| The Art of Madness Drum Media |
| The Art of Madness Drum Media |
The 9:30 club is a small club in downtown Washington DC. The night is chilly and wet but it doesn't stop the line of people stretching over two blocks waiting to get into the club. They are happy to wait for three hours to get into the venue, and wait for abother two hours before the head;ome namd jots the stage. But it's a rare chance to see Matchbox Twenty in a small club. They long ago grauated to stadium size when their frst album, "Yourself or someone like you" sold over 5 million albums world wide.
But they are finally back with their sophomore album, Mad season, and of course expectations are high. So the band are tour bussing around the US playing small venues working the new songs in front of an audience. The 9:30 club is special because it is one of the first venues the Orlando, Florida originated band played when they first started. At the gig the audience is enthusiastic as they get through most of the 13 tracks off the new album, that is if you ignore the constant screams for "smooth" the monster hit and three times Grammy awarded song lead singer Rob Thomas wrote and recorded with Santana last year.
"No, we will never play Smooth at a Matchbox Twenty gig," says an adamant Rob Thomas after the gig. "It's a Santana thing. I guess its just as well we have foldback in our ears so we can't hear people yell for it."
Rob may be the singer/ songwriter/pin-up boy for the band, but he is keen to show that he's not trying to steal any limelight from the other four members. "The front man always has the focus, but we always combat it. We wouldn't even do the cover of Rolling Stone because they wanted to me on and not the rest of the band," says Rob. "The whole Santana thing was great, but I did it out of love of music and the chance to work with Santana. I had no idea it would be as huge as it turned out to be. I really thought it would just be another Santana album and I would have to ring my friends and tell them to go and find it in the store to check it out."
Still Rob was careful to check with the rest of the band before he went ahead with Smooth. "We were on a break. I wouldn't have even considered doing it if we were recording or on the road," he says. "But they were happy for me to do it. Paul (Doucette) was just a bit concerned that it wasn't going to be a Ricky Martin sounding thing."
"We feel more like a band with this album then we ever had because when we made the first record we hadn't been together that long. We didn’t have any really good fights or good laughs, not much of anything together. So its very hurtful when people refer to it as Rob Thomas' band, or say that it sounds like a reluctant back up band. There is nothing further from the truth," he says.
If anything Matchbox Twenty have been trying to encourage anonymity. Like their first album, Mad Season does not have an image of the band on the cover of the CD.
"We've sold millions of albums still most people don't know what we look like," jokes bassist Brian Yale, as the band prepares to board their tour bus back to the hotel.
"I think it's cool," adds Rob. "When we sold that many records nad people didn't know what we look liked to us it meant that people were buying the music. It wasn't because of our image or that they thought we were cute. Before MTV that's what it was like for the most part- nobody knew what Supertramp or the Eagles looked like."
Songwriters traditionally have the advantage in the first album of drawing from a well of songs they have spent years writing, but Rob says he actually the luxury of more time for mad season
"With the exception of 3am , all the songs on Yourself or someone like you were written in eight months, so I had more time to write for this record, because I have been writing all the time we were on the road," he says. "I don't just write because I have a new record coming out. I'm always writing. It's my hobby so by the time we come to make a record, I have about 50 songs to choose from, so we can make sure we only put good songs on the album."
"Bent" was chosen as the first single, because it was a familiar sounding song for Matchbox Twenty fans. "We were thinking of releasing Black and White people but it had horns in it, and the band didn't have a horns section, so we thought "Bent" was a good five person rock band song to come back with. There's no smoke or mirrors, just a good solid song," he says.
If Rob were to define a theme for the album he says it's about maturity. "It's about getting older, about gaining acceptance, not to take everything so personally," he says. "When you are 20 everything is life and death but by the time you get to 25/26 you start to see the bigger picture."
The title song Mad Season refers to the wild ride the band has been on since their road to success. "I wanted to call it '13 new songs' but nobody seemed to like that one," laughs Rob.
Speaking of titles, a few months ago it was announced to the media that the spelling of the band had to change from the numerical to the spelt form of twenty. It was reported that they did not want to be confused with other number bands like Eiffel 65 or Blink182. It seemed a pretentious move from a band that always seemed so down to earth.
"It was a total piss take and a joke that nobody really got," explains Rob. "We really don't care how people write it. Our tour laminates and merchandise still have a number on it. We just decided to change it for the album and made a joke about being compared to other bands, but in print the sarcasm was lost. So now our joke is that we are the band that changed our name from Matchbox 20 to Matchbox Twenty"
