HOME | ARTISTS | TOURS | ATLANTIC TV | MY RADIO | VINTAGE | MOBILE | STORE

Welcome to AtlanticRecords.com.

Rob Thomas

Get the latest news, tour dates, photos, music and videos for Rob Thomas here!

Something To Be

My My My Ever The Same I Am An Illusion All That I Am Now Comes The Night This Is How A Heart Breaks Problem Girl Lonely No More Something To Be Streetcorner Symphony Fallin' To Pieces When The Heartache Ends

A New York Christmas

A New York Christmas

Check out Rob Thomas's official web site.

Rob Thomas Biography

'I didn't want to go into this record with any idea of what it was going to be like. My only pre-conceived idea was that I didn't want to make a matchbox record with different musicians. I'm already in a great rock band, so if I just made another rock record with two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer, and keyboards, it would be redundant and I wouldn't have been using my time to do something creative and new. It was about having done this for so long at a really high level and still having no idea what I was capable of doing. It was the idea of really finding out things about myself that I've never touched on. I don't want to be just one thing; nobody wants to be just one thing. This record is me trying to step out of that. It is about me trying to find... something to be.' - Rob Thomas

For nearly a decade now, Rob Thomas has been a ubiquitous presence on the modern musical landscape. As the primary composer and lead singer for matchbox twenty, he has been the driving force both behind and in front of one of the most consistently successful rock bands in recent history. Independent of the band, Rob's growing reputation as an exceptional songwriter has led to invitations to collaborate with a select list of artists – most notably Santana, for whom he wrote and sang the multiple Grammy-winning 'Smooth.' But despite his remarkable achievements, Rob found himself at a crossroads. It was a personal turning point that led to the creation of '...SOMETHING TO BE,' his debut solo album.

'It's been a long time coming,' says Rob, 'but I'm not sure that I was ready to do it until now. I think I had to go through the process of learning how to do this as a group until I had the confidence to do it on my own. I was also spending my free time writing for other people – country people and Latin people and hip-hop people – trying to spread out my writing chops as much as I could. So I think this record was put-up-or-shut-up time. It was a kind of gut-check for me. Could I do it on my own or did it all rely on everybody that I was surrounding myself with? I just had to go in there with my instincts and let it come out. Fortunately, the one thing that hadn't changed was the kind of magic that unfolds as long as you start out with a good song.'

Working without the safety net of four other 'censors,' as Rob calls his matchbox bandmates, proved to be both a liberating and challenging experience. 'I had to be a lot more honest with myself,' he says. 'It's funny, because since I'm the writer, people just assume that I bring the songs to matchbox and the guys go, ‘Oh, thank you very much.' But it's not like that at all. There's a lot of deliberation, and there are often songs that the guys don't like, and sometimes they're completely correct. So with this album, I had to come in with a song that I loved and then be able to be honest with myself. I had to have the room to make my own mistakes and then be my own censor.'

'...SOMETHING TO BE' was produced by matchbox's longtime collaborator Matt Serletic and mixed by Jimmy Douglass and David Thoener, with recording in New York City, Los Angeles, and Ossining, New York. Making special guest appearances are John Mayer (guitar on 'Streetcorner Symphony'), Robert Randolph (lap steel guitar on 'I Am An Illusion'), and guitarists Mike Campbell (Tom Petty's Heartbreakers), Wendy Melvoin (Wendy & Lisa), and Jeff Trott (Sheryl Crow). The rhythm section features bass guitarist Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Eminem) and drummer Gerald Hayward (Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé). The core band is rounded out by Serletic on keyboards.

'It was all about having people on the record whose playing I really admired and who I thought would bring something that I've never been a part of,' says Rob. 'Every musician I used on this record has a direct link to something they've done in the past that I really wanted to get a piece of, and that they can do like no one else. It was also the idea of taking all these people and putting them together. For instance, Wendy is an entirely different kind of guitar player than Jeff, but the two of them together are an amazing combo.

'Mike and Gerald come from a very urban, hip-hip world, so for them this project was more rock than anything they'd ever done. And simultaneously, the project was farther from rock than anything I'd ever done, so we were all out of our element. And then you put someone like Mike Campbell with them, and it's inherently something completely different, with sounds you wouldn't expect to be together.'

Rob's determination to set this album in a landscape far removed from matchbox territory is reflected in a diversity of unexpected sounds – from the use of a sample of Bessie Jones's 'O Death' on 'I Am An Illusion' to the appearance by  the gospel choir Greater Anointing on several tracks, including the beat-driven first single, 'Lonely No More.' Then there is the world music approach that permeates 'All That I Am' – which the Los Angeles Times calls 'arguably the emotional centerpiece' of the album – featuring the shofar (the ritual Hebrew ram's horn), kanun (Turkish stringed instrument), duduk (Armenian wind instrument), and various percussion.

As for the album's musical direction, Rob notes that 'I wanted to do something different, but not just for the sake of doing something different. I wanted to make it as diverse as I possibly could, and I learned that genres mean nothing at all. It doesn't matter what kind of music you're making. It all comes down to the fact that you have to mean it and you have to believe it. I really believe that the songs that affect you most are the songs that really meant something to the artist when they recorded it.'

Equally important to Rob as the diversity of the album's sounds and styles was that it not be a mere collection of songs, but reflect a personal and musical journey. From the driving rock of the album's opening track, 'This Is How A Heart Breaks,' to the deeply moving closing ballad, 'Now Comes The Night,' the album 'tells its own kind of emotional story,' says Rob. 'A lot of great songs didn't make it because they messed up what we thought was the flow of the record. The album takes you up and down... just when it's slamming in your head, it takes a kind of wind-down and makes a left turn that no one expects it to take... then it takes a little twirl around and comes right back again. Those are the kinds of journeys that keep you listening from track one to twelve. If you take it from the beginning to the end, you feel like you have been on a journey, and that was very important to me.'

Rob remains an artist who creates very personal songs with universal resonance. 'There are songs on the album that are very personal, and songs that start from somewhere very personal but then go somewhere else,' he says. 'My wife had quite a lot of illness over the last two years and that makes its way onto a lot of the record. And the songs that aren't about that directly are still about realizing what's important in your life – touching more on a spiritual nature, not religious as much as spiritual, about trying to find a center.'

With '...SOMETHING TO BE' wrapped up, Rob has turned his attention to taking the music on the road. 'One thing I've been really excited about since we started is taking this thing from the record to the stage. This has always sounded like a record that was going to be really great live. The show is going to be something of its own animal, and I'm excited about seeing it grow. I feel more comfortable in front of ten thousand people than I do sitting here talking to somebody about standing in front of ten thousand people.'

In the end, '...SOMETHING TO BE' is but the latest stop on an evolving musical journey. 'Right now, at this point in time, this record feels like who I've become,' says Rob. 'This represents who I am. But three records from now, it's really only going to be who I was. It's going to be who I was during this transitional period, because every period is transitional. It's hard to remember that in the present. This record was a chance for me to figure out who I am, who I could be on my own this time around. It was just something to be.'

If you still see this message after the page has loaded, you may need to upgrade your Flash Player. This site uses the Flash plugin to display videos and navigation. You can still view this site without the Flash plugin, but it just won't be the same.
If you'd like to experience the full version of this site, you can download it here.

You do need to turn on Javascript to enjoy this site properly though.