Rob Thomas

The smooth frontman of Matchbox Twenty.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob West's podcast. My guest
today is one and only Rob top Rob. You're wearing
a Bob Dylan T shirt. You're a big Dylan fan.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Uh yeah, of course. Man, if you're a songwriter and
you're not, then you've missed something along the way.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
So what are your favorite Dylan songs?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
You know, besides I think obviously you know, like Blowing
in the Wind or that kind of seminal first period,
you know, Like I was really really got into the
Times of Change record, you know, like the Yeah, I
thought that there was a really great return to form.
I thought it was just it was it was kind

(00:52):
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

(01:13):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I got all said, I'm the same way, so uh,
I won't go anymore. But uh okay, believe it at that.
So do you keep up on new music?

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Not in the way that I used to. I mean,
I it's easy to blame the medium, but I think,
you know, like I do a song of the day
every day, and so in a way that that tasked
me to every day search on Spotify and listen till
I find something either that you know or I mean,
I try and do it, like if I'm driving in
the car and something excites me and make a note
for that to be my song of the day. But

(02:01):
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

(02:22):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
So how do you get turned on to new stuff?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Well, you know, it's not as important to me, I guess,
to get turned on the new stuff, I think. I
just you know, I'm a big fan of film, a
big fan of television. I think that placement now has
been better than it's ever been before. So I know
that I find a lot of music that I love
through film and through television. It just just in different,
you know, in sync situations like the amount of times

(02:55):
and my wife and I are sitting on the couch
watching something and then we hold up our with a
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

(03:19):
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

(03:39):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Okay, But you know the difference, it's very different when
you were coming up and you had your initial success.
Today there's a tsunami of prout, like it's almost you know,
every day there's one hundred thousand tracks on Spotify, And
I know the bit you're talking about age, but it's
like incomprehensible. But let's go back a step. So what

(04:12):
streaming television do you watch?

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Oh, I mean it's purely script scripted drama, comedy. You know,
Like I'm just a huge fan of pretty much any
new thing that comes out my wife and I are,
you know, Like my favorite thing now is just when
she tells me that she doesn't want to watch something
because I'm running out of shit for myself to watch alone.
So like she doesn't like something, I'm like, oh, thank god,

(04:37):
I got something, you know, to watch when I'm working
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

(05:01):
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

(05:21):
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

(05:43):
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

(06:05):
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,

(06:27):
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.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Okay, there are other people you might feel inadequate relative to.
But how much of it is what you mentioned earlier,
that the business has changed and you don't get all
that money thrown it at you. And is it lamenting
those days or is it just when you see somebody
say they're fucking great?

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah? No, I mean, you know, I was really fortunate
in the career, especially at the very beginning, that really
bought me the ticket to be on the ride for
as long as I've been on it. But it's never
I mean, coming up, we were we were very very
careful about decisions that we made in things that we
wanted to do, and we've left a lot of money

(07:16):
on the table. It's never really been the deciding motivating factor.
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

(07:37):
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

(07:58):
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

(08:18):
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.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Can you give us any concrete examples of songs?

Speaker 2 (08:30):
I mean, that's probably not. I mean, I'm the worst.
I feel like I feel like Nick Hornby and in
a high fidelity where like I'm tasked to put down
the top five list, and it never, like nothing ever
comes to mind as soon as you know, as soon
as I.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Hate that too, but it's just you know, you hear
certain songs sometimes that as a memory. Okay, So if
you're not watching biopics or you're watching series, or you're
watching movies.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
I'm watching both. I don't know. I think we've all
we all got to a certain place where it feels
like a momentous task to sit down and watch an
hour and a half or two hour film, but we'll
stream four hours of five hours of something without thinking
twice about it. Like I I've actually caught myself now
on the other side of it, like watching a movie

(09:16):
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,

(09:40):
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

(10:02):
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

(10:23):
us to do.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Okay, what's the best Star Wars movie?

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Let me think, I mean, for me, it's got to
be a new Hope. But I mean, I think that's
just because it was the thing that everything hinged on,
you know, like it comes with so much emotional baggage
with it that and it just means so much. I mean,
all the way to my fucking Star Wars bed sheets
that I had, you know, probably way past the ages

(10:50):
that I should have had Star Wars bedsheets.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Okay, Star Wars came out in seventy seven, you were
a little kid. Did you see it when it came out.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
I don't think so. My wife and I were trying it.
We don't remember when we first saw Star Wars, and
we were having that exact conversation. I remember my sister
and I were growing up in South Carolina. My sister
has we have different fathers, and I remember her father
picking her up, she's five years older, and her father
picking her up to go see Star Wars in the

(11:18):
theater and being like like crying. My mother had to
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

(11:45):
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,

(12:09):
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.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
So what else is on the list.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Of all time? Like, I mean, it jumps around my
One of my favorite movies of all time is iHeart
Huckabees David Russell film, But also so is Curproco. I mean,
like my wife every time she comes in the house,
if Circac goes on, it's fucking on, and it stays on.

(12:56):
It drives her insane and then she just gets some
out of my like shitty Patino And personally you get
too in the back, You get to in the back,
like I mean, it's it's just it was, It's just
I don't know if there's anything cooler in the world
than al Pacino during Cercroco period. You know, it's a
maybe dog day afternoon, okay.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
But on the list that you have what you're gonna
watch on television? How do you establish that list?

