Mention the earthy new trio The Thorns and there's not an immediate recognition factor, but mention Matthew Sweet, Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge in the same breath, and people get excited. The three have teamed up to explore a collaborative approach to songwriting - a sharp detour from what they do in their solo careers. They released their self-titled album May 20 and have just finished touring with The Jayhawks.

Sweet, the band's most critically-acclaimed member and a bona-fide Epiphone and Gibson fanatic, has been at it since the '80s, and his career took off in 1991 with the release of his third album, Girlfriend. As one of the leading power-pop songwriters of this generation, he's honed his craft to a fine art by creating melodic masterpieces like "Girlfriend" and "Sick of Myself." Shawn Mullins, an underrated folksinger and songwriter known for his late-'90s radio hits "Lullaby" and "Shimmer," has another side that most radio listeners don't know about, says Sweet, "a really dark thing going on that's really sort of ominous and cool." Droge, a Seattle-area songwriter and producer, has just released his fourth solo album, Skywatching and is known for crafty songs like "If You Don't Love Me (I'll Kill Myself)."

"We come from pretty different places musically," explains Sweet, whose homespun Midwestern accent contrasts the often bittersweet irony of his songs. "Shawn has more of a Southern singer-writer thing, kind of almost a rootsy, Kris Kristofferson vibe going on with him. Pete is again rootsier than me in that he has a little more of an Americana kind of thing going on. He also has that classic rock sensibility, we like a lot of the same sounds and recording techniques from the '60s and '70s."

The three modern-day troubadours met through music industry associates and found that they had more in common than they first imagined. Mullins and Droge had been doing some writing together, and Sweet's manager called to ask him if he'd be interested in trying to work up some harmonies with them as an experiment. Sweet was a little dubious at first - "I had just gotten out of my long-term contract that started with Zoo Entertainment when Girlfriend came out, and I was not wanting to instantly get stuck at some label for doing this, like, side project," he says. "So I had a lot of fears about that. I was afraid of what will my fans really think about it, it's so different from what I do." He met Droge and Mullins at the Sound Factory in Hollywood and got acquainted over the course of a few days, and on the last day - a Friday - they wrote "I Can't Remember," which later became their single. The following Wednesday they got an offer from Aware/Columbia to make a record as a side project.

Sweet decided to throw caution to the wind, because he liked what he heard when he sang with Droge and Mullins, and felt challenged by trying to write three-part harmonies. "Everybody got with me and they thought, we should do really crazy, Beatles-ey, Beach Boys harmonies. My interest is really to try to do harmonies with other strong singers and explore that. It was just the luck of the draw that our blend sorta worked immediately and that we were able to write together."

They headed to a ranch in the Santa Ynez valley (north of Santa Barbara) and there, inspired by the beautiful scenery and hot summer weather, began to cowrite a batch of songs on the back porch, with the knowledge that they could stop at any time and scrap the project. There was no pressure to produce radio-friendly singles, and many of the demos were cut live and tracked into Sweet's laptop at night, with crickets chirping in the background. Though it was a relaxed environment, a certain amount of tension spurred them to delve deeper into their creative minds, a process that was psychologically challenging, Sweet admits.

As they struggled to define their identity as a group, they quickly came to a consensus about their choice of guitars. "We were like, okay, we've got to play all Gibson acoustic guitars. Even from back then, we had designs to use those guitars, which I've used for many years anyway - I think all of us have," Sweet explains enthusiastically. "That was one of the things we immediately bonded on, like yeah - we'll have all Hummingbirds and Doves and stuff like that." Other acoustics used during tracking include the J-200 and a 1958 J-45. The project lent itself to electric guitars as well, including the new Firebird and a 1968 335 12-string.

The next step was to find someone to steer the ship - a producer's producer, in Sweet's words, and Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam) seemed the logical choice. O'Brien had already produced three critically-acclaimed albums for Droge including Necktie Second and two for Sweet including his 1995 gem 100% Fun, but the successful producer had a full schedule. Droge casually gave him a tape of their songs while visiting a Pearl Jam mix session, and after hearing it, O'Brien eagerly signed on for the project. He gave the new band access to his cache of vintage Gibsons as well as playing them himself on the album, which lent a whole new dimension to the songs.

Sweet has a pretty amazing guitar collection himself. He's been a fan of Epiphone Casinos for years, and the guitar he bought new that he's played the longest is a Les Paul Goldtop that supplied the opening riffs on his song "Divine Intervention" from Girlfriend. He also has a '61 SG reissue with a whammy bar that he took on the road with The Thorns. "Guitars are one area in my life where I enjoy, guilt-free, switching partners all the time," he laughs. "There are some people that have only their one old guitar that they like. For me, I also get really excited about new guitars, which are mine and I'm the one that gets to mess them up! Almost always I'll get some good song idea out of a new guitar."

The Thorns album has a breezy, nostalgic feel, with solid harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys and late '60s AM radio darlings The Association. Their sound has also invited comparisons to Crosby, Stills & Nash. While the band is flattered, Sweet says that wasn't their intension. "Our thing is different than them in that we tried to write all our songs together, so it's a little more integrated," he explains.

As the fates allowed, he met David Crosby while doing the TNT special, "An All Star Tribute to Brian Wilson" and stood across the mic from him during the final all-star jam. "He had this look in his eyes, this kind of twinkley look that he got. And it was amazing, he made me feel how much he felt the music, and I thought, wow, he really loves to sing with people," Sweet recalls.