For Matchbox 20, the new year has a familiar ring to it

(Jan. 8, 1998)

It's funny, members of Matchbox 20 don't feel like newcomers, and yet there they are, nominated for best new artist in the upcoming American Music Awards.

The Orlando rock quintet recorded its debut Lava/Atlantic album, "Yourself or Someone Like You," in February 1996, and it was released nearly seven months later. Drummer Paul Doucette and his band mates have been veterans of the road ever since, circling the globe en route to slow-building Top 10 and multiplatinum status.

"All this is just getting too weird for me," Doucette said recently. "It's us, The Wallflowers, Jewel and Spice Girls. It's like, 'Oooh, we're in good company.' The Jewel record was released like three years ago; The Wallflowers and us were released two years ago, so in essence, I guess the Spice Girls are the only ones who could actually win."

Doucette takes a peek at Matchbox 20's 1998 tour itinerary, and it's staggering. They're back and forth across the states, Europe, Australia and Japan, with only a few days penciled in as "off" days, sometime in June.

"You can't help but feel good that we're doing well," Doucette said. "That's a great feeling knowing that they think people will be buying our record throughout '98, but we're a band and we write songs. We really, really want to go in and make another record."

Mind you, Doucette isn't complaining - There is the alternative: being another obscure bar band in Central Florida - but it would be nice for the hard-working, gritty rockers to get a break every now and then.

"Everyone has written songs individually," he said, "but we haven't had time to work on them together. There's actually one that we added into the set, one of (guitarist) Kyle Cook's songs. Luckily, we were working on it during sound checks for so long that we finally pieced it together.

"Because we're going to be on the road for so long, if we were going to work on these songs now, they would be stale by the time we recorded them. They would be a year old. And you have too much time to overthink things. Like this record, all the songs were written six months before we recorded it, and 'Long Day' was actually written while we were in the studio. Everything was so fresh and so new that we felt that was the most comfortable way to do it for us, because we were really excited about every song.

"Our mind-set is that we'd just like to go in and do everything fresh. We're not going to rush into making a new record. We're not going to be, 'Oh, finally, we're off the road. Let's go make a new record.' We feel we have to separate ourselves from everything so we can go in with a clear head and make the next record."

Matchbox 20's breakthrough in 1997 is more than slightly unusual. The album was released Oct. 1, 1996, but "Lava closed down like three days after our record came out,' Doucette said, "so there was a long time between when they moved us over to Atlantic proper, as they call it, but no one knew who we were, so nobody really cared what our record did. It was just kind of sitting there."

Undaunted, Doucette, Cook and singer Rob Thomas, rhythm guitarist Adam Gaynor and bassist Brian Yale played their tidy guitar pop in small bars and worked their way up by word of mouth. Wide radio airplay and MTV/VH1 airtime for such tracks as "Long Day," "Push" and "3 am" boosted album sales.

By spring 1997, "Yourself or Someone Like You" was inching up Billboard's album chart, eventually peaking at No. 5 over the summer. Audiences doubled with each repeat visit to U.S. cities. Then came the American Music Award nominations for best new artist and album of the year.

One of the '97 highlights for Doucette was when they opened for the Rolling Stones in November.

"I wouldn't say the actual playing part was amazing, because it was like doing a radio festival," Doucette said. "We played at 4 o'clock in the afternoon; we had 4 feet of stage and no sound check, and half the people were there. But being a part of it took over for that. I talked to Charlie Watts for like 10 minutes; we talked about different drummers we're both into, especially a guy named Jim Keltner, who played on their record."

Has Doucette been able to enjoy Matchbox 20's prosperity?

"Yeah, but it's not like Rick James and having a party and inviting 300 of your closest friends to Bermuda," he said. "We haven't come anywhere near close to that success anyway. But, sitting here, I don't worry about ordering room service. I'm not worrying about bills.

"Still, this has been the most outrageous year of my life. I can't even absorb it."