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Hold on, you know what I'm gonna show, I'm gonna
figure out right now, like right now, so I've even
got it. So I've even got it down. And the
ones that that are gone away, but but they're gonna
come back, things like The Morning Show and the Umbrella Academy, Uh, Fargo,
if they're gonna if that's gonna come back, Deadlock which

(13:44):
is really great. Australian showed Showgun, which I think is
kind of done. It's not coming back. Fallout was really great.
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

(14:05):
of thing.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
And so what will your wife not watch that you
watch yourself?

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Okay, well, like we just started The Sympathizer with with
Robert Downey Jr. And she watched one episode and was like, okay,
this is yours. I don't know why she loves Robert
Downey Junior more than me, but that was it.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
So is this something where you watch something every night
or once a week or how much?

Speaker 2 (14:35):
No, pretty much every night. I mean every night that
we're home. You know, we're we have we we have
the blessing and the curse. Like if I'm gone, I'm gone.
But when I'm home, I'm I'm very present. And when
we have long stretches of time where we're you know,
so we have a routine, and that routine always involves
let's either make some dinner or have some dinner. We're
gonna sit down and we're gonna watch something, you know,

(14:56):
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.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
But you always do it at home. You don't go
out to the theater.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Not as much. We you know, here, we live in Bedford,
and right around the corner in Bedford Village there's this
beautiful place called the Bedford it's a Bedford Cinema, but
it's also the Clive Davis Center for Performing Arts.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
This is bed for New York in the Bedford.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
New York right right, And they have this beautiful place,
you know, and you can eat food there and it's great.
You know, it's wine and food and they have directors
come and they have like events centered around the films.
But they'll also have classic movies Tuesdays and Thursdays, like
they just had the Big Chill last week. I think
they have escaped from New York coming up next week,
and so we're more likely to go see those movies.

(15:44):
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

(16:05):
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

(16:31):
to make sure, like, well, I mean, am I getting
driven in? Do I have to find parking? Like? Do I?

Speaker 1 (16:35):
You know?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Do I am I good? You know? Do I have
good tickets? Like? I don't know?

Speaker 1 (16:40):
But if they're playing at the Capitol, you'll go.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Oh the Capitol for sure. I mean that place is awesome.
I was playing the Capitol and in the dressing room,
the artist dressing room, there's a picture, live picture of
Carlos back in like the early seventies, like sixties playing
and I sent him the picture and he remembered it immediately,
remember that tour. He remember that show, and he's like, oh,
the Capitol. He didn't even know it was. He didn't

(17:04):
know it was back open again.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
So a lot of great shows there before it closed
and Peter Shapiro reopened it. But you grew up in
the South. What's it like living in the North.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Now, Well, I've been here longer than I've been anywhere,
because I've been here. I'm fifty two and I've been
here for twenty six years. In New York so I've like,
I don't really know remember, but I think that the
difference is you're never not from the South, if that
makes sense. Like there are certain sensibilities that I grew

(17:36):
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

(17:59):
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.

(18:20):
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,

(18:41):
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

(19:02):
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,

(19:23):
which is just kind of like a non specific Northeastern
kind of a thing.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
So you didn't consciously try to get rid of it,
It just evolved.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think I could have. If
you listen record by record, you can hear it fading away,
you know, little by little.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
So how'd you meet your wife.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
At a strip club? No, she was. She was on vacation
in Montreal with a friend. She had never heard of
our band, but her we only had one song out.
So we had the joke between us that when we met,
I was more famous than she thought that I was,

(20:05):
but less famous than I thought that I was. And
because to her, she was this worldly New Yorker who
had lived, she'd modeled all over the world. She'd seen
things that I can only imagine. And to her, I
was this guy who had a song on the radio.
She was like, big fucking deal. And to me, I
was this guy that had a song on the fucking radio.

(20:25):
It was a big fucking deal. And so she showed
up that I was immediately her friend somehow.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
A little bit slower. Where were you? How did you
end up really encountering her?

Speaker 2 (20:38):
I met the Metropolis, this kind of like larger sized club,
smaller sized theater in Montreal. Her friend, what I want
to say, was kind of like being very flirty with
our guitar tech. And so the guitar tech brought her
back after the show, and so whor my now wife

(21:01):
was in tow they're just upset, like she wanted to
fucking go because, in her words, girls like her don't
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.

(21:24):
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

(21:48):
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,

(22:09):
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

(22:31):
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

(22:53):
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.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Average Okay, was it smooth off into the sunset or
were there bumps in the road.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
I think overall pretty smooth, and that we're really good friends.
I don't. I mean, the thing about being married that
long is is just that everybody at you know, every
few years you're evolving into whatever it is that you're
going to become. And so I think every I would
give it, let's say every five years, you chick it

(23:30):
on yourself, and whatever group of experiences that you've had
happened to you or that you've been a part of,
they change you in some way and you start to become,
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

(23:50):
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.

(24:15):
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

(24:36):
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

(24:58):
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

(25:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Have you ever been to couples counseling?

Speaker 2 (25:30):
No, No, that's not for us.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
And the two of you don't have children together, right,
we don't.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
I have a son. My son is twenty six. So
that was another hurdle is that, you know, so we
meet each other, she's in love, she's got this whole
vision of this life that we're gonna have together, and
I have to explain to her that I do have
a son on the way that he's you know, he
hasn't been born yet, he's about to be born in July.
And that was I think. In fact, so I had

(26:01):
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

(26:23):
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

(26:45):
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

(27:07):
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

(27:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
So, had you had a relationship with the mother of
your son or was it a brief interlude.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Somewhere in the middle. We were very fond of each
other and we we spend a little bit of time together,
but it was but it was brief.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
And so what what went through your head when you
found out she was pregnant?

