The audience is restless. They've already sat patiently through two unfamiliar acts, and they're ready to get what they paid for. Young kids and their parents shift in their seats, their popcorn boxes long empty. Twenty- and thirty-somethings hustle back from the bar, full plastic beer cups in each hand. Sullen skateboarder types crouch along the back wall, almost paralyzed from boredom. Every age group appears to be represented, making the venue a hodgepodge of generations, colors, attitudes, and personalities. Surely it's a testament to the universal popularity of the night's headliner, Smash Mouth.

With the help of infectious, melodic songs; a hip, effervescent stage presence; and a die-hard work ethic, the quaint little band from San Jose, California, has climbed its way to the top of the commercial rock pile. Together, guitarist Greg Camp, singer Steve Harwell, and bassist Paul DeLisle have reached millions with tunes like "Walkin' on the Sun," "Diggin' Your Scene," and "All Star," which feature the band's unique mix of modern and retro sensibilities.

Smash Mouth cut its teeth on the cramped punk stages of San Jose, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, but tonight's stage-the kind built for superstars-is more physically imposing. It's split into two levels: the drums, keys, and percussion are on risers, while the setup for guitar, bass, and vocals runs across the front. It's a formidable space, generous and comfortable, with enough room for singer Harwell to work his good-natured magic.

The lights go down, the stage glows in cool psychedelic colors, and the band takes the stage; an excited squeal rises from the crowd as the band kicks into its high-energy, highly entertaining set. Prior to the show, songwriter-guitarist Camp, the creative force behind Smash Mouth's phenomenal success, took Onstage backstage and told us a few of the band's secrets.

Was it tough for you guys to get gigs early on? It was hard to get gigs in our hometown [San Jose] because there was only one all-ages club. Everything else was 21 and up. They were great places for bands to play when they reached a certain level of achievement, but for us it wasn't too great. So we started traveling a lot, playing San Francisco and L.A. San Jose crowds were pretty critical of us, too. They didn't understand what we were trying to do. We weren't punk rock, we weren't ska, we weren't anything that people could readily label. We were misunderstood a lot, I thought.

Did you have a pretty serious work ethic at that time? Starting out, we rehearsed every single day except for Sunday. We made a pact that everybody in the band would do something to further Smash Mouth's prospects every day, even on Sundays.

Like what? Anything. Make a flyer, book a gig, come up with a song, come up with a part-and I think that's one of the reasons we got signed so quickly. We had a focused, condensed work ethic. A lot of bands would rehearse on Thursdays and play Saturday and get a few things done. We just did it every single day-each one of us every single day.

Sounds like you were intent on success. Paul and I played in bar bands while we were getting Smash Mouth together, just to make money. So I'd be asleep on Saturday morning after playing late Friday night, and Steve and [original drummer] Kevin [Coleman], who weren't playing in bands other than Smash Mouth, would pull up to my house-'cause it was the jam house-at, like, 8 a.m. That's how willing they were to put the time in and make it work.

How long did you put that kind of effort in before things started happening? Let's see . . . it started the tail end of 1994, and it was 1997 when we got a record deal-the beginning of 1997.

So it didn't happen overnight. One of the criticisms we got and we still get is that we came out of nowhere. "New band explodes onto the scene, gets a hit record." They must be a "one-hit wonder." What they didn't know was that we condensed ten years of normal garage-band time into two years. We really wanted to do it. We started meeting people in the business, record company people, and we used those relationships to our advantage.

Can you give us an example? We were friends with [MTV's] Carson Daly. Back then he was working at a radio station in San Jose. He started getting us airplay on a local station, KOME.

How did Smash Mouth end up getting signed? Good story. We were in L.A., shopping our demo . . . so someone heard "Walkin' on the Sun." They said, "Man, we gotta get that on KROQ [the legendary L.A. alternative-rock radio station]." Jim Pratt, a production guy at the station, took the CD to a program directors meeting. They listen to CDs and decide what's going to be played. Kevin Weatherley, who's world famous for his program direction, heard it and said, "Put that on there!" Someone said, "But they don't have a record deal." And Kevin said, "They will after we start spinning this!" They started spinning it.

I was in the back of Carson's truck going up the hill from Hollywood to where he lived. He opened the back window and said, "Listen!" And I heard the song on the radio for the first time. It freaked me out. The next morning the phone rang; we were all in a little hotel room. It was Interscope Records. They had somehow tracked us down. They heard the song and-because they knew we were in town-called all the hotels in Hollywood looking for us. They said, "Can you come into the office today?" So we went in and sat down with Jimmy Iovine, Ted Field, and some others. They said, "We don't want you to leave until we come up with some sort of agreement." Our attorney said, "Go get drunk, and when you come back we'll have some kind of a record deal." When we came back we met our manager in the elevator. He said, "I've got some news for you-you've got a record deal."

Was the signing based only on "Walkin' on the Sun," or did they listen to the rest of your demo? Yes, they did listen to the rest of it. But my producer would kill me if he heard me calling it a demo. We set out to do an EP and all we did was go back and finish that EP, so I guess it's an official release. Everyone put a stamp on it. Everyone took a little bit of it, and that was it.

Were you the band's core songwriter then? Well, back then I would write stuff. I had a cassette thing, and I'd write scaled-down versions of melodies and take them to the band for practice. At that time, everyone would put their two cents' worth into them.

Has it always been that way, even with lyrics? Yeah. There are two songs on Astro Lounge and one song on Fush Yu Mang that Steve wrote the lyrics to.

