November 12, 2009

Rock Steady

From humble beginnings to massive success, ROB THOMAS has remained focused on growing as a songwriter, which has led to one of the best careers in modern rock history

BY ERIK PHILBROOK

Rob Thomas has spent his life on the move. He was born on a military base in West Germany but spent his childhood shuttling back and forth between living with his grandmother in South Carolina and his mother in Florida. As a teenager he drifted around the Southeast looking for his own path out of a difficult youth. Fortunately, the one constant in his life was his love of music - particularly passionate singer-songwriters such as Al Green, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, Elton John and other classic craftsmen.

After playing in a series of bands, he founded Matchbox Twenty with two friends, Paul Doucette and Brian Yale, and they made their debut in 1996. Rob had found his path. As Matchbox Twenty's primary songwriter, Rob has led the band on a remarkable journey. To date, they have sold more than 45 million albums worldwide, with Rob having written such remarkable hits as "Push," "3 AM," "If You're Gone," "Bent," "Real World," "Back to Good," "Mad Season" and so many more.

The band's achievements are impressive on their own, but they only tell one part of Rob's story. In 1999, at the height of Matchbox Twenty's success, he was invited to co-write a song with ltaal Shur for Santana's album, Supernatural. The song was called "Smooth" and, as anyone who has listens to modern rock radio knows, it became a phenomenal hit worldwide. And Rob earned three Grammys for songwriting and singing.

Remarkably, that was ten years ago but Rob didn't rest on his laurels, he kept moving. He's continued to record and release albums with Matchbook Twenty, racking up even more chart-topping hits. He has written for such top artists as Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Travis Tritt, Marc Anthony and more.

In 2004, the Songwriter's Hall of Fame presented Thomas with his first-ever Starlight award, given to songwriters in the early stages of their careers who are already making a lasting impact. His first solo album, Something to Be, was released in 2005 and Rob became the first male artist from a rock group to debut at number one with his first solo album.

Prior to the release of his second solo outing, cradlesong, Rob sat for a special live interview at ASCAP's New York Sessions, a one-day music education event held at Jazz at Lincoln Center. With humor, self-deprecation and much wisdom generated from years in the business, he generously shared the highs and lows of his remarkable career with a rapt audience.

You had a relatively bumpy ride as a boy and a young man. Can you describe some of those early character-forming years and how that contributed to your ambitions?

I grew up in South Carolina in a crazy redneck family. My grandmother was the local pot dealer [laughs]. It was a different set-up. At the time, I didn't think of it as different until I moved out of South Carolina and went to Florida and would start to talk about my family, as compared to other people's families, and realized that mine was crazy!

I moved to Florida. My mom and I had a really crazy relationship so I just left, and spent a lot of time hitchhiking around the Southeast. I would go to school for a while and then I would leave school and join a band. And eventually I quit school so that I could continue to play music, which I would not say that anybody should ever do. But I didn't have a lot of choices. I've never written a song called "Hitchhiking Teenager" or "Drunk Grandmother" or anything like that, but I think those are the kind of things that make up who you are and they afford you a certain point of view.

In those years what styles of music made the most impact on your own desire to pursue music?

Growing up in South Carolina, it was real old country, like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Conway Twitty, Merle Haggard and George Jones. These were people that were just laying out their heart. They were so funny too, because when you think about it, these are men like I will never be. Look at me. These are manly men just pouring out their heart and telling you a real story about their life. So, when you grow up with that, then you're automatically going to feel attached to songwriters and feel attached to that world.

When did you seriously start to write your own songs?

It wasn't until I moved to Florida and I met a guy who was a keyboard player that went to Berklee College of Music. He had just graduated so he gave me his music theory books, chord charts and stuff, and I would take them home with a keyboard that he loaned me to learn the chords and how the notes all related to each other.

I was singing in his band at the time, but I wasn't writing. One of the first things we did was a surf band [laughs]. It was a bunch of guys from Jersey that went to Berklee, so they were the sickest players ever, and we played in Florida.

The only places we could play were these metal clubs because that was all there was at the time. We'd play on a Wednesday night and there would be all these metalheads and we'd be dressed in Bermuda shorts with long hair. We'd play covers like "Woolly Bully" and "Johnny B. Goode." The originals we were doing were songs called "Johnny's Got a Wave" and "Me and My Surfer Babe."

It was a band called Tidal Wave. It was horrible. But it felt so good to me to find something that I could do. I didn't know anything about cars. I didn't know anything about sports. All those things that you need when you grow up in the South to be cool, I didn't fit any of it.

That must have been a real epiphany.

I figured out not what makes me special to the earth but just what made me feel like I had a path. So when I started to write, it was with those guys. I would sit alone with this borrowed keyboard. I had this little Casio and I would just sit and write everything on it. I wanted to be Lionel Richie. I wanted to write my "Truly," you know?

Then it all kind of worked out for me. Because at parties all the jocks would get drunk and pass out at some point and I would sit at the piano with their girlfriends and play piano. I think that was where my career started, right there [laughs].

There are only a handful of successful rock bands that have originated from Florida. What was the music scene like there when you started?