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Uh? I mean at the time, I was more worried.
I mean, I mean I was more of a fuck
up then, you know, I was. I was still dabbling
in cocaine and brown liquor a lot, and so I
think I was just I really just had these thoughts

(28:20):
of me not being prepared, you know, like I wasn't
I didn't really have a sense of like, oh my
life is over, but that you know, there wasn't like
this this kind of dread. I mean, I was twenty seven,
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

(28:44):
need to. I need to, you know, kind of I
need to be better quick.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
Okay, So you meet your wife pretty early in your success.
Many people, you know, they want to become successful rock stars,
to live the rock and roll lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah. Well I had, you know, a good year and
a half with just fucking ran it til the brakes
ran off of it. And that was you know, it
was fun. But you know, Paul, my best friend, Paul,
who was the drummer for Matchbox and now he's the
guitar player. I mean, I remember just before I met
my wife on a plane, just wasted and looking at

(29:28):
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

(29:51):
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

(30:13):
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

(30:35):
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

(30:58):
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.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
So she traveled with you at first? Does she traveled
with you at all? Now?

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Whenever she wants? I mean she you know, she's not
lured by the bus anymore, you know, maybe the way
I used to be, But she does like I did.
I knew that she was the one when after our
first time we were torn together. We're sitting like about
a month or two later in our apartment and soho
and she just out of nowhere she said, oh I

(31:49):
missed the bus. Was just like, oh really, so nah,
It's like I fucking love you. And then you know, well, Willy.
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

(32:11):
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

(32:32):
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.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Wow. So what did the rest of the band say
when all of a sudden there's this woman along with
you with them?

Speaker 2 (32:52):
It was it was a good time, Like when when
I met her. It was the next leg of our
tour was about to happen, and it was the first
time that we had two buses, and so everybody, what
the hell just happened?

Speaker 1 (33:07):
I have no idea where that came from. It's like
a your birthday or something. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
That is awesome. So, you know.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
This is audio only, but all of a sudden, we
saw balloons on the screen, just like to see my message.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
I don't know, I feel like that guy in that
I am not a cat, sir. So we had two
buses for the first time, and so we're we all,
you know, Paul at the time, I just started dating
me and Zappa and they weren't married yet, but they
had just started dating. I think Brian had just met,

(33:40):
like we had all met people, and so we everybody
loved the idea that we could break off, had a
little more room, and everybody could bring somebody out if
they wanted to. So it's actually the perfect time for it.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Okay. Anybody who's had the level of success you've had
knows you're out there, you're playing to thousands of people.
You know, then you go back in the dressing room
with the same people you've known for ten or fifteen years.
How do you calm down from a show?

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Well, I mean it's I think it still involves drinking.
Probably it used to be more, I think, but then again,
I mean, you know a lot of those highs were
much higher at the very very beginning. They were new.
Everything was a new experience, you know, for the first
few years. Every sold out club, no matter how small,

(34:30):
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,

(34:53):
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

(35:14):
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

(35:36):
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

(36:00):
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

(36:22):
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.

(36:42):
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.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Okay, let's say, you know, you go from the stage
to the shower. You still can't fall asleep right away.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
No, no, no, it's still we're still up late, you know.
But that's luckily my wife is one of those two.
I mean, you know, there's been a lot of like
times where I'm in there, I'm on the shower because
I'm I'm now like the bus is moving, I'm on
the bus showering while we're driving down the road. I've
got to kind of got good bus legs, and so
I come out. And then we're always like, there's a couple,

(37:18):
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

(37:38):
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,

(37:59):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Are you wearing an orror ring? I am, so tell
me about that.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
I don't know. Do you have one? Now?

Speaker 1 (38:24):
I don't have one. I know a lot of people
who have them. I've read varying reports on you know,
their usability, their accuracy. What's your experience been. I.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
I think the only reason that I wear it is
to check how my sleep was every day. It's like
it's literally I I didn't get an Apple Watch. I
had an Apple Watch and it was so passive aggressive,
that little fucker, and like it kept telling me to
stand up and go for a walk, and hey, don't
forget to meditate. And now even now through my phone,
my ring, like my phone will beep and just be like,

(38:56):
hey man, it's getting time for bed. Don't you think
hm out when I start winding it down, and I'm
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

(39:16):
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.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
You know, what are all the details it tells you
about how you sleep?

Speaker 2 (39:35):
I let you know, like where you're breathing rate was
while you were sleeping, but it lets you know, like
you're how much time you were in RAM sleep versus
deep sleep, how much time you spend in bed versus
actually sleeping, you know, And like it turns out like
even like if I have like a pretty high sleep
score and I slept pretty well, only like fourteen minutes
of that whole night was in deep sleep, which is

(39:58):
kind of crazy, like maybe an hour and something is
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

(40:19):
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

(40:39):
to go? I'm not using it the way I'm supposed to.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
If you had a high score and you thought back
and you said, well, I didn't drink or I drank less,
and I did this, and I did that, if you
repeat that behavior and you get the same results.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah, I mean obviously, like any it doesn't take a
psychotherapist or a medical doctor to letting you know that
if you have two glasses of wine instead of six,
you're probably gonna sleep a lot better. And I have
like restless legs syndrome I have, but I also have
a drinking problem. So what are you gonna do?

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Well, well, we'll define a drinking problem.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
I drink more than is healthy for my life.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Do you drink every day?

