'More Than You Think You Are'

Its most recent CD, "More Than You Think You Are," with its songs of broken hearts and despair sounds like the ultimate breakup album, yet contains messages of hope.

"I think all of our songs are both," matchbox twenty drummer Paul Doucette says. "I think the one thing about us is that a lot of times we'll write a song about a relationship, not a very happy one, but the music is hopeful. Sometimes the music is so dark. I think there's always an element of hope in our records since our first record. I think as songwriters, especially Rob (Thomas), we all deal with those kind of not-so-happy moments in our life with other people or with ourselves, and that's what we all write. A lot of our songs are: 'This really sucks, but that's OK.' A lot of our songs fall into that category, lyrically."

	IF YOU GO
	matchbox twenty in concert with opening act Fountains of Wayne When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4 Where: TECO Arena, 11000 Everblades Parkway, Estero Cost: $45 and $35 Information: Call 948-7825 or Ticketmaster at (239) 334-3309.

"We thought it was great, a nice thing to think about," Doucette says. "Even if you think you're the greatest person in the world, what if you're more than that? We're our own worst critics. It was a reminder to us: we're OK, we're doing pretty good at this."

"Pretty good" is an understatement for a band as wildly successful as matchbox twenty.

The band, which plays TECO Arena in Estero at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4, has had a string of hits since its debut album, "Yourself or Someone Like You," songs such as "Push," "3 AM," "Real World, "Back 2 Good," "If You're Gone," "Bent" and "Mad Season." The current CD has generated three hit singles so far: "Disease," "Unwell" and "Bright Lights."

They have the distinction of having had more No. 1 hits and spending more weeks at No. 1 on both the National Modern Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40 charts than any other artist. Readers of "Rolling Stone" magazine named them "Best New Band" in 1997. Their debut album "Yourself or Someone Like You" went diamond, selling more than 15 million copies worldwide. Their second album, "Mad Season," went quadruple platinum. And their third CD, released in November of last year, has sold over 1 million copies in the United States alone and debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

The quintet, which consists of Rob Thomas on vocals, Kyle Cook on lead guitar, Adam Gaynor on rhythm guitar, Brian Yale on bass, and Doucette on drums, sold out Madison Square Garden in New York City in just 10 minutes during their "Mad Season" tour.

With all this success, how could matchbox twenty even question themselves?

"I think it depends on where you put your level of success, not fame," Doucette says. "It's not necessarily having hit singles, it's making a record that you feel strong about. That's something we've been learning how to do. This record pointed us in a direction of where we wanted to go. We're proud. This is the first time we've made a record we feel strongly about: 'This is matchbox twenty.' "

They had more control over "More Than You Think You Are" than on their previous two albums. Though they worked with producer Matt Serletic, who'd produced their previous albums and co-written some songs with them, he wasn't as available this time.

DETAILS

What's a matchbox twenty? And why twenty? "I just made up the name one day," matchbox twenty drummer Paul Doucette says. "It doesn't mean anything. Just two words I thought sounded OK together. "In retrospect, we think it's a stupid name now. But we're stuck with it now." And what was behind the decision to spell out "twenty" instead of using the number 20 after the first album? "We spelt it out on the 'Mad Season' record. When I was doing the artwork for it, it just looked better," Doucette explains. But they still use numbers on some of their T-shirts. "That's the great thing about having a number in your name," Doucette says -- the flexibility. "We could do Roman numerals in the next album," he says, only half in jest. In fact, the more he thinks about it, the better the idea sounds. "I think I'll do that," he declares. But whether it's 20 or twenty or XX, it's always lowercase. Just one more thing to drive copy editors crazy. -- by Nancy Stetson

For example, Doucette says, if they need to lay down a guitar track, and he was the only one in the studio at the time, he'd do the guitar track.

After their "Mad Season" tour, the band took a break. Doucette and Gaynor wrote songs together, Cook played with his other band called The New Left, and Thomas wrote songs for artists such as Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Marc Anthony and Carlos Santana.

So when they assembled back in a studio together as a band, it was interesting, Doucette says.

"I would run over to the piano and play something, Kyle would play something or have some idea; we'd constantly be going: 'Who is that guy? I didn't know he could do that.' We learned from working with other people and brought that back to the band with us. We were constantly impressing each other. That was great. After playing in a band for so long, you take people for granted, and this was the opposite experience."

Doucette, who wrote "Could I Be You" and co-wrote "Soul" and "Feel" on "More Than You Think You Are," thinks that having more songwriters in the group makes a band stronger.

"That gave us so much hope for the future of matchbox twenty; there's now a wealth of songwriting choices we have in the future," he says. "We continue to write, continue to get better, and on the next record, we'll have a lot of songs to choose from. As I develop more as a songwriter, you start to discover your own voice. Mine's different from Rob's and Kyle's, and Kyle's is different from mine and Rob's. And it's going to broaden us as a band."

Collaborating, Doucette says, is fun. "It's the way bands are supposed to work," he says. "Kyle starts playing something, I throw a melody on top, Rob throws in words, then Rob takes over the melody and I add some words. We're throwing ideas back and forth, putting it on paper. It's an energy that comes across. Writing by yourself, you're sitting in a room, you're trying to pound it out of yourself. Collaborating, you have someone else to bounce off of. They come up with a great idea, and you want to come up with a great idea, too. You feed off of each other. And with three people in the mix, it's even more exciting."

Doucette was influenced by Led Zeppelin and the Beatles while growing up.

"I've been a massive Beatles fan since I was 5 years old," he says. "I was also a massive R.E.M. fan as a teenager."

The record has a lot of '70s-era sounds.

"The whole '70s rock thing comes from (the fact that) we were so uninterested in what's going on musically around us," he explains.

There are a few modern bands he likes, he says, naming Wilco, the Jayhawks, Son Volt and Whiskeytown. But for the most part, he says, they went back to what they listened to as kids for inspiration.

Doucette found himself listening to Pink Floyd, The Who, '70s Stones, early Wings albums and Paul McCartney's solo albums.

They recorded it in a studio in Woodstock where The Band had played.

"The room has so much vibe to it, it's an older room. It's an old barn," Doucette says. "You couldn't help be influenced by that. When you're in a room like that, with a great sounding old piano, you just want to put a mike in front of it and record it. A great sounding instrument in a great sounding room. No need to mess it up. That's why the record sounds as classic as it does. We just didn't mess with anything. We also play older instruments. We think older instruments tend to sound better -- older guitars, older drums. The drums I used is a '60s-era drum set. Wood ages in a way. Instruments just sound better."

Doucette says matchbox twenty is excited about having Fountains of Wayne open for them.

"We're big fans, we've been fans for years," he says. "We've always been impressed with them as songwriters. They're just great pop songwriters in that smart pop kind of way. Their chord movements are more interesting than most people's, their melody movements are more interesting. There's an intelligence in the lyrics. Maybe some people read them as being sophomoric, but if you listen to what they're doing, they're actually really smart. We were very psyched when we heard that they were available to do the tour. It's been great watching them every night."