Short Biography
Rob Thomas, lead singer of Matchbox Twenty and a hugely successful solo artist in his own right, returns to Australia this summer for a limited series of concerts in arenas and at the popular ‘a day on the green' winery events.
Thomas is a prolific songwriter who has contributed to the sales of over 80 million albums worldwide to date - as lead singer/songwriter with Matchbox Twenty, as an award-winning collaborator with the likes of Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, Bernie Taupin and Carlos Santana, and most recently as a solo artist.
After warming up with a two-month US tour, Thomas will kick off his Australian dates in Melbourne on February 5. He will perform at ‘a day on the green' concerts at Leconfield Wines, McLaren Vale SA, Centennial Vineyards, Bowral NSW, Rochford Wines, Yarra Valley VIC and Sandalford Wines, Swan Valley WA.
The tour's special guest will be one of the great voices of Australian music, Vanessa Amorosi. Her album "Somewhere In the World" yielded the gorgeous platinum single "Perfect" which has been nominated in the upcoming APRA Awards as The Most Played Australian Work for 2008. Most recently Vanessa teamed up with US rockers Hoobastank featuring on their song and video for "The Letter". Her live performances are always acclaimed and of course, expect the hits we all love ‘Absolutely Everybody' and ‘Shine'.
Rob Thomas undertook his first solo Australian tour in February 2006, a visit that included 9 sold-out arena dates. As the front man of Matchbox Twenty and as a solo artist, Rob has toured Australia 6 times, most recently in 2008, with total ticket sales now well in excess of 350,000 nationally.
Thomas embarked on a solo career with the 2005 album release Something To Be. Fuelled by the #1 worldwide smash hit Lonely No More, This Is How A Heart Breaks, and Ever The Same, the album went #1 here and in the US, and hit multi-platinum sales.
Last month, his follow up album Cradlesong was released. The album went straight into the top 5 on the ARIA album chart and hit #3 in the Billboard Top 200, and features the hit single Her Diamonds, a multi-week # 1 airplay hit in Australia.
The Grammy Award winner has his name on an impressive number of smash hits including US #1s Push, 3AM, If You're Gone, Bent, How Far We've Come, the Carlos Santana hit Smooth, as well as on other major tracks such as Real World, Back 2 Good, Little Wonders, Mad Season, and Bright Lights.
"The reason I do what I do is because I have all these songs that are always building up in my head, so it's really cathartic to get a load of them out into the world and start over again," Thomas says. "And the solo career is a really important way for me to do that."
In-depth Biography
Rob Thomas was the singer and principal songwriter for Matchbox Twenty, a Florida-based adult alternative combo that found success with a blend of '70s rock influences, slick hooks, and 1990s post-grunge crunch. The band broke through in 1996 with "Push" and never looked back, issuing single after single, scoring hits in various radio formats, and watching its debut LP, Yourself or Someone Like You, go platinum 12 times over in the U.S. Thomas himself won numerous songwriting awards as the scribe of such Matchbox hits as "Real World," "If You're Gone," "Bent," and "Mad Season," and parlayed that success into a career as a solo artist.
Rob Thomas was born February 14, 1972, on an Army base in Landstuhl, Germany. His parents divorced, and the ex-Army brat spent most of his childhood in South Carolina and Florida. He dropped out of high school at 17, and bounced around the South singing in pickup rock bands before landing in Orlando in 1993. There he helped form Tabitha's Secret, and the group had some regional success before Thomas, bassist Brian Yale, and drummer Paul Doucette left to form Matchbox Twenty with guitarists Adam Gaynor and Kyle Cook. Their debut, Yourself or Someone Like You, had gone five times platinum by 1998, and it established them as superstars even if Thomas wasn't individually well known.
That all changed with a song he co-wrote for the Carlos Santana album Supernatural. "Smooth" was ubiquitous in 1999, and it made Thomas a star. The track took home three Grammys including Song of the Year, and Thomas landed on People's "Most Beautiful People" list. He also married model Marisol Maldonado. Mad Season (2000) and More Than You Think You Are (2002) continued Matchbox Twenty's success, but after years of touring for both records, the bandmembers decided they needed a break, and Thomas used the hiatus to write and record his first solo album. When "Lonely No More" debuted in early 2005, its sleek and funky dance-pop sound was closer to Justin Timberlake than Matchbox, and it set up the April release of the chart-topper Something to Be. ~ Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide
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