Matchbox Twenty‘s long-awaited Slow Dream Tour finally gets underway Tuesday night in Vancouver. Since the tour was first announced, they’ve made a new album, Where the Light Goes, but don’t worry — they don’t plan to dump their hits in favor of the new stuff.
“This tour was supposed to be in 2020. So we promised a tour of a lot of our history and we’re not going to ignore that just because we made a record,” the band’s Paul Doucette tells ABC Audio.
“We definitely think that there is a large element of our fanbase that want to hear the new songs … and that makes it exciting for us,” he explains. “But at the same time, we’re a band that’s been around for almost 30 years … we know that we have a long history with our fans and we are not in the business of disappointing them.
Singer Rob Thomas agrees.
“There is a sense of nostalgia in coming to see us, and there’s no shame in that,” he says. “Because we’ve been really, really fortunate to have a few songs that we’ve managed to be able to put out into the universe and … be a part of people’s life … we want people to be able to revisit those like old friends.”
He laughs, “I don’t think you’re ever going to have like one night where it’s like, ‘Tonight is going to be almost all the new songs."”
Either way, fans shouldn’t expect the same show every night, which is why they’ve arranged to make every concert available for download as soon as it’s over.
“Fans are sharing it literally the day of the show, and they’re sending off versions of this song to someone else,” says Rob. “I like that aspect of it.”
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