Central Florida, outside of the Orlando area, had a big singer-songwriter happening. There were like four, five, six bands that all converged and one of them started an open mike night and everybody would go and we'd all share songs.

Then we'd all go back to somebody's house and we'd spend all night just writing songs back and forth. I think that was the first time where I got to surround myself with people that did what I did. There were some that were really, really special - like Jason Ross and the guys in Seven Mary Three; they are a great rock band.

I remember going to see them at the Hard Rock and they were a new band at the time. They had come out of Virginia and they moved to Florida. We went there and labels were coming to see them and that was the most amazing thing. For us, people at labels, if you can imagine, were like mystical figures.

There was also a songwriter named Steve Berry, who had a band called the Beat Me Ups. If there was one local guy that I wanted to be, it was him. This guy was writing songs that were about his life and he was speaking a plain language and just saying everyday words that, on their own, weren't so special but when you put them in context with a great melody and when you put them all together, they're telling this beautiful story in plain language like a great country song. Because of him I stopped writing songs from the outside in and started writing from the inside out.

Then I spent many nights in a place called The Mill with bands like us. We were a band called Tabitha's Secret. We would play with the Beat Me Ups and the Big White Undies and Shock Lizard - just a lot of really great bands that were all so generous and cool with each other. It was nice to start realizing what you do best surrounded by people who were supportive and who just wanted to give you ideas and share their talent with you.

When you finally landed a record deal, did you feel that as a band and as a songwriter, you were prepared for what that entailed?

I thought so. I was completely wrong. I think the perception is the biggest thing that kind of gets changed. When we signed a deal, we thought that we had reached the pinnacle, like we had just accomplished something.

Then we realized that when you sign a deal is when you really start working. I never realized what work was until I signed a record deal and had to do what I was doing regionally across the country and around the world. Such as starting off and touring in a van for like a year-and-a-half, even when the record comes out.

When our first record was released it eventually sold 15 million records, but the first week it was out, it sold 610 copies. And there was a lot of talk at our label like "uh-oh." We had a video on MTV. We thought, "well, how could it be? We're giant stars. We saw ourselves on MTV. It's gotta be true."

If I would have signed that deal and really thought about the odds and what I was up against or thinking that I was going to be out here playing with these bands that I was watching and falling in love with, I would have just rolled into a ball on the floor. So, I think one of the best things that you can have when you are young is a kind of ignorant optimism. That's where you get to do the impossible because you don't think it's impossible.

That first album with Matchbox Twenty had several hits on it and you had to work for three or four years straight. That's intense for any group of musicians. What is it about your relationship with the guys in Matchbook Twenty that help you flourish as a group?

They are like my brothers. I don't know anybody like I know these guys. I could talk to a million people that have had success and we can talk about what it's like to be a success but only me and these four guys can talk about what it was like to be in this band and what it was like to start and grow up in this band.

And musically, we all represent the different music that we like. Paul was our drummer for years and now he's our guitar player; he's the cool guy in the band, and knows every new band before they even come out. And Kyle is like the Mr. Jazz-Country-Old School- Roots-Bluesy guy. Brian is the guy that introduced me to Maceo Parker and a lot of the great 1960's horn stuff and Tower of Power and James Brown records.

It genuinely seems that each one of us somehow is responsible for pretty much all of our influences that we have. We've just been passing them back and forth to each other around the world. We say that a Matchbook Twenty record is the result of an argument between four people, and that's where it is every time. It could not sound the same without those guys and that's why we'll keep making Matchbook Twenty records, because we're excited to see what we'll come up with.

You've also had a great creative relationship with producer Matt Serletic and have worked with him on several recordings, which is unusual these days because many artists feel the need to keep moving on to new producers. What is it about working with Matt that has proved to be such a great arrangement?

He's very tall. I like that [laughs]. When I met Matt, he had produced the first two Collective Soul records. Their record that had the song "December "on it was out around the time we met. We thought, "wow, this guy knows everything." He is one of the most musically and technically proficient people I know. We had a Matchbook Twenty record where there was a 62-piece string arrangement on it and he literally wrote it in the car in the parking lot when he got to the studio that day.

Literally, in just an hour, he wrote it all out. That's something that I can't even fathom. Because we're around the same age, each time we go in to make a record, we're both in a new place, we both feel like we've evolved and want to do something that's different.

It also must be nice to work with a producer who completely understands your process.

Exactly. It's great being able to sit with somebody you're that close to and be able to speak in shorthand. It's also good to be around somebody who tells you when something sucks, and you believe them.

Matt has taught me a lot about work ethic, which I think is the main thing. A lot of the difference between me and a songwriter that's yet to be successful out there is the doing it. The guy who wakes up and just writes nonstop is eventually going to write that great song that he's trying to write.

Matt also made me realize that when you step into the process of making a record. if by the time you're done you haven't rethought what you thought your best songs were at the beginning, then you're not working hard enough. Talent and inspiration can only get you so far and the rest of it is perspiration and craft. The craft is the part that you can continue to work on.

So you feel that one can learn to become a songwriter?

Talent is something that you have or you don't. I think what I love about being a songwriter is you can learn how to write a better song, but either you're a person that wakes up in the morning and you hear music in the air, or you're not, and I think that's what's so special about it.

