Matchbox Twenty promises hits and new songs during Southern California stops

During an interview earlier this month with Matchbox Twenty’s Paul Doucette, he paused to consider the longevity of his popular band.

“It’s hard to stay together for 30 years,” he said. “That’s why a lot of bands don’t do it.”

The group is currently out on its Slow Dream Tour, a jaunt that was originally supposed to launch in 2020, but was sidelined and rescheduled twice by the COVID-19 pandemic. The outing — which hits the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on Monday, May 22; FivePoint Amphitheatre in Irvine on Sunday, May 28; and Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre in San Diego on Tuesday, May 30 — is in support of the band’s first new studio album in more than a decade, “Where the Light Goes,” which drops on Friday, May 26.

To be completely accurate, Matchbox Twenty won’t hit their 30th year as a band until 2025, but the guitarist knows a thing or two about how difficult it can be for a band to remain intact for so long.

In Matchbox Twenty’s case, there have been several periods where the band went inactive – usually involving times when singer Rob Thomas was making and then touring behind one of the four solo albums that have made him a major star in his own right.

Those projects had idled Matchbox Twenty for stretches of time since 2005. In the early years, things were busy, and the quartet became one of the most popular bands out there. The 1996 debut album, “Yourself or Someone Like You,” sold some 12 million copies and yielded four hit singles, including the chart-topping songs “3AM,” “Push,” “Real World” and “Back To Good.” The 2000 follow-up, “Mad Season,” added four more hits, including the multi-chart-topping “Bent,” and 2002’s “More Than You Think You Are,” included the Top 5 hits “Unwell” and “Bright Lights.”

But then Thomas, who has gained individual fame for co-writing and singing on the monster Carlos Santana hit “Smooth,” in 1999, launched his solo career. And since then, Matchbox Twenty have released only three albums – including 2007’s “Exile On Mainstream,” which combined 11 hits with seven new songs. The most recent release was “North” in 2012.

Doucette admitted Matchbox Twenty’s sporadic schedule had created points where the group could have split up. Guitarist Kyle Cook, in fact, left the band briefly in 2016 before rejoining in time for a tour the following year that seemed to put the band back on solid footing.

And Doucette reached a point where he had concluded Matchbox Twenty were done making albums. He, Thomas, Cook and bassist Brian Yale would tour from time to time, but that would be the extent of the band’s activity. It was not a notion he welcomed.

“When I sort of got to the point where I was like ‘Yeah, I think that we’re done making records,’ I legitimately grieved that process. Like that was a loss to me,” Doucette said. “But once I went through that process, I could look at it differently. I could look at it and be like ‘You know what, we can go out and we can play. We’re ridiculously fortunate to be able to do that and people will still come.’ And I have all these other things that I can do and I can concentrate on doing this (scoring). And maybe that’s not so bad.”