Rob Thomas on an ‘Unknown’ road
Matchbox Twenty frontman launches his solo tour first, then his new album
Rob Thomas says he has never launched a tour before putting out an album.
But he’ll start his two-month The Great Unknown 2015 tour Thursday in Orillia, Ontario, well before the release of solo album
The Great Unknown this summer. The Matchbox Twenty frontman does have a new single, though: Trust You, written with and produced by One Republic’s Ryan Tedder and out in late May.
“We’re basically putting out a single and touring the single, then leading up to the album,” he says.
Thomas’ concerts will consist mainly of solo material, including
Smooth, his Grammy-winning collaboration with Santana.
He will work in the occasional Matchbox song, like 3 a.m., “but the version we do of 3 a.m. is more like we did it originally, which is a breezy, slow version, with a whirly piano.”
Thomas plans to play three or four songs from The Great Un
known during each show, “but maybe not the same ones every night,” he says. “I’ll move them so that fans can get a little taste of it before it comes out.”
The Plain White T’s will open for Thomas. And they’d better be- ware: Thomas has a history of pranking opening acts. Matchbox Twenty once had a police officer pretend to arrest members of a band, then drop them off a mile from their hotel. Thomas and his cohorts locked another act in a room visible to concertgoers during the band’s headlining set.
Fountains of Wayne got them back, though. “They were friends with Robert Smigel,” Thomas says, “and they actually had Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on the screen in the back (of the stage), (mocking us).”