BWF (before we forget): In February 1998, Matchbox 20 attended the Grammy Awards in New York, where it was nominated for best rock vocal performance by a duo or group with vocal for the single "Push." ... The group was named best new band of 1997 in Rolling Stone magazine's Readers Poll and best new rock band by Performance magazine. ... Strike it up with Matchbox 20 on the Web @ www.atlantic-records.com or www.msopr.com.

BIG 'PUSH' IS ON FOR MATCHBOX 20: (April 24, 1997):

It has been seven months and thousands of touring miles since the October 1996 release of Matchbox 20's Lava/Atlantic debut album, "Yourself or Someone Like You." Frontman Rob Thomas says the Orlando-based pop-rock quintet has learned quite a lot along the way.

"You can't worry all the time about what you're doing with radio and what you're doing with sales or with the record company," he said recently, "because regardless of where you're at, you're going to be doing the same thing. You're going to play the best you possibly can; you're going to get into the van and go to the next place and do it all over again. You just can't sweat over that stuff."

Patience has paid off for Thomas and band mates Kyle Cook (guitar), Adam Gaynor (guitar), Brian Yale (bass) and drummer Paul Doucette. After stints opening forthe Samples, Jars of Clay and the Lemonheads, Matchbox 20 is finally seeing some results: "Yourself or Someone Like You" is at No. 129 and climbing this week on Billboard's pop albums chart, and radio is embracing the single "Push."

More than a year ago, Thomas admits, he was bright-eyed and green behind the ears when the group went into the studio with Collective Soul co-producer Matt Serletic.

"Matt's our age, about 25, he wasn't an old, set-in-his-way kind of guy in his 40s that was bitter and only had his way of doing things," Thomas said. "Matt was just one of us, like another member of the band, and getting all excited about the music. That really helped our situation, because we were pretty new to this."

Matchbox 20 and Seven Mary Three, poised for the release of its second Mammoth/Atlantic album ("RockCrown"), are leading a new Orlando charge. Labels may be combing Central Florida for "the next big thing," but Thomas says the music scene there didn't happen overnight.

"There's always been bands here, just like in any city," he said. "It's just so funny how you get a couple fingers out there before anybody will take a look at them, and then all of a sudden everyone acts like bands are popping up out of nowhere. It just doesn't happen that way."

A tale of two Davids - Dave Matthews and David Broza

(Sept. 29, 1994)

One David is a South African expatriate whose band has sold more than 100,000 copies of its independent debut album, distributed from its Charlottesville, Va., office.

The other David, based in Cresskill, N.J., enjoys superstar status in his native Israel, selling out 15,000-seat venues and passing the quadruple-platinum mark with his last album.

Both have an intense, virtually indescribable passion for music and performing and see America as the last great pop hope.

Word of mouth did the trick for Dave Matthews Band's self-released "Remember Two Things," which has sold more than 10,000 copies a month since late 1993. Those numbers didn't slip by the majors; RCA signed the industrious quintet and has just released its big-label debut, "Under the Table and Dreaming," produced by Steve Lillywhite (U2, Talking Heads).

"Certainly, we didn't have anything else in the beginning. Taping board tapes and stuff like that was getting the word out," Matthews said from his home in Charlottesville, near the University of Virginia campus. "We rushed toward fraternities at first so we could make a little money and get people to know us and guarantee us an audience.

"The focus from the beginning, for me, was to keep it together. ... It felt really good right at the beginning when we were playing for 10 people. There was something special about it. And I was real honored to play with these guys because I had listened to them for years or knew of them.

"What was also great was that we could see it on the faces of the people, no matter how few there were. There was some sense that if we could do our part right and keep our thing together, then we could get as far as we could get."

Matthews' father was a physicist for IBM, and after his death, his mother returned to Charlottesville, where they lived for a time before Dave was born. "After a little aimless wandering, I settled here," Matthews said. "I love it."

As for South Africa, "I'd be very happy to perform there some day ... the political climate is a lot better."

