Matchbox Twenty Welcomes Smaller Vegas Venue

Matchbox has been on the North American leg of its arena tour since mid-September. But it’s squeezing in a gig at the 1,400-seat Joint in Las Vegas on November 12, between a 16,000-seat Fresno show and a 7,000-plus seat show in Colorado. Guitarist Kyle Cook welcomes the smaller venue, both for the improved sound quality and because the audience gets to enjoy the performance more. “You can equate it to acting to a certain degree, if you look at Broadway vs. movies. In arenas, other than the first two or three rows, people are fairly far away,” he tells Martin Stein of Las Vegas Weekly. “There needs to be this heightened, accented sense of movement because you feel like you’re playing for the people in the middle to the back who, unless they have binoculars, they’re not seeing what’s going on stage very well. They’re not seeing the nuances; they’re not seeing the facial expressions; they’re not seeing the hands striking the guitar, the sticks hitting the drums.” Llasvegasweekly.com has since removed the article.