When you transitioned into putting out your first solo album, what were the rewards and the challenges that you faced? Was it liberating or was it riddled with uncertainty and fear?

Yes, all of it. When I started, my first thought was, oh, it's going to be great to have all this freedom. You know, it's going to be great to go into the studio and not have anybody telling you, "I don't like that or this is gonna be this." Then, when I got in the studio, I realized how much I had relied on these people before, and how much I relied on the guys in the band to kind of give me a good direction, and so I had to step up.

When you were approached to write a song for Carlos Santana, what went through your mind? Had you written for any other artist at that point?

I'd just moved to the city. I was living down in Soho and had just come off the road. I'd bee on the road for literally three-and-a-half years. So this was my first downtime. My wife and I got a place. I got a call from Itaal Shur, a great writer and producer, who was working on a track for Carlos literally a block away from where I was living. So I went over there and we got a track and worked on it some. Then I took it and created a melody.

Originally, when I wrote "Smooth" I thought that I was done, but I hadn't written the chorus yet. Itaal was like, "no, it can go bigger." He was right. I was a huge Carlos fan, and I would have done it no matter what. I thought it was going to be like, great, people will read I'm on the new Carlos record.

Then there was a lot of hubbub about the Carlos record when it was about to come out. I remember reading about it and I was so bummed because I was the only one not mentioned. I would read about Eric Clapton and Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean. And I'm like, "come on, I'm on it, I'm on it" [laughs].

My wife was the only one who, from the very beginning when she heard it, said "this song is going to be huge." I think while you're writing, if you're saying "this is the hit," then I don't think you're really writing. That's something you're supposed to discover later.

You had such a great success with that song. But you've also written with Mick Jagger and Willie Nelson. What is it like to write for some of these iconic artists?

Well, Willie Nelson is my hero. If he called me tomorrow and said, "Rob, I need you to come be my busboy," I would do it. I think any songwriter in America should, because we all owe him, even if we don't realize it. To me, he is just one of those guys. He's the real deal. I got the call to write with Willie the night before, and I literally couldn't sleep.

I was in a hotel in L.A. and I knew that he had just gotten there. And I'm like "he's right upstairs!" And it was just funny because I'm very Southern. The big thing about

Southerners is we're geeky, no matter what we do, because we're really glad to be here and we're really glad to meet you. It's not a put-on.

So we went and got into a little studio where we could be at the piano and on the guitar at the same time. We spent two days just playing each other songs. He'd play me something and I'd play him a couple of songs. And then I would say, "Man, you know, I love "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground," and we'd just start singing.

We spent two days doing nothing but that for like eight, nine hours at a time -- writing, talking about music we loved. Then when it was all said and done, and I thought that nothing got accomplished, he pulled out a pad and he had three titles of songs that I had just written and wasn't quite sure what to do with yet. And he was like, "Well, I like these three songs, can I do 'em?" And I literally cried when I got that first demo of Willie Nelson singing my songs. I don't know if anything really ever affected me like that, do you know what I mean?

You've written in so many different contexts -- with the band, for other artists and for your own solo work. How does a song start with you?

Usually, it's a mood. I always feel like if I'm telling a story, or writing my own little movie. Sometimes you have a great line and you want to build it around the line, but usually it's just a mood. And you start with a chord progression and you start using this weird language that only songwriters speak. It's this kind of guttural, rhythmic thing. Sitting in a room with somebody like Mick Jagger and seeing that he does the same thing is very inspiring. To see that Mick does it the same way made me feel like I might be on the right track.

What were some of the influences, musical or otherwise, that inspired the music on your new album, cradlesong?

This record to me is like the end of a John Hughes movie. You know, it's just like a great 80's record.

What is it about music of the 80's that you love?

Well, obviously I grew up in it, so I'm blind to whether it's any good or not. It just makes me warm and fuzzy [laughs]. I have a ten-year-old son and he loves the Disney Channel, loves Disney satellite radio. He has music that's kind of genetically-engineered for him with artists and bands all custom-built for that whole market. Because somebody realized that they are a demographic and they've started treating them like that. When we were kids growing up - I'm 37 - I didn't have a Jonas Brothers. I had Al Green and the Talking Heads and Fleetwood Mac, and I grew up listening to the same radio that my mom grew up listening to. It was really, really diverse. So, you could have all those artists on a one-hour play bloc. I could hear Al Green, Fleetwood Mac, Robert Palmer, or Peter Gabriel, you know? It would be hard to see a guy like Peter Gabriel come out with a song like "Sledgehammer" now and have it fit on Top 40 radio or on Hot AC. I think there was a kind of fearlessness in the 80's and anything could fly and be okay, you know, with the exception of some really horrible synthesizer sounds. I think a lot of it survived pretty well.

What do you think is the most important thing that an emerging songwriter should do or can do to get themselves prepared for the long haul in music?

When you sit down in the morning, your goal should be to write a great song. And the next morning, your goal should be to write a great song. That's the only thing you have to do. I believe no matter where you are and no matter what state the music business is in, if you write great songs, they will have a place.