David Broza has been at it quite a bit longer than Matthews. He has been touring the states for 10 years since leaving his Israeli homeland, where he enjoys unparalleled pop success.

"I took a big dive when I came here," the 38-year-old Broza said from his Cresskill home. "I did it because I'm fascinated with this rock 'n' roll culture I was born into.

"We've managed to beat the odds, I think, with the whole unplugged era and the rise of the indie labels and getting commercial and critical acclaim. It's basically giving people like myself a chance."

Broza, a self-professed "urban folk rocker," landed in Pulse! magazine's year-end Top 10 list in 1993 with his November Records debut disc, "Time of Trains." He has since been featured on CNN and appeared on NBC's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."

An artist-in-residence at Bennington College in Vermont, Broza combines guitar-based melodies with the words of respected poets. He continues that trend with his latest November album, "Second Street" (released Sept. 20), but this time with a full band behind him.

"I used to be electric for years," he said. "That's how I started as a kid, with a garage band and all. As I started traveling around the world, the easiest instrument to carry was a steel string or Spanish guitar, but I continued to play the rock songs, adapting the style of playing so that it would sound good on a Spanish guitar."

Broza credits Eric Clapton's Grammy-winning "Unplugged" for opening the industry's ears to other acoustic artists.

"Suddenly record companies that before wouldn't give us the time of day started listening in and looking for other talent in that vein," he said.

"People around me say, 'Look, if you stick at it long enough, either you forget and you're completely senile and you won't remember why you're doing it or else it'll start happening.'

"It's really happening now."

BWF (before we forget): "Under the Table and Dreaming" peaked at No. 11 on Billboard's pop chart in 1995 and sold more than 4 million copies. Matthews' follow-up album, "Crash," reached No. 2 in 1996 and has sold more than 3 million. In November 1997, "Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95" debuted at No. 3. ... Check them out on the Web @ www.dmband.com.

Iain Matthews finds his Southern comfort

(June 30, 1994)

Misery loves company, and for many songwriters, it just comes with the territory.

At least that's how Iain Matthews sees it.

The founding member of Fairport Convention and Matthews' Southern Comfort uncovers deep-seeded anger, pain and frustration over relationships and career ups and downs in his latest solo album, "The Dark Ride" (on Watermelon Records).

For the 48-year-old English-born singer-songwriter, it has been a long dark ride.

"It's probably unfair to say songwriters have an exclusive right to it," Matthews said recently from his home outside Austin, Texas. "But I think for anyone that is artistic in any way, as a career, there's a lot of soul-searching going on because you're constantly looking for something better."

Matthews wanted something better after his solo career waned in the '80s and he had moved to Los Angeles, working as an A&R man for the Island and Windham Hill labels. The title track addresses that period in his life.

"What better place to be miserable?" Matthews said. "My answer was to go into therapy. I did that for four years. I fought it like a terrier. People would suggest (therapy) to me and I would say, 'Naw, I can work it out.' Therapy was the best thing that I ever did for myself."

When going through his mother's things after her death earlier this year, Matthews found a high school report card from 1961. Pictured in the disc's liner notes, the report card contains a teacher's comments on the restless youth: "Must learn to think - concentrate"; "Must get that chip off his shoulder"; "Has ability, fails to use it; bone idle & a nuisance to himself & other people."

"I just wasn't interested in school. It was just one big putdown," Matthews said. "All I wanted to do was play football and write short stories."

He dropped out of school, then joined a South London surf-music group. Born Ian Matthew MacDonald, he used his middle name professionally to avoid confusion with King Crimson's Ian McDonald. (He now goes by the Gaelic spelling of Iain.) He then established himself in the folk-rock movement by forming Fairport Convention with Richard Thompson and friends.

Weary of the folk scene, Matthews left the Fairports after two albums and formed what would become the country-flavored Matthews' Southern Comfort. Just as their second album was released, a track never intended for the album - a version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock," first recorded during a BBC appearance - took the nation by storm. It quickly rose to No. 1 on the British pop singles chart, staying there three weeks, and later charting at No. 23 in America.