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Oh? Yeah, most days? Yeah, I mean I don't get
drunk every day.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
But what's the earliest you'll have a drink.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
It depends if I'm on the road and it's a
day off. I mean you might be out at lunch
having some drinks. But you know that's a that's a
different special situation. At home, we're more of like a
six thirty seven o'clock have some wine. I mean, like
I come from a world where it was shot shot, shot, shot, shot,

(41:56):
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

(42:19):
nice four door sedan. Kind of a body happening.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
And do you have an addictive personality? Do you need it?
Or you're someone say, well, you know I can stop
after a couple of drinks.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
I No, I don't think so at all. I think
that's the thing is, I could not drink at all.
But I don't have a limitter. But I'm that way
with a lot of things, you know, good and bad,
Like I get. I like my workouts. I will work
out six days a week, seven days a week for

(42:53):
an hour and a half two hours a day, you know,
and really, and I've got it in my computer, I know,
like what workouts I'm doing this and this day and
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

(43:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Work out six days a week? Yeah, by yourself with
a trainer, now, by myself. So how do you get
yourself motivated?

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Ego? Like I one of the things, you know, real
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

(43:59):
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,

(44:19):
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

(44:40):
don't like talking about people, but I'll tell I'll give
you a great example of it.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Okay, Very early in your career, once you broke to
the external world, it looked like it was very fast
and you gained weight, and as a result of that
and your instant success perceived by the public, there was
a lot of blowback. How did you cope with that?

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Unfortunately by eating and drinking, Like I used to do cocaine,
but I would only do cocaine so that I could
stay awake and party more, which led to more drinking,
which eventually would lead to, you know, gorging on food.
So no matter how much I was doing, I was
still gaining a lot of weight. The first time that
we were ever mentioned in Rolling Stone at all, there

(45:32):
was just a picture of me I had this red hoodie.
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.

(45:57):
So we got to charge out of that because at
least it was clever.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, I mean, we're talking decades later. It must have
hurt back then.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
No, I mean it really did. And obviously, I mean, Bob,
the thing that we're talking about now, you know, when
I think about the reason in the why I'm working,
why I work out six days a week, the reason,
like I have an unhealthy and this is this is
you know real talk to me and my therapist, you know,
these are these are subjects, which is I have a
very unhealthy body image and I have an unhealthy relationship

(46:25):
with calories and food and the like because of because
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.

(46:47):
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,

(47:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
So your reference drugs a number of times like that
was in the past. So what's the status of drugs today?

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Uh? Alcohol, caffeine, weed? So none?

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Was that a conscious decision, a hard decision, or just
so all of a sudden you woke up one day
and you weren't doing it.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
That wasn't too hard. I mean I really miss sometimes
I miss psychedelics sometimes, you know, I miss and I
missed like maybe ecstasy. You know, we used to have
a lot of fun. Uh, you know, takeing ecstasy, but
cocaine was easy to give up. I think it was
just one you just have to be have one time

(48:07):
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.

(48:28):
And so that was pretty easy to be like, yeah,
I'm okay with Without that part of my life happened anymore.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Now I can see on the zoom you're wearing a
bracelet with letters on like a friendship bracelet.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Oh yeah, one from a fan and one from my niece.
But it's not as cute as it sounds. My niece
is in her mid thirties.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Okay, do they say anything specific?

Speaker 2 (48:54):
One has my dog Sammy's name on it, who passed away,
and then one just says Matt twenty because uh, because
I'm a fan.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
So you mentioned a therapist, So when did you start
and how much do you go now.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Uh, once every couple of weeks, maybe a year and
a half ago, two years ago I had I started.
Five years ago, I had my first time ever going
to a therapist, and I swear to God, like five
it's like a fifth session. And she just fell asleep

(49:33):
in the middle of the session, and when I called
her on it, she just said I was boring her,
And so I think in some way, I was like,
I fucking knew this is what it was. I knew
this is what it's gonna be the you know what
I mean, And so that put me off it for
a little while. Now I have one who I like
a lot. Honestly, I think that she agrees with me

(49:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
What motivated you to go to begin with?

Speaker 2 (50:11):
You know, I got there's a lot of unresolved. My
mother and I had a very complicated relationship. It's almost like,
if you go like reasons for therapy number one, this
is you know, so my mother and I had a
very complicated relationship, that was never resolved when she passed away,
and that was kind of always in there, and I

(50:32):
see these parts of her that I hated, that I
see inside of myself, and I wanted to explore those
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

(50:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Okay, so you grew up in South Carolina. We're in
South Carolina.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
So between a place called Lake City, South Carolina, which
is like a very small tobacco town maybe an hour
from Myrtle Beach and a little time in Columbia, but
in Lake City. So Lake City, we we lived in
my grandmother's house. So my grandmother was this character. So

(51:30):
it was like a kind of like I guess you
would call it a general store in a sense, right.
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

(51:51):
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

(52:11):
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

(52:32):
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

(52:54):
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

(53:15):
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

(53:37):
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

(53:58):
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.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Let's go back your grandmother. What were her parents? How
did she end up there?

Speaker 2 (54:18):
I never knew her father, I knew her I didn't.
I mean, it was just this magical place that just
appeared to me. You know. That was where my history
of my family and everybody began. And it's hard to
get a straight answer about anything that happened before that.
You know, my like my I know my aunt. My
mother had a sister. Her name is Marcella Summers, and

(54:41):
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

(55:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Okay, the husband of your grandmother, what was his story?

