Friday, June 13, 2003 | 9:44 a.m.
Who: matchbox twenty with Sugar Ray.
When: 8 p.m. today.
Where: Mandalay Bay Events Center.
Admission: $43, $55.
Information: 632-7777.
For matchbox twenty drummer Paul Doucette, life must look a bit like the infamous T-shirt in Cameron Crowe's movie, "Almost Famous."
You know, the one with the blurry shot of the film's fictitious band standing behind a crystal-clear image of the band's charismatic star.
Matchbox twenty singer Rob Thomas is a bonafide international superstar, thanks mainly to his Grammy Award-winning pairing with guitarist Carlos Santana.
And Thomas' four bandmates? For most of the world, they are more or less out of focus.
Doucette says that on one hand, he doesn't mind taking a back seat to Thomas in the public eye. After all, it allows him to live as normal a life as a career in rock 'n' roll might allow.
"I actually think that it's good, for me personally. I like that I can have my own kind of existence," Doucette said in a recent phone interview from a Denver hotel room, hours before a show at the Pepsi Center. "And I don't really fall into the whole rock star lifestyle too much. I don't feel comfortable with it anyway."
That doesn't mean Doucette is completely comfortable with matchbox twenty's identity as "Rob Thomas and his band," however.
"I think that phenomenon is a problem with music today," Doucette said. "Because there was a period, when I was growing up, when I knew who everyone was in every band. And no one knows that anymore.
"I think that the mystique of the rock star is missing today, and it's kind of sad because it was exciting. As a music fan, part of me misses that."
The five members of matchbox play tonight at 8 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. Sugar Ray opens the show, a pairing Doucette said has gone over well with audiences since the tour -- matchbox twenty's first in the United States since 2001 -- started in April.
"It's worked out really well, because you're not getting three hours of the same kind of music," Doucette, 31, said. "They're totally different than what we do, and they're really good at what they do. People seem to be having fun with it."
Matchbox twenty's story began during the mid-1990s, when Thomas, Doucette and bassist Brian Yale began playing together in various bands in and around Florida. The trio were soon joined by guitarists Kyle Cook and Adam Gaynor, completing the quintet's permanent lineup.
The band's first album, "Yourself or Someone Like You," established matchbox twenty as a modern rock sensation in 1996. But it wasn't until Thomas teamed with Santana on 1999's smash single, "Smooth," that the singer's fame began eclipsing that of his bandmates.
Thomas and Santana took home three Grammys (Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Collaboration of the Year), leaving Doucette to wonder if the band's own Grammy dreams would ever be realized.
"I'd be lying saying that it's not a little weird. Matt, our producer, has (a Grammy) from that experience too, and we all started this together," Doucette said. "So I think the rest of us are kind of like, 'Yeah, it would be nice to have a Grammy.' And we definitely gave Rob a hard time about it."
The band even tried to turn Thomas' Grammy sweep into a humorous theme for one of its videos.
"In the original concept, we wanted to beat him with his Grammys, which we thought would have been funny," Doucette said. "But we were not given permission to do it by the Grammys.
"We had to ask if we could have the Grammy in the video, and they were like, 'How do you want to use it?' And we were like, 'Well, we're going to beat up last year's winner with it.' "
On their third album, November's "More Than You Think You Are," matchbox took steps to ensure Thomas would not be the lone focal point. For the first time, Doucette and Cook collaborated with Thomas on a pair of tracks, and Doucette also contributed one of his own compositions, "Could I Be You," to the disc.
"It's just kind of the natural progression of where the band is going," Doucette said. "Rob had a couple of years on us as a songwriter, so he was way more experienced at it than we were. Kyle and I started writing a lot more in the past couple of years."
Doucette, who has also been working on his first solo side project, said he hadn't intended "Could I Be You" as a matchbox contribution, but Thomas requested it be included.
"At first I had to think about it for a minute, because all my lyrics are about me. It's a very personal song to me, so it was kind of weird to hear someone else sing it," Doucette said. "But he did an amazing job singing it, and I actually think it's my favorite vocal performance on the record, actually."
"More Than You Think You are" is also Doucette's favorite matchbox release so far. It features a slightly harder edge than its two predecessors, yet has continued to produce radio-friendly singles such as "Unwell" and "Disease."
"We wanted to make a record that sounded more like we sound live, and we wanted to make a record that sounded like records that we really like," Doucette said.
"One thing we never liked about our records is the way that they actually sounded. There's a warmth that's on a lot of records that we really like that was getting lost on ours. Our records kind of had this glossy sheen to them, and we just wanted to get rid of that."
Doucette said the band accomplished that, so much so that when he recently put together a de-facto "Best of matchbox twenty" for a recent trip, he leaned heavily toward material from the third album.
"I don't really listen to us, but I decided to put together what I thought the definitive matchbox record was for my iPod. And I think eight of the 13 songs I picked were from the new record," Doucette said.
Even music critics, long skeptical of the band's commercial appeal, have started coming around on matchbox twenty, giving the new album far less harsh reviews than past efforts.
"I'm always critical myself, so I could totally understand a lot of that," Doucette said. "But it has been turning, and we've noticed that. Quite frankly, I think we're earning it. I think our records are getting better and I think it's showing."
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