"That wasn't what I wanted ... that was the last thing I wanted," Matthews said. "It created all this peripheral stuff that took up my time. What would've been time learning to be a songwriter, it became time spent doing interviews, photographs, tours and appearances."

Matthews bailed out at the peak of the group's success in 1971. "I still have people who hate me to this day for leaving the band," he said. "... I kind of pulled the plug on them."

Matthews still has a fondness for "Woodstock" and the early music he made. And even though he went on to score a No. 13 hit with "Shake It" in late 1978, he never matched the impact of "Woodstock."

Only recently has he even considered himself a true songwriter.

"I have a terrific attachment to 'Skeleton Keys' (1993), the one before this album," Matthews said. "It was the first record I had done where it was entirely my own material, and the beginning of my sort of openness and soul-searching is on that record, stuff about my career and my home life.

"I still have an emotional tie to that record, but people keep telling me that ('The Dark Ride') is my best record yet. ... I'm coming around to believing them."

BWF (before we forget): Matthews' follow-up album, "God Looked Down," was released in 1996.

Tom Maxwell: An ex-Squirrel Nut Zipper does good

(June 18, 2000)

If Tom Maxwell has any qualms about leaving the well-oiled Squirrel Nut Zippers machine last year, he's sure not showing it.

In fact, he says he's the luckiest man in the world to be on his own.

"I'm saying thank you God for my perfect life," he said recently. "I had to get to the point where I was willing to accept the responsibility, not only for a whole album's worth of material or for being executive producer on the project and being a band leader, I had to go, 'Well, look, I can't sit around and complain and then not do this yourself.' Once I started that, it wasn't really that hard."

He's rightfully confident after releasing his debut album, "Samsara," on May 16 on his own Samsara label (distributed by Red Eye). Albums don't get more eclectic than this one: One minute, he's in a hot-jazz mode ("The Uptown Stomp"), the next he has some country twang in his soul ("Flame in My Heart").

Even a few Zippers help out. Multi-instrumenalist Ken Mosher, drummer Chris Phillips and bassist Stu Cole contribute, and Zippers alum Mike Napolitano produced the album.

"I have enough good sense to surround myself with very talented people, on both sides of the stage," Maxwell said. "I made sure I was the weakest musical link on the record, and because I'm not on a label, I'm not suffering under a share-cropping label contract. I've got my own 40 acres and a mule and I'm happily plowing my own soil. Everybody who's working for me, like Ken (Weinstein), my publicist, he took on the project because he wanted to and he truly believed in it, not because it was stuffed on his plate. That's a huge, huge difference."

If anything, Maxwell sounds relieved to be free from the specter of the Zippers' little big-band sound.

He laments that the Zippers were cast as the torchbearers of the now-dead-and-gone swing movement. The Zippers, he says, were so much more than swing.

"That swing thing was a horrible, horrible ball and chain, a hideous weight placed around our necks," he said of the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based group. "I have to say, without naming names, the vast majority of music that was held up as being representative of swing music was stupid, artistically bankrupt and one-dimensional.

"I don't want to bitch about fellow musicians, personally, because let's face it, I have more in common with them than anybody else in the business. Music is music, and I don't begrudge anybody for making music. But I have to say I don't believe that it ever came anywhere near living up to the potential that it had. On the surface, you had this shitty, idiotic, one-dimensional facade completely tied into associated iconography. It had nothing to do with the music; it's all like, 'Do you wear a zoot suit? Do you smoke cigars? Do you drink martinis?' I'm like, 'You fuckers, you're killing me.'

"I didn't think leaving the Zippers would get me out from under that rock. Time just had to pass. But if you scratch the surface and get below it, you find out that rock 'n' roll is toothless and completely co-opted by the machine. And even though there is great rock 'n' roll made, it's totally sold out to the man and is used to push product.

