There are very few artists I can claim a hometown connection to, but Rob Thomas is one of them. He once lived on the very road I raced down every day on my rush to and from middle and high school – just a stretch of asphalt in a quiet New York suburb, barely an hour from Manhattan, in a town so small you could blink and miss the main strip entirely. And yet, daily without fail, my dad would nod toward that turnoff and remind me, “The best in modern pop rock lives here,” before queuing up Rob Thomas on shuffle through the crackling aux cord in his Honda.

Rob Thomas wasn’t just a local legend to me; he was woven into the fabric of my adolescence. His voice was the soundtrack to countless car rides, rainy afternoons, and nights when the windows were down and the music was up too loud. So when the invite to cover his performance at Pier 17 landed in my inbox, it didn’t feel like just another assignment. It felt like coming full circle – a marker in my own journey as a music journalist, and a moment I’d been quietly anticipating for years.

My first encounter with his music came when I was six, right after my family traded the city’s hum for the stillness of a farmhouse down a rutted dirt road. It was a place where neighbors wore denim and boots instead of suits, where weekends meant farmer’s markets and small-town street festivals. A constellation of celebrities dotted the area – Martha Stewart, Richard Gere, Chevy Chase – but their fame always felt far away. Rob Thomas was different. His songs, though brimming with energy, fit the town’s rhythm like they were made for it. They carried the same intimacy you’d find in a backyard jam session with friends, the kind of melodies that feel like they belonged to everyone.

Now, more than thirty years into his career – both as a frontman of Matchbox Twenty and as a solo artist – Thomas has only sharpened his craft. At Pier 17, he brought something new to that legacy: his son, Maison Thomas, on guitar. This wasn’t an act of family favoritism. Maison’s playing had its own gravity, as if he’d been born with strings in his hands. Watching him onstage, carrying his father’s music into a new generation, was nothing short of boundless – it was continuity, the kind that’s earned, not inherited.

The venue was packed, a sea of faces lit by the skyline behind the stage, the East River’s wind threading through the crowd. Thomas took the stage with a band so tight they felt telepathic, harmonies buoyed by a chorus of female vocalists, the bass line – his self-proclaimed “sexiest instrument” on stage – rolling like a heartbeat under every track. The guitar work was a conversation between generations, Maison’s youthful precision matched by the seasoned warmth of his father’s bandmates. Drums snapped in lockstep, the metronome that kept bodies swaying, while the keys painted the air with colors that pulled me straight back to my childhood living room, where my dad’s piano played along to my first guitar chords.

And Thomas himself? His voice has lost none of its power. If anything, it’s gained dimension – more control, more grit when needed, more ease in the quiet moments. Between songs, he spoke openly, letting us in on the stories behind the lyrics, revealing the people and places that gave meaning to the melodies. There was humor, too – gentle ribbing aimed at Maison about how most of the setlist predated his birth. But when father and son locked in onstage, any generational gap disappeared. Maison played songs older than he was as if he’d been there in the studio the day they were recorded.

Midway through the night, Thomas shared something that stilled the space: “The moment that you’re in right now is life… we spend so much time waiting for the thing we want to happen, and the whole time we’re waiting, life is happening to you and for you.” Then came “Little Wonders,” and it landed with the weight of that truth. The crowd sang like the knew exactly what he meant.

When “Lonely No More” arrived, I was no longer just the reviewer scribbling notes – I was that kid again, dancing in the living room, cycling through the song on Pandora until my parents begged for mercy. The “woah-oh” refrains became a choir of thousands, strangers linked for a few moments by the same rhythm and the same words.

The night closed with “This Is How a Heart Breaks,” though it felt more like the opposite. If anything, the performance stitched something back together – memories with music as the thread, moments we didn’t realize we’d been holding onto until we heard them again.

For me, it was more than a concert. It was a reminder that certain songs age like fine wine, not fading by deepening with time, gaining new meanings while preserving the old. Rob Thomas continues his tour through early September, and with Maison by his side, these shows aren’t just about revisiting the hits. They’re about witnessing the way music can live in more than once lifetime at once. If you get the chance, don’t miss it.