Matchbox Twenty's Paul Doucette: "We Sound the Best We've Sounded"

As I'm writing this, Matchbox Twenty's 1996 hit "Push" comes on at Starbucks. It's not surprising to hear these radio hits, both old and new, considering the commercial success the band has had over the years.

Despite almost 20 years together, two hiatuses, and different side projects, the band continues to evolve and attract fans. Proof? Its latest album, North, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.

We caught up with Matchbox Twenty drummer Paul Doucette while the band was touring in Connecticut to chat about the new album, the tour, and how things have calmed down for these guys as the band has grown over the years.

New Times: How has the tour been going so far?

Paul Doucette: The tour's been great. We sound the best we've sounded, and we're really happy about that. It keeps getting better. It's fun to do it for as long as we've been doing it and know that we have some experience now. We're no longer walking on stage like "Oh, what do we do?" Now we walk on stage, and we know what we're doing, and it's coming across.

How else has it changed touring this time around than previous experiences?

We're playing smaller rooms on this run, so that's pretty different. We're doing a lot of theaters through this winter, and we haven't done that in a long time, so that's been fun. It's been challenging, to bring our show, which we had just done in Australia (which was an arena show), and we wanted to keep a lot of that through this run. So bringing that into a smaller room was interesting.

So next week, you'll be playing Hard Rock Live here in Florida. Are you looking forward to that show?

That's where we started the last tour, so we haven't been there in a while. Playing Florida is great. It's fun to go back there because that's where we started. It's like, "Hey everybody, look what we did."

Are you planning on hitting the slots in the casino after the show?

Personally, I'm not a gambler, so probably not. But other guys in the band are, so they probably will.