were rockstars. We didn’t realize we were about to get dropped and it was all about to go away, but one guy in Alabama started playing ‘Push’ on the radio and it became the biggest song in Birmingham, so they released ‘Push’ and that was really the song that saved us.”
Soon after, Thomas teamed with Carlos Santana for the iconic hit “Smooth” (1999), which won three Grammys, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year, while Santana’s album “Supernatural” won nine total.
“It was like the ‘Thriller’ of that year,” Thomas said. “‘Supernatural’ was just a really, really big thing for all of us to be a part of. We showed up in a studio just outside of San Francisco with him and his band and just ran through it. … Carlos has become one of my greatest friends in the world. He’s my brother, we talk constantly, every few days we’re sending each other music and we’re calling each other late at night, so our wives make fun of us.”
He reunited with Matchbox Twenty for the band’s exquisite second album “Mad Season” (2000), which delivered more radio hits like “If You’re Gone” and earned another Grammy nomination for “Bent.”
“The first three albums (are) the time when an artist gets a chance to figure out who they are,” Thomas said. “The first record you’re learning how to make a record. … After the success of the first record, we had money to make the second record, so we were getting strings and orchestras and we had a lot of studio time. That record sounds expensive, everything has 100 tracks on it, a little of everything goes into it because we were experimenting.”
The band’s third album “More Than You Think You Are” (2002) was another success, featuring hits like “Unwell” and my personal favorite “Bright Lights,” perfect to roll your windows down and sing at the top of your lungs.
“When the third record came out with ‘Bright Lights’ and ‘Unwell,’ we really had kind of figured out a leaner version of that, like this is the best way to serve the song, ‘let’s think about how we’re going to play these live while we’re in the studio, let’s think about us as a live band while we’re doing these,’ those kinds of things,” Thomas said. “When I listen back to [‘Bright Lights’] those drums are epic! Just these big ’70s kind of fills.”
After that, Thomas proved that he could be an artist in his own right by breaking off for his first solo album “Something to Be” (2005), earning two more Grammy nominations for “Lonely No More” and “This is How a Heart Breaks,” as well as other hits like “Ever the Same” and “Streetcorner Symphony” featuring John Mayer.
“It always seemed like a side project that I was just doing to get it out,” Thomas said. “I knew I had different musical tastes in me like ‘Lonely No More,’ if I were to bring that to the band, they might not necessarily jive with it, it’s not really the kind of thing they’re into, so it was just one of those things where I was like, ‘This is nice to do.’ … It really connected in a really big way and created this crossroads where I had this viable voice in my solo music.”
In 2007 alone, he delivered the Matchbox Twenty hit “How Far We’ve Come” on the compilation album “Exile on Mainstream,” while recording the solo hit “Little Wonders” for the Disney movie “Meet the Robinsons.” He continued to alternate between solo albums like “Cradlesong” (2009), “The Great Unknown” (2015) and “Chip Tooth Smile” (2019), and Matchbox Twenty albums like “North” (2012) and “Where the Light Goes” (2023).
“‘Matchbox’ was kind enough to realize that they had to give up (time) because if I’m working solo, then they’re not working,” Thomas said. “My absence was noticed, it wasn’t always appreciated, but it was understood. Then, fans who were around for songs like “3 AM” and stuck around all the way to whatever we’re doing now, then also went with me on (solo) journeys, it was a gift that they did and continue to allow me to explore different spaces.”
Maybe someday he’ll even be invited back to D.C. to receive a Kennedy Center Honor himself.
“One day they’ll run out of everybody else and then they’ll come to me,” Thomas said.
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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