Speaker 2 (55:30):
There was no husband. Since I was a little kid,
she was. I mean, as far as I knew she
was asexual, and then I found out later she wasn't.
But but she no, I never there was never there
was a husband. I think his name was Floyd, but
I've never met him. I think, I don't think I've
seen pictures of him. These are the stories that my

(55:50):
mom used to tell me.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Okay, So your grandmother started the shop herself.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Her, I think her. I don't think it's her father.
I think it's her stepfather started Willie. It's a great name, really,
Grandpa Willy. He started the store and then it was
called Kirby Grocery, and then she took it over. You know,
years later. I just knew, like when I was born,

(56:20):
like I pictures of me as a baby in that store,
So I'm not sure how long she had had it
before then.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
And what happened to the store.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
I found out later on that had burned out. My
one of my cousins burned it down for insurance. Like
here's how my family went. My cousin, one of my
cousins and his sister got their mother my aunt hooked
on crack and then they all tried to burn down
the store for like some insurance money. But I didn't
know any of this. I took my wife, I think

(56:49):
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

(57:10):
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

(57:31):
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

(57:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
So did her father ever show up when you grew up.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
My sister's father, Yeah, a couple of times. I actually
know him. He comes to shows all the time. He
lives in Chicago. He's a really nice guy. I see him,
you know, quite often. I my mother, So my mother
in law and my father in law are really really
been my family over the last twenty six years. In

(58:31):
my because I it was the first time I'd ever
had a relationship. Like when I moved to New York,
I remember like we would go on the road and
my wife would call and say, oh, you know, we're
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.

(58:53):
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

(59:13):
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

(59:36):
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,

(59:58):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
So when you were growing up, was your father in
the picture?

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Now I found out litter. I mean, I think my
dad was scared of my mom in a lot of ways,
you know, they she was volatile, and I guess I
didn't know at the time, like I was, I didn't
have my dad's number. I didn't know why. And it
turned out because I had it, that my mom would
get it. Then she might start calling at three o'clock
in the morning, you know, and harassing him or whatever.
But I didn't know any of these things. I just

(01:00:42):
felt like my dad wasn't around because he just wasn't around.
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,

(01:01:04):
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

(01:01:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Okay, you're close to your sister. Your father comes back
in the picture. You see your sister's father. Are they
a asking for money? B Do you support them?

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
No, My sister has once begrudgingly asked me for money
and then paid me back. My sister's father's never asked
me for anything at all. And I said this is
just a genuinely one of the best people that has
ever existed in the world. And I think, you know
her and I we're victims of a trauma together, you know,

(01:02:09):
like we went through a lot and through that with
our mother, you know, and she a lot, a lot
of kind of rage and violence and uncertainty and being
gone for days and days and us being alone and
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

(01:02:30):
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

(01:02:52):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
So how old were you when you moved from South
Carolina to Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Let's see. I think I was in I want to say,
six or seventh grade middle school.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
So you're living with your mother. Grandmother is quite a character.
Father's not around. Does this impact your identity in school? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I think so. I mean in a lot of ways.
I you know, my mom at the time. So my mom,
you know, single, So she's dating a lot of guys
and then kind of become we become whatever she was
dating at the time. Does that make sense? So like
when she's dating a biker, we're all bikers right now,
and she's dating like a businessman, then we're all, you know,

(01:03:50):
we need to come on, act like people. Come on.
I think, you know, having all of this weird turmoil
at home with my mom, I was acting out a
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

(01:04:11):
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.

(01:04:32):
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,

(01:04:53):
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.

(01:05:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
So you were that kid? Did you have friends? Were
you popular? Were the loner or the guy who fought?
What kind of kid were you like in school?

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
I was all of those things like I didn't have
a clique, but I got along very easily, which I
think is another trade of children of alcoholics. I got
along very easily with every group. So like on a
Saturday night, I could go to pretty much any group
of party and I would be able to come in.
I knew people pretty much everywhere there. But like you know,
this group of friends on Saturday afternoons would all get

(01:05:56):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
And at that point you're in high school, was there
enough money that if you needed something your mother could
buy it for you. It was always like an issue
having money to get shit.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
We had money, but it was mom. It wasn't she
was big on spending money on herself. Honestly, like my
drives my wife insane because she'll talk about like she
did this, and I was like, yeah, I never get
to do that. I never get to do this. I
never got to get this. I was I think it
manifested itself a lot too, and like I got into
a lot of trouble. I got arrested quite a bit.

(01:06:40):
I started to really get like my first I got
arrested for the first time ever for arm to burglary.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
Okay, tell us this story.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
It sounds worse than it is. Honestly it was. It's
the thing where we would break into people's homes that
we knew and rearrange their furniture. You know, we never
really stole anything, well I can't. Sometimes we would like
steal a beer. You know, it was we And honest
when I say this, Bob, I want you to understand now.
I realized that that if you're a homeowner and you

(01:07:10):
come home and that's how it's you feel violated, you
know what I mean, Like, it's a horrible if I
grew up.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Too, is the same thing. One time we went away
and somebody came in stole Magical Mystery Tour which had
just come out, and my father's changed first, nothing else.
They just wanted to break And I know exactly what
you're talking about. But if it's armed, Rob, where's the gun?

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Well, the gun was in the home. And honestly, it
was a very scary moment when I think about it,
because the guy that when the guys I was with
found this gun, was kind of fucking around with it.
He's like, no, there's nothing in here, and he was
pointed at me and I'm like, dude, just don't whatever,
I don't trust it, don't point it at me. And
he went like this and he shot it and it
shot through the through the wall, and I was like,

(01:07:53):
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,

(01:08:15):
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

(01:08:35):
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

(01:08:56):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Did your mother say when you got arrested.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
I don't think she was surprised. I mean I wasn't
hanging out with the like you know, when your mom
always tells you, you keep hanging out with those guys,
you're gonna you're gonna wind up dead or in jail.
I mean she knew that, and luckily it was jail.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
Well, you mentioned a number of rests. What were the
other arrests?

