It is the day before the Grammys and Matchbox 20 guitarist Adam Gaynor is in his hotel room across the street from Radio City Music Hall.

Although he is only hours away from losing his Grammy virginity, Gaynor is showing no signs of being nervous. If anything, he is confident.

“I think we have a pretty good chance at Album of the Year,” Gaynor says in an overly serious tone. “I think we’ll take Puff Daddy.”

Gaynor is a textbook rock ‘n’ roll star goof — the kind of guy whose day-to-day activities revolve around downing brew and telling outlandish tales to the media.

Matchbox 20 is not on the ballot for Album of the Year — but it doesn’t matter. “Truth is,” Gaynor says. “It’s very exciting just being here.”

From Camp Echo to the Grammys

It was 22 years ago when Gaynor won his first trophy — Best Camper at Camp Echo.

“There were 400 kids there and they chose me,” he boasted. “I kissed a lot of ass to get that award. I wanted to make sure I got it.”

Gaynor displays the trophy in a hidden shrine in his closest, “which probably, like every musician, is a giant warehouse of junk,” he said.

Where would he display his Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group Grammy (the only award Matchbox 20 was up for) if his band were to win?

“We can’t think about it like that,” he said. “We all probably deserve it. Jakob Dylan deserves it.

“It’s a strange place that we are in,” he continued. “We have a great fanbase; it’s our critical success that is coming along at a slower rate. But I’m happy as hell. It’s about playing hard for your fans, and if you get honored along the way, that’s great.”

Because Best Rock Performance is going to be announced before the show, Gaynor and his bandmates, vocalist Rob Thomas, guitarist Kyle Cook, bassist Brian Yale and drummer Paul Doucette, are looking forward to relaxing during the actual Grammys.

“We’re not going to be sitting there too long,” he said. “We’re planning on hanging out by the mini-bar all night.”

The Lava meltdown

Matchbox 20 is the dreamchild of longtime singer/songwriter Thomas, who fronted a variety of bands in his high school years in Orlando, Fla.

It was then that he hooked up with Yale and Doucette to form an early version of Matchbox 20.

The threesome soon recruited Cook from the Atlanta Institute of Music and Gaynor from Criteria Recording Studios in Miami, Fla.

“When they came and asked me to join the band, Rob played a couple of songs he had written for me acoustically,” Gaynor said. “When he played ‘Push’ I went from ‘not sure’ to ‘OK, I would like the job please.'”

Producer Matt Serletic, who co-produced all three Collective Soul records, shared a similar opinion of Thomas’s songs and began tracking demos of the group.

The recordings quickly caught ears from label reps on both coasts, and Matchbox 20 eventually signed on with the Atlantic subsidiary Lava.

Serletic wasted no time and quickly took the newly discovered band into the studio to record “Yourself Or Someone Like You.”

However, not long after the album was released and the first single “Long Day” began gaining spins on alternative radio, Lava shut its doors.

While some of the bands on the label were left in the air, Atlantic absorbed Matchbox 20 into its roster.

“We were like ‘what the hell just happened,'” Gaynor said. “We were very concerned. We had established great relationships with the people at Lava — we still do have great relationships with those people.

“We went through a two-month time period where it was like ‘are you going to work on Atlantic?’ You know, it was either here comes our career or their goes our career.”

Fortunately for Gaynor and his crew, it was the former.

Matchbox 20 impressed Atlantic with its non-stop touring, and the label responded by releasing “Push,” a song that would catapult record sales to an average of 75,000 a week.

“Push” eventually drove Matchbox 20 into almost every format on the FM dial, from hard-edged rock to adult alternative.

“I always thought that would be one of the bigger songs,” Gaynor said. “We get worked up [to play ‘Push’] at all of our shows — you can get so much out of it.”

“Push” was instilled into radio just in time to catch the coat tail of the acclaimed summer anthem season, which included Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life,” Sugar Ray’s “Fly” and Smash Mouth’s “Walking On The Sun.”

“My summer anthem was ‘Unforgettable’ by Nat King Cole … no, I don’t know,” Gaynor joked. “A good summer anthem is a hell of a happy pop song. A song every kid is going to sing in their head all day. A song you can hear every 15 minutes on the same radio station.”

In other words — “Push.”

Laundry, naps and the sophomore jinx

Matchbox 20 has been on the road since it walked out of the studio over a year and half ago, which has the band eager for a break.

“I am really excited just to get an eight-hour nap in between records,” Gaynor said. “We have been working so hard and so long it will be nice just to go home, relax and recharge.”

While Gaynor is looking forward to home, he is well aware of the lifestyle changes he will go through.

“I will have to do my own laundry, get into my own car, hold my own straw,” he joked. “It’s funny because everyone of your friends has a million questions. ‘What’s this guy like?’

“The best thing people say is that they have been inspired by you. My sister is an artist and she sees what I am doing and she knows that she has to work her ass off.”

Although critics are already predicting Matchbox 20 to suffer the sophomore slump that put a lid on the Nixons, Seven Mary Three and The Refreshments in 1997, Gaynor said he looking forward to recording the next Matchbox 20 record.

“I do not even have an inkling of fear,” Gaynor said. “Rob is such a wonderful songwriter and we have not begun to tap into that well. I don’t give a rat’s ass about any kind of jinx.”

It has now been over a week since the Grammys, where Matchbox 20 went home empty handed. But with the single “3 a.m.” currently cranking on radio, and “Yourself Or Someone Like You,” still in Billboard’s Top 10, it would take a lot of angry camp counselors to jinx Gaynor.

Matchbox 20 will be playing at Stephens Auditorium Saturday. Cool For August will open the show at 8 p.m. Tickets are sold out.