Center of the pop-rock world

In 1995, Paul Doucette was 20 and working in a record store in Florida when he answered an ad placed by a band looking for a drummer. The ad said the band's influences were REM and the Replacements.

"They didn't sound anything like REM or the Replacements," Doucette says. "But then I heard Rob sing, and I was pretty blown away by that."

Rob is Rob Thomas, lead singer for matchbox twenty and recognized as the owner of one of the best rock 'n' roll voices on the planet.

The band became popular in Florida as Tabitha's Secret before the core group left to form matchbox twenty, an even more popular band that straddles the broken-down fence between alternative rock and pop.

Matchbox twenty and opening act Fountains of Wayne will perform Sunday at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau. One of three matchbox twenty fans who previously passed an audition will live out a fantasy Sunday by coming on-stage to play guitar with the band, a moment that will be videotaped for later broadcast on the cable TV show "VH1's You Rock with ..."

The band's current single, "Bright Lights," is at No. 23 on the Billboard's Hot 100 chart.

Previous hits include "Push," "Bent" and "Bright Lights" off the new album "Disease."

By now, the other members of matchbox twenty are accustomed to the attention Thomas receives. "We're fairly smart individuals, and we understand that people need to draw to a frontman," Doucette said in a phone interview from a tour stop in Rockford, Ill.

In 1999, matchbox twenty's frontman went off by himself and won a Grammy Award for his collaboration with Carlos Santana on "Smooth."

It wasn't as if the Grammy suddenly made matchbox twenty popular, Doucette said. The band had sold 15 million copies of its previous album, "Yourself or Someone Like You."

"I think it solidified our position, took us out of the pack," he said.

Now that matchbox twenty is one of the most successful bands in rock 'n' roll, on their new album "More Than You Think You Are" they've changed their strategy of relying so heavily on Thomas. All five members of the band contributed as composers.

"That's the thing we're most excited about," Doucette said. "We have a whole new wealth of material we can draw from now ... instead of walking in and saying, 'Rob, what songs have you got?'"

One of Doucette's contributions is "Could I Be You," a song about the unhappiness that can come from expectations.

Walking onto a stage and being greeted by the cheers and applause of 7,000 to 10,000 fans every night is "a very odd feeling," he says. "But because we do it so often we've gotten so used to it."

He doesn't mean the band has gotten jaded.

"Every night we know we're going to take part in a two-hour party. We just get up there and do it," he said.

Confidence in themselves has gotten rid of most of the butterflies. "We know we're there to entertain people. If you're nervous, sometimes you're timid, and if you're timid you're not giving people very much of a show," Doucette said.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182