For singer-songwriter Rob Thomas , the melody almost always comes first, no matter whether he’s working on a tune for a new solo album or for his longtime band Matchbox Twenty .

“You go fishing and you find a melody,” Thomas says on a recent video call from his tour bus as it barreled across Ohio on the All Night Days Tour in support of his new solo album of the same name. “There’s a certain chord progression that, for some reason that day, sounds really good to you, and it has a certain color and mood and tone that starts to inform the lyric.

“It’s the melody that grabs you the first time,” he says. “The melody is like the hot girl or hot guy at the bar. It’s like the initial attraction that draws you in, makes you want to engage.

“Then the conversation is the lyric. If you’re lu

See Full Page