Get the show on
Smash Mouth comes to Oklahoma for free Newcastle performance
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