SmashMouth in a nutshell...

The awesome, cool, totally sweet band we all know and love as SMASH MOUTH was formed in September 1991, in the small fishing hamlet of Buttcrack, Idaho. High school buddies Johnny Smash and Nathan Mouth started jamming together after school at Smash's parents home on the Eastside. Mouth, an accomplished guitarist with the Buttcrack High Blues and Boogie Revival Band, was raised on the eclectic record collection of his parents, Marlon and Meryl. Their tastes ranged from the Bee Gees, Captain and Tennille and Barry Manilow right through to the more 'way out' sounds of Bonnie Tyler, Kenny Rogers and the trippy psychedelia of Pat Benatar. With so much quality, diverse music always around him, it was inevetible that Nathan would use these influences to forge his own unique style and identity. Eventually he would discover the more underground sound of bands like Warrant, Bon Jovi, Europe and the one with that guy with the long hair...always wore a shirt. Smash, meanwhile, was more intent on drinking beer and eating burgers while living the high life of a typical frat boy, rather than concentrating on his burgeoning accountancy career. But Mouth saw something in Smash, besides a gut-full of beer, and soon the two would start performing in a Genesis/Phil Collins cover band, 'Geneside", along with drummer Billy 'Sick' Sticks, who was playing in The Small Dicks with Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue), Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac) and David Hicks (Al Qaeda). Bass player Graham Garden was recruited from an ad in the Buttcrack Times, but would leave 6 months later to form The Sound Gardeners with Chris Cornhole. Garden was replaced by Smash's neighbour's cousin, Vince McElwellingford, and to this day this remains the seminal Smash Mouth line up.
After a year of jamming and writing songs, the band realised they had little or no talent at all, and gave up. It was only when Matthew Mouth found an old Casiotone keyboard in the attic of his grandmothers house that the band re-gained momentum. Frustrated at not being able to play a note and being tone deaf, Mouth lashed at the keys in anger, and the opening bars of "Walking on the Moon' were born. After a lawsuit from The Police, the song title was changed to 'Dancing on the Moon', 'Dancing on the Ceiling' (which pissed off Lionel Ritchie no end), 'Dancing on the Sun' and eventually "Walking on the Sun'. The distinctive 'doo doodo doo dooo' sound has become a Mouth trademark, and is reviled and avoided by millions of musicians around the world to this day. And as they say, "the rest is history'.