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
Uh? I got arrested once for Steele in a car.
I gotta I almost got to wrest with once for
Steele in a house, which is kind of weird, like
somebody had like gone on vacation and So the neighbor
was a friend of mine, and the neighbor like broke
into the house and they just but through a fucking

(01:09:50):
rager of a party. I mean, like cars around the block,
like not subtle in any way whatsoever. And I attend
this party. But then I wake up and me and
this girl are like the only people in the house,
and there's cops beating on the bedroom door. So then
it's just me, and I'm like, so I just tell

(01:10:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Okay, so you ended up dropping out of high school,
tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
I dropped out of high school. I got my ged
only because I thought that I was going to join
the army. Like I went to the army recruitment place
I took I guess what's called the ASPAB, which is
just like your placement for you know, your aptitude tests
to join the army. Turns out it's not a it's

(01:10:51):
not a very high bar. And I fucking aced it.
I got like a ninety nine or something on it,
and it was incredible, and they we're very excited, but
they said, you know you, but you have to have
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

(01:11:11):
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

(01:11:32):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Berkeley College of Music and Music.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Yeah, yeah, Berkeley ee of Boston that my son later
graduated from. And so it was through them that like
I started like learning how to He would give me
all of his music books, so I would learn like
chord structure and some music theory, you know, mixed with
you know, with practical books of how to play music

(01:12:09):
and teaching myself song by song, you know, every chord
and every notation in this song that I know, and
then this song and you know, and just keep doing
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,

(01:12:33):
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?

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
Connecticut?

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
All right? So I don't know if they did this
in Connecticut, but like there would be a day once
a year where you go out to like the pavilion
or wherever outdoors, you know, lunch section or maybe in
the cafeteria, and there was a band set up, like
a full band. They're playing like you're like hits from today,
but they're all in Army fatigues and they're all the

(01:13:17):
Army band.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
You know, I went to high school in the Vietnam era.
Believe me, that wasn't happening.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
Okay, yeah, okay, So this was like their recruitment catch.
It was like, hey, look how fucking cool the Army is. Man.
We're laid back, We're just like you. We're playing Terrence
Trent Darby man, you know, like we're fucking we're playing
the cure like this is where your people. You can
come to the Army. You want to do this? And
I was like, oh that shit worked on me immediately.

(01:13:43):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Usually, once they get their hooks in you, they don't
let you go that easily. Usually they track you down
to try to join. When you said you weren't going
to join, they keep coming after you.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
I think it's a lot easier to track you now.
Well now it's a lot easier in general, but it's
a lot easier if you haven't addressed like you know,
I was pretty fluid at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Okay, So where did this music thing start?

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
I really don't know. I mean, I I remember, like
my sister saying that when I was like ten, eight
to ten, I would I would like write little songs
and I would put on little shows for my parents,
you know, or for my sister for like cause it
was okay, this is another story that's going to sound satisfyed,

(01:14:53):
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

(01:15:14):
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,

(01:15:36):
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,

(01:15:59):
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

(01:16:21):
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

(01:16:44):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
Honestly, what about music lessons learning how to play the piano,
the guitaris.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
I wish that I had taken them, honestly. I mean,
I I'm a pretty good piano player. I wish that
I had taken piano because it wouldn't take me as
long to get it, you know, to get better at it.
I wish I had taken guitar, but I'm like a
really shitty guitar player. Like at some point, if I'm
writing a song on the guitar, I might have to

(01:17:30):
put it down and go to the piano because I hit,
I hit a chord that I know that I want
to get to, but I don't know it on the
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

(01:17:52):
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

(01:18:13):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
Okay, you're gonna go in the army. You meet these
guys going to Berkeley. So what's the next step. How
do you ultimately perform?

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
Well, we play a lot of like, you know, friends parties,
Like I said, these kind of like.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
And what's your role? Are you the front guy.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
On the front guy? Like? Okay? Our songs are like Hunger,
like the Wolf Lady in Red's Tall Cool and remember
the Robert Plant solo Tall Cool One. I'm only saying
these to give you a sense of reference of the time,
right this absolutely these kind of eighty songs mixed in

(01:19:00):
with stuff like old time rock and roll and things
that we ass like we gotta we gotta gig one time.
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.

(01:19:24):
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

(01:19:46):
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

(01:20:09):
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

(01:20:29):
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.

(01:20:50):
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

(01:21:10):
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

(01:21:32):
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

(01:21:54):
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

(01:22:19):
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

(01:22:42):
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

(01:23:05):
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

(01:23:29):
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

(01:23:52):
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

(01:24:13):
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

(01:24:36):
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

(01:24:58):
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

(01:25:18):
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

(01:25:40):
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,

(01:26:04):
he gives it to charity.

Speaker 1 (01:26:08):
Okay, let's go back. You signed a deal with Matt Surletic,
yes or no?

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):
Yes, a production deal?

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
Okay? Was that just you or was that the three
of you?

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
It was the three of us? It was all around
the same time. So we signed with them. We signed
with Atlantic Atlantic. It turns out, so Matt was going
to produce the record. Atlantic Records wasn't as comfortable about
giving these three guys from Florida four hundred thousand dollars,
but they were more comfortable doing it through Matt Serletic

(01:26:49):
and his production companies since they had, you know, a
collective Soul was on Atlantic at the time, so they
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.

