“You're just not the person in your fifties that you were in your twenties,” says Rob Thomas, speaking with Yahoo Entertainment from the tour bus that’s been his home away from home — and sometimes his only home — for most of his adult life.
The Matchbox Twenty frontman, 51, is back on the road to promote his band’s first album in 11 years, Where the Light Goes, which he says is “filled with questions about mortality and questions about the difference between where you are and where you think you're supposed to be. … Losing my mother was a really big thing for me. My relationship with my father is a really difficult thing for me. My wanting to be a good dad to my son, wanting to keep this career off the ground, wanting to keep my marriage going good — these are things that everybody deals with, you know? And I think if you don't spend time thinking about them and really giving them a good, thorough investigation, then you're probably not doing it right.”
There probably was a time when Thomas wondered if he’d even make it to 51. He had an incredibly unstable upbringing, with an alcoholic mother, an absentee father, and a grandma who sold moonshine and marijuana. “When I was 10 years old, I was at my grandmother's house learning how to separate seeds and stems, so I could make dime bags so she could sell weed,” Thomas chuckles.
“When I got back into a ‘normal’ life… my mom, you know, had worked really, really hard to get us into a nice, middle-class life, but when I got around ‘normal’ people, I didn't know what that was like.” Eventually Thomas dropped out of high school, spent two months in county jail for stealing a car, got into drugs himself, and even ended up homeless for a while. But now he believes that his adolescence prepared him for the chaotic rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
“I already had a little Gypsy in me,” muses Thomas. “I realize that if I had gone to Little League and had a ‘normal’ life, I wouldn't have the point of view that I was afforded at an early age. I find now in my fifties that so many curses along the way have been blessings. And so in a lot of ways, I think I look at it like a gift. ... And I wasn't shielded from it. I wasn't shielded from some really harsh things.
But also the generosity of people, the kindness of people that are there to help you when you're in that kind of situation — I existed on the kindness of people who would take me in, so I saw that good in people too. I think if you're a guy who writes songs, and if your songs are about relationships and interpersonal relationships with people — not just romantic, obviously, but familial and platonic and every kind of way that people interact with each other — that's a blessing. And so, that's the kind of way I've always looked at it.”
Thomas also soon realized that a life in rock ‘n’ roll was the only life for him: There was no Plan B. “I'm not suited for anything else. I'm not really good at anything else. I don't have any skills — like, life skills,” he laughs.
Before Matchbox Twenty exploded onto the mainstream in 1996 with their 12 million-selling debut album, Yourself or Someone Like You, he had “almost every kind of a job that you could have that wouldn't become a career, like any kind of a job that I could have that I could quit on a Friday if I had a gig, and then get a new job on a Monday. I did every kind of restaurant work, every kind of construction work, every kind of delivery jobs, driving stuff, building, making, futons, delivering beds, roofing, drywall. I just did pretty much anything I could do, because at that point I had just been navigating my way through a bad situation, kind of like floating around, living on park benches and hitchhiking around the Southeast, and really just kind of figuring myself out since I was like 17.
