"Wild Dogs (Running in a Slow Dream)" broke a long silence for Matchbox Twenty in 2023: their first new music since North in 2012, and the lead-in to Where the Light Goes, a fifth studio album co-produced by Gregg Wattenberg with drummer Paul Doucette and guitarist Kyle Cook, with Amanda Shires guesting on "No Other Love." The Slow Dream Tour that followed was their first since 2017's run with Counting Crows, more than 50 dates across the U.S. and Canada. A long gap for a band whose debut moved so fast. Yourself or Someone Like You came out on Atlantic in October 1996, carried "Push," "3AM," "Real World" and "Back 2 Good," and had an RIAA Diamond award for 10 million copies by the time the second album, Mad Season, was due in May 2000.
Rob Thomas, bassist Brian Yale and Doucette came out of an Orlando band called Tabitha's Secret and started this one there in 1995. The name came from a customer's patch-covered shirt that Doucette noticed while waiting tables; Thomas has said the band hated it at first, and the spelling changed from Matchbox 20 to Matchbox Twenty before Mad Season. They've sold more than 25 million records worldwide. Thomas keeps a second career going as a writer: he co-wrote Santana's "Smooth" in 1999 and has written with or for Mick Jagger, Marc Anthony and Willie Nelson, who is also on the 2027 Stagecoach bill. A 30th-anniversary tour of North America is set for 2027.