"It's incredibly subversive to make this kind of music. It also completely flies in the face of the illusion of progress, because you're going back to old styles which are considered archaic or obsolete. Naturally, they're not. Jazz ignored it and put it down, and rock 'n' roll never picked it up. The stuff is amazing. It's a totally and uttering American expression. It does not know race; it does not know class. It's our greatest contribution to 20th century art. It's the strongest foundation on which to build your aesthetic house. It's virtually unlimited in terms of diversity of expression and putting your own individual stamp on it. It's hog heaven."

Touring with his band The Minor Drag is hog heaven, too, Maxwell says.

"It's the best band I've ever been in," he said. "People are naturally going to sniff when they hear that, like 'of course, it is, you're trying to sell your record, son.' But if they come out and see us, they'll know it's a phenomenally talented unit. I've been waiting a year and a half to be doing this, and I'm loving every minute of it.

"Stations that play the new album play the hell out of it. People that bother reviewing it give it glowing reviews. Then the rest of the people are like, 'You're still here? One-hit wonder, hello, 1997. The swing thing, it's over, son.' I'm sorry, y'all, I ain't going away."

On "Samsara," Maxwell dabbles in blues and gospel ("Can't Sleep" and "Roll Them Bones") and psychedelia ("Caveat Emptor") and tips his hat to the past with covers of Duke Ellington's "The Mooche" and T-Bone Walker's "Don't Give Me the Runaround."

He says he came by his appreciation for all styles honestly. "My older brother would come home with Beatles records and the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin," he said. "If you listen to Led Zeppelin, you have to listen to the Yardbirds. Who did they worship? They worshipped Howlin' Wolf. Where did Wolf come from? He came from Clarksdale (Miss.) and he knew Robert Johnson. So, bang-bang, you're back to 1938.

"In the late '80s, I was a rock 'n' roll drummer and I came home from a gig and I turned on the TV and they were showing a film clip of Cab Calloway singing 'Minnie the Moocher' in 1932. I was always knew the song, but it had been candied up and rendered sort of nonthreatening. When you saw him do it, it was terrifying. You realize the song's about heroin addiction. It's very grim, and he's an unearthly figure. I'm like, 'Hold the phone, this is amazing. This is like rock 'n' roll.' Then I fell for early Duke Ellington. A friend of mine had a collection of Duke records, and I heard 'East St. Louis Toodle-Loo,' I was like, 'Holy shit, what have I missed?' Now I love it all."

Maxwell may forever be known as the one who wrote the calypso-tinged "Hell," the Zippers' signature hit, but he thinks fans coming out to see him on his current U.S. tour genuinely care about the music he's playing.

"I think they're clued to who I am; certainly I'm getting people waiting for me to do 'Hell,' " he said. "In fact, I get it out of the way, I make it the first song of the set. Then I do my thing."

THE FIRST RECORD I EVER BOUGHT: " 'Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl' when I was 12 years old in 1977. I got some allowance money and went out and bought it. It basically sounded like Beatles records with a jet taking off constantly. In the liner notes, George Martin said, 'My daughter asked me if the Beatles were as good as the Bee Gees; I just pat her on the head and tell her, 'Yes, they were.' I can't say it's a great record; it's basically unlistenable, but what a great band and they changed my life. There you have it, at least my first one wasn't 'Disco Duck.' "

THE FIRST CONCERT I EVER WENT TO: "That's murky. It was in college, believe it or not. I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina and there really wasn't a lot of stuff going on. It was either Clapton or Elton John, and I don't really remember. It was probably in Raleigh or Chapel Hill. I missed all the cool stuff; I missed the Talking Heads coming through on the 'Stop Talking Sense' tour; I missed R.E.M. coming through on the 'Reckoning' tour. All this killer stuff that I wasn't quite clued into yet. It diminishes my cool factor, but what can you do?"