Speaker 1 (01:27:04):
Okay, Traditionally traditional production deal, you're signed to production company.
Production makes a deal with Atlantic and they take a whack,
so the act actually makes less. Is that what happened
throughout your career.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
Up into a certain point, Like I mean, Matt still
gets money whether he produces a record or not, that's
always in the deal. But he found us, and then
that's that we agreed. That's why you agree on those
things early on, because you're hoping for the success, not
that when the success comes later you're like, oh, we
have to read you know. But you know, to Matt's credit,
he did change his payment fee so that because it

(01:27:43):
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

(01:28:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
Okay, how about the publishing? Do you own all the publishing?

Speaker 2 (01:28:21):
I own what I haven't sold?

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
Was that a little bit slower? When you made the
deal with Matsroletic and ultimately Link, did you have to
give up any publishing?

Speaker 2 (01:28:31):
No? None.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Okay, so you own a one hundred percent of the public
machine you have sold some of that?

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
Yeah, I'm now I've made a deal with Roundhill where
I sold off like seventy percent. I still retain thirty
because I still want to participate in success, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
Okay, just to be clear, seventy percent of the songs
or seventy percent of the record royalties are.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
Both just just the songwriting publishing part of it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:58):
How long would you make that deal?

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
Right before COVID? I think so, I would say twenty
nineteen to the twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:29:06):
Okay, so you're happy you made that deal five years later?

Speaker 2 (01:29:10):
Yeah, I mean, you know, like I I was, I
had been with you know, with with uh EMI for
a really long time, and I start to find that,
like as you know, as we get older and you
fall out of favor a giant corporation like that, when
they start thinking about songs for sak when they start
thinking about the artists either at the top of their mind,

(01:29:31):
I don't it's hard for you to be there anymore
because they have the fresh and the new, you know,
And so I thought it was a really good time
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,

(01:29:51):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):
You have to tell me anything.

Speaker 2 (01:30:14):
No, I mean, I listen, I've I've my wife and
I we were we're really well invested. We we were
not crazy spenders. We're not we don't take a lot
of risks are investing. You know, we've we've managed to
maintain and grow everything really really well. So you know,
like it's we're not I'm never really I never thought

(01:30:34):
about money as the means to own anything. It was
always like money was a means for experiences, you know,
like I would I would. I love being able to
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.

(01:30:56):
That's we're good, you know where we need to be.
I don't like, I don't mean much status symbol.

Speaker 1 (01:31:01):
Well, let me put it a different way. You get
a big check, did you buy anything or you just
invest all of it?

Speaker 2 (01:31:07):
No, I just it just went back in the pile
with the rest. I mean, I already I've already been
like we'd already done been doing really really well. This
was just a it was just kind of one of
those things of like, well let's let's look at the
landscape of music. Let's let's start to understand the power
of your catalog back when, but even just when you

(01:31:29):
could when the greatest hits made sense, right, which you
know now the greatest hits is it doesn't exist anymore
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

(01:31:53):
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,

(01:32:16):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:32:32):
Know, right, so your songs round he'll own seventy percent.
Is there anything you say that they can't do with them?

Speaker 2 (01:32:42):
I have? Yeah. I have the complete right to say
no to any like if they want to use it
in some way that I don't want. I have the
complete say over how they get used.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
Just generally speaking, what would you say no to?

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
The first thing that popping in mind would probably be
something political that I don't agree with, like that, you know,
that would be a problem for me. You know, maybe
certain uh, pharmaceutical you know, commercials, maybe that I don't
officially totally agree with. You just you never know when

(01:33:20):
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

(01:33:42):
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,

(01:34:03):
and it's cool again.

Speaker 1 (01:34:05):
How'd you hook up with Michael Lipman who's on the
West Coast.

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
He was managing Macheletic because he managed his producers at
the time as well. Michael had had a lot of success,
but the only thing that he had never done was
take a band from zero. He never had a brand
new band, and that was just something he always wanted
to do, and so he took us on as that project.
He honestly, it was so similar in everything that we did.

(01:34:30):
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.

(01:34:52):
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,

(01:35:14):
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

(01:35:36):
figure throughout my entire life.

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
Okay. What I remember was, especially in LA, there ended
up being an acoustic version of Push, which they played
in a top forty on the FM station. Was that
an anomaly? Although there are you know, once Napster hit,
there were a million versions now on YouTube. Is that
a factor in the success of Push, the acoustic version?

Speaker 2 (01:36:00):
No, no, no, it was a product of it Push.
I mean the reason why Push was a success is
because it was nineteen ninety six ninety seven and Dave Rossi,
who ran I think the edge in Birmingham, Like it
was at a time where if you're a programmed director
of a record of a radio station, you could play
something because you liked it. You know, there wasn't like

(01:36:21):
a formatted you know, you weren't part of a conglomerate.
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

(01:36:44):
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

(01:37:06):
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

(01:37:27):
moment on was just exponentially. Every week we just started
to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:37:34):
Okay, you had success and it was Matchbox with the
number two. Oh and then it was changed to spelled
twe n t y. What was that about?

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
Paul? I just liked the way it looked better, Like
it was funny that we weren't. I think Michael made
more of a deal of it than and like put
out like a release and all this stuff like that
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

(01:38:11):
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

(01:38:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
Okay, tell me. The story behind Push Push.

Speaker 2 (01:38:54):
Was just a song about manipulation, you know, about power
in a relationship, about how people can use you know,
the fact that they know that someone loves you and
they can use that to manipulate you, and how sometimes

(01:39:14):
you get so used to it that you can mistake
that for love. Sometimes. It was written about a situation
that I was in at the time where I was
the I feel like I was, you know, the one.
But I also didn't feel like anybody wanted to hear
a song with a guy bellowing about being a victim.
So it was kind of like written as a third

(01:39:36):
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,

(01:39:57):
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.

