smash mouth

Get the show on: Smash Mouth comes to Oklahoma for free Newcastle performance
for The Oklahoman / NewsOK

Photo by Jay Blakesberg.

The years start coming, and they don’t stop coming.

But the airtight cadence and pitch-perfect 1990s-ness of San Jose, California, band Smash Mouth’s 1999 hit “All Star” have placed the act in the sweet spot where musicianship, nostalgia and memes overlap. Almost 20 years after its release, the song is ubiquitous again, and with its resurgence, the band is riding an elusive second wave of mainstream relevance.

Smash Mouth’s founding guitarist and principal songwriter Greg Camp, who penned the band’s biggest hits, including “All Star” and 1997’s “Walkin’ on the Sun,” rejoined the band early this year. He answered some questions for The Oklahoman ahead of the band’s free show at Newcastle Casino.

Q: Smash Mouth came to prominence at the end of a really strong era for alternative genres on pop radio, right at the cusp of pop music coming back into fashion. That first album (1997’s “Fush Yu Mang”) is kind of a punk album outside of the first single, “Walkin’ on the Sun.” And then your second album (1999’s “Astro Lounge”) is much poppier. How do you explain that shift in the sound in such a short period of time?
Greg Camp: We set out to be a band that was a little more into all of our influences at that time, which varied from pop and reggae and ska. We got together in 1994, so between ’94 and ’97, the four of us were in a room writing songs and coming up with ideas together. When it came to the second album, most of that record was written on the road, on a tour bus and backstage, and everybody was sort of scattered and off doing their own thing. When we finally got home and it was time to buckle down and do that album, it was mostly myself and the producer Eric Valentine in the studio putting the record together. It was a little more focused on the production and the songwriting, and at that point I had become the key songwriter for the band.

Q: I read that the success of your first hit, “Walkin’ on the Sun,” had something to do with Carson Daly. Can you explain that connection?
Camp: Paul De Lisle, the bass player, and I were in a band before Smash Mouth, and I wrote the song “Walkin’ on the Sun” for that band. They passed on it, so it sat in a shoe box on a cassette tape until our drummer pulled it out. We recorded the song, and Carson Daly was working at a little radio station, KOME in San Jose. He started playing the song as his pick of the day, which happened right when people were getting off work, so they were listening to an unsigned band on the radio. Shortly after that, Carson moved to Los Angeles and started working at world-famous KROQ, and he brought that song with him. They put it into rotation on KROQ, and the next week, we had a record deal.

Q: Let’s talk about “All Star.” It was originally kind of an anthem for misfits, but it’s become something so famous that basically everyone in America has a feeling about it one way or the other. Did you know you had something special on your hands when you were writing it?
Camp: Nobody would ever have predicted how crazy it would get, especially nearly 20 years later. It’s like it’s gaining momentum in a way. It was the right song, right time, right place. The lyrics and the vibe of the song were on modern rock stations and crossed over to pop in just all kinds of different ways. Anyone could walk away with that song and apply it to their own lives, and I think that’s sort of why it keeps on giving.

Q: Moving forward, what are the band’s plans outside of touring?
Camp: We have sort of the beginnings of an album, not sure if it’s going to be a full-length or if we’re going to release two EPs back to back. We’re kind of really loving all of the songs that are coming out of us right now, so we want to make sure they all get an equal opportunity to be heard as opposed to putting out a record where people just like one song.

Q: Who’s in the crowd at a Smash Mouth show in 2018?
Camp: When the band first came out, we had a fan base so everywhere we went there were people singing the words to all of our songs. Now people definitely focus more on just the hits, the songs that they know, and the age variance is just incredible. You’ll see little kids who are still watching “Shrek” along with their parents, who watched “Shrek” when it came out. There are all these kids, too, you know, 18, 19, 20 years old. These kids are on social media and YouTube where all you see are memes of Smash Mouth and “All Star.” It’s so wide open. So to answer your question, the crowds vary from kids in strollers to gray-haired people and everything in-between.