THE LAST CD I BOUGHT: "I got a bunch at the same time. It was a couple of Coleman Hawkins CDs, something he was doing in the late '20s or early '30s. I also got a Ben Webster. I decided I needed to sit at the feet of the tenor flutist and try to understand the tenor a little bit better. Those guys are like the well spring."

BWF (before we forget): Catch Tom Maxwell on the Web @ www.tommaxwell.com.

John Mayall finds 'Blues For the Lost Days'

(March 13, 1997)

John Mayall has devoted his life to spreading the gospel of the blues, but he knows his own limits.

Ask the godfather of the 1960s British blues movement how taunting a task it would be to gather all the musicians that have played in his Bluesbreakers band on one stage for a reunion concert and he laughs heartily.

"People ask me that a lot, believe it or not," Mayall said recently from his Los Angeles home, where he has lived for the past 30 years. "It's almost totally impossible. It would be beyond my control, because things like that can only happen from the top down.

"So, from that point of view, it would have to be something that was spearheaded by Eric Clapton and his management and his record company and a thousand other people who would stand in the way of something like that."

In other words: not bloody likely.

Still, it would be a testament to Mayall's influence on a generation of rock musicians to see so many of his discoveries in one spot: Clapton, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Peter Green, Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones), Jack Bruce (Cream), Andy Fraser (Free), Aynsley Dunbar (Frank Zappa/David Bowie/Journey/Jefferson Starship), Jon Mark and John Almond (Mark-Almond), Harvey Mandel (Canned Heat), Hughie Flint (McGuinness-Flint).

The Mayall family tree stands tall and proud. The 63-year-old blues pioneer, however, prefers the here and now.

"Musically, there's no guarantee that such a reunion would be any near as good as what you hear when we get on stage now," Mayall said of his current lineup, "because we play together all the time. We know each other's moves, backwards and forwards. The excitement between four people is a building thing."

For Mayall, part of that construction has gone toward "Blues For the Lost Days," his third recording for Silvertone Records. Due April 15, the John Porter-produced album is infused with spirit, skill and an obvious passion for the blues, from the hard-edged opener "Dead City" to the respectful ode to blues legends, "All These Heroes."

Mayall laments that many of today's musicians don't dig nearly deep enough into the blues' back pages.

"There's a slight tendency not to go far enough back, where they should be drawing from inspiration," he said. "There's a lot of great emotion that comes across in those early times. Of course, they're not talking about the same subjects, but the topics and feelings are common to any age.

"The blues is very much alive today. That in itself tells you a lot, that it's so accessible to so many people. That was never so in the early days. Now is the time for those who are getting turned on by the blues to try and enlarge their repertoire."

Mayall has certainly done his part. Born in Manchester, England, in 1933, he first played guitar at age 12 and formed his first group, the Powerhouse Four, when he was 15. After graduating from art school, he moved to London and started the Blues Syndicate, which evolved into the Bluesbreakers.

Many great musicians came and went with the Bluesbreakers. Mayall was never one to hold them back from seeking greater fame and fortune.

"But that's the joy of being a band leader," he said. "You get to choose the musicians who mostly turn you on. And I've been very fortunate over the years."

What does it take to get into the Bluesbreakers?

"First of all, there has to be a vacancy, and that doesn't happen all that much anymore," Mayall said, with a laugh. "Joe (Yuele), my drummer, has been with me for 11 years. (Guitarist) Buddy (Whittington) has been with me going on four years. Just for guitarists alone, there's only been two in the past 14 years.

"To get into the band, you have to be socially compatible. You have to be really good friends. That's more important than the music, in so many respects, because you're on the road for so long. In the course of the day, that on-stage portion is only a small part of it. As long as everyone's on the same wavelength and has the same ideals and the love for the music, that's what it's really all about."

With the recent addition of bassist John Paulus, the Bluesbreakers, as always, are all on the same page, Mayall said.

"I wanted to make an album of songs that were close to me," he said. "The overriding theme was just the way the world is today - life in the cities, urban decay and so forth, and also to draw attention to some of the early blues heroes who sang about their own troubled times."