(01:40:18):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:40:29):
You know, what was the real situation that inspired the song.

Speaker 2 (01:40:35):
Uh. I mean I think that you know, if you're
if you were me at that time, and like you
your prospects were potential, right like, if this whole thing
that you're working on works out, within the sky's the limit.
But chances are, like everybody likes to tell you it's
not going to you know, because it doesn't. You know,

(01:40:56):
it doesn't work out ninety percent of the time, and
so you know, if it hadn't worked out, I would
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

(01:41:18):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
You know, you wrote the first album very quickly because
you discarded the songs with a previous band. How much
pressure did you feel on the follow up album.

Speaker 2 (01:41:43):
Uh, you know at first none. I mean I think
you know the whole idea when you're young and you're
doing something like this, it's that native atay, right, it's
the what you don't know or you don't realize it
actually gives you the strength to kind of go like,
of course I'm gonna make it. You got to have
you have to have a little bit of narcissism because
you have to believe that other people should listen to

(01:42:06):
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,

(01:42:26):
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

(01:42:51):
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

(01:43:17):
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

(01:43:39):
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

(01:44:00):
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

(01:44:24):
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

(01:44:46):
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,

(01:45:09):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:45:15):
Now, eventually the landscape changes completely, but the hits are
not as many at number? How does that feel? How
do you cope with that? Emotionally fine?

Speaker 2 (01:45:27):
I mean, we're it's it doesn't take a genius to realize,
like there's a moment where we're still doing well. Third record,
we're still doing well, and we don't sound like everything
else that's on the radio around us. Like if you
look at a screenshot, it's like Nelly, you know, it's
a bunch of like Southern rabbits and then unwell, as
you know, it's kind of in there. But you don't

(01:45:48):
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,

(01:46:10):
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,

(01:46:32):
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

(01:46:54):
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

(01:47:17):
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

(01:47:42):
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

(01:48:02):
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,

(01:48:24):
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,

(01:48:46):
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

(01:49:10):
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

(01:49:32):
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

(01:49:52):
something you just do, you know, you just side and
I'm mak a sneakers, I'm a name on them.

Speaker 1 (01:49:57):
Let's switch gears. It's the twenty fiftheen verse we of Smooth.
According to Billboard, it's the third most played song in history,
after Blinding Lights by the Weekend and The Twists by
Chubby Checker. He started to tell the story, tell the
story now, how smooth came to.

Speaker 2 (01:50:14):
Be well, first of a fucking good for the Weekend, right, Like,
just jump right up there pretty damn quick. I you know,
originally I was just supposed to write smooth. I wasn't
going to be a singer on it. I just sang
on the demo and I was even in Carla in
Clive's office having the conversations about who was going to

(01:50:40):
sing it. You know, we flirted around. I flirted around
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

(01:51:02):
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

(01:51:23):
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

(01:51:44):
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

(01:52:06):
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,

(01:52:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:52:38):
Okay, the band Matchbox twenty made a number of records.
You've made solo records, You've gone on tour solo, You've
gone with Matchbox twenty live. What does the future hold?

Speaker 2 (01:52:53):
I mean, right now I can only see right in
front of my face. So next year is the twentieth
anniversary of my first solo record, So I am just finishing,
just finishing the writing, and we're deep into the recording
of a new solo record. And then the very next
year is the thirtieth anniversary of the first Matchbox twenty record,

(01:53:17):
and we're trying to figure out what that means for us.
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

(01:53:39):
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

(01:54:00):
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?

(01:54:22):
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

(01:54:43):
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

(01:55:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:55:27):
So okay, one final thing, it is almost impossible to
make it. Luck definitely plays a factor. Hard work pays
a factor, plays a factor with me. But in order
to make it, you need to need it. You have
to have this inner drive. To what degree is that

(01:55:49):
a characteristic of yours?

Speaker 2 (01:55:53):
I think because like making it has changed over the years,
you know, like we just talked about but I think
I want to still feel to myself like I'm writing
the best work that I can write right now. You know,
like everything that I've done up until now, I can

(01:56:13):
look back on it now and go like, oh, I
would have changed this or would have done this. But
I know in my heart that each one of those
groups of songs I made the best record I could.
I wrote the best songs that I could at that time.
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

(01:56:35):
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,

(01:56:56):
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

(01:57:17):
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,

(01:57:38):
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.

(01:57:59):
I will just be I'll just be quietly rich somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:58:04):
Okay, but that's that's now. Go back to the beginning.
You're a high school drop out, You're.

Speaker 2 (01:58:11):
Playing in it was everything. If I don't make it,
I don't survive like it was. And it's still it's
easy for me on this side of the fence to
tell somebody, you know, listen, if you're tenacious, dreams are
gonna happen. You just have to stick with it. But
that's not always true. And the fact is, without the

(01:58:34):
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,

(01:58:55):
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.

(01:59:16):
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

(01:59:38):
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

(01:59:58):
got lucky and he showed up and picked us up,
and you know, we went on the ride.

Speaker 1 (02:00:04):
Needless to say, your dream came true. Rob, Thanks so
much for taking the time to tell your story to
my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:00:11):
It's a pleasure, Bob. I've been reading you for years
and years and it is an absolute pleasure.

Speaker 1 (02:00:16):
To that's great talking to you. Obviously, you'll see him
on the road in some incarnation, coming fast, and of
course you'll hear Smooth in your grocery store, on the radio.

Speaker 2 (02:00:27):
Kahoon, and in your nightmares till next time.

Speaker 1 (02:00:32):
This is Bob left side.