How many people do you tour with? There are six of us in the band. Two tour managers, two sound guys, two bus drivers, a monitor guy, and a systems tech. That makes 14 people altogether.

Is it a fluid system at this point? Oh, yeah. We just sit back and everything gets done.

How long did it take to get to this point, where everything's running smoothly? Until this tour. Before that it was complete mayhem. There have always been big problems, lots of confusion, disorganization.

What are your challenges now? Personally, I've got insane stage fright, for some reason. At one point it had totally gone away and I was worry free. But it has returned worse than ever. So I don't know what to do about it.

Have you seen a therapist? No, but I probably should. I'll talk to anyone.

How do you deal with it? I tried the Brady Bunch thing, the "[Visualize] everyone in their underwear" deal, but that didn't really work. I don't know. It's just completely strange. I've been playing in front of people for a long time.

Did you rehearse a lot for this tour? We rehearsed for three days at the place where the first show was. That was probably our best sound because we had a chance to work out the bugs over three days. On the fourth day we did the show.

What kind of bugs usually arise? It's always something different. Like tonight, at this venue, there's a song we play that doesn't sound right. There's something about the key it's in that doesn't agree with the room. Every time we hit this one note, the whole room goes "Bbbbbbbbbrrrr." And so then we stop and try it again. But we can only get it as good as it can get. There are carpets, padded seats, and a few people in there for cushion, but it's a problem that's not gonna go away.

You're on the road so much, how do you manage to keep the sets fresh? Steve writes out the set list-I think he's dyslexic. Last night, for example, it was the most boring crowd we've seen in a long time. We were up there trying to get people going. But they were just standing there looking dumb.

So what did you do? Well, we started playing songs that were always our favorites, party songs, "Runnin' With the Devil," a few Van Halen songs, actually. And we tried jumping around, but people were still standing there going, "Huh, cool." Then on the very last song we played "All Star," and everyone went completely nuts. We should've just done that the very first song. Goes to show you that you've got to put some time into writing out your set list. You've got to try to figure out your audience before you go on stage and then deliver when you get there.

Do you ever have trouble translating your songs from the studio to the stage? It's just different. The live sound is more hard-edged, not as smooth as our studio production. But hard is where we came from.

Do you guys ever get a chance to jam? Rarely, but we do sometimes, mostly during sound check. When we get downtime and everything's working-the line is checked, and there's no trouble on stage-and we have about an hour or so, that's when we get a chance to stretch out. That's when we end up writing a lot of songs, actually.

Do you build in any spaces for improvising during the show? "Road Man," and the song "Home." We've been getting such good response from "All Star" that we've been jamming that out as well. We went through a point where everyone was saying, "They suck live, they suck live." Critics were saying we weren't tight enough on stage, that we couldn't play our songs the way they needed to be played. So we said, "All right," and we worked on just that; we worked pretty hard on it, in fact. And then just recently we read this thing about our show that said, "Smash Mouth sounds exactly like their album live. C'mon guys, why don't you try jamming a little?" That's exactly what it said. So, it goes to show you, you can't please everyone. You can't ever win.

Musically, how has your live show changed from the early days? The music now is more melodic, there's more texture and instrumentation, and we make sure that everything is accounted for during a live show. If we don't have the instrumentation on stage there's a sample for it. So people started saying, "Are you guys lip-synching? Do you have some kind of computer that keeps you in time and in tune?" No, we just drink too much! No, I'm kidding. I think we've just gotten to be a pretty good live act.

What about your hearing on stage? Everyone but Paul and I have in-ears [in-ear monitors]. He and I tried them, but it just doesn't work out for us. Maybe it's because we spent a lot of time in clubs and bars playing and hearing loud music, and it just doesn't feel right wearing them now.

Did you try different types? The guys all got molded ones. But Paul and I tried those spongy things at first. We just couldn't get comfortable with the idea.

What kind of warm-up exercises do you do before a show? Paul does some vocal exercises. I don't think Steve does. Usually we just get together and listen to some music, rock out, sing a little bit. But they're not like [feigns an opera singer] "Vee-vo-vee-vo-vee-vo-vee-vo-veee!" I like to play before we go on. I have this crummy acoustic guitar I play so that when I get on my electric it feels better. It's usually just stuff I'm working on at the time. New songs I wanna see through. I don't know scales so I can't work through stuff like that.

Do you write a lot on the road? A lot of this record was written on the road. A lot of it was written in Europe and Japan. "Stoned" was written in Japan; "Satellite" was written in Bologna, Italy; "Fallen Horses" was written at a sound check in Scotland. That was the quickest song I've ever written. We were just up there playing a kind of groove. Our drummer started playing something, the keyboards started in on something, and Steve came in, and he was like, "What's that?" We were just playing and it came out. Steve was hit pretty hard by the death of Linda McCartney, and he took that idea and wrote the lyrics. It's a pretty heavy song for us, about how some people are in so much pain on earth that they're better off dying. It was deep, and the great thing was, we all took equal parts in writing it. That's the only song on Astro Lounge that's like that. But that's how most of Fush Yu Mang was. That band feel really adds something to the song.

Do you write on the bus? Yup. I wish my bus were here so I could show you. My bus looks like a pawnshop of old gear. It's mainly for songwriting. That's why we have that bus-it's just full of gear. I'm generally the only one on it, or if my family's with me. I had my wife and daughter with me a few days ago; now I have a friend traveling with me.

Is it a custom bus? It's actually Garth Brooks's "Star Coach." It's the one he used for a while. It's a regular old bus, but instead of having a lounge in the back, it has a bed. It's got a little makeup area where I guess he did his hair. The whole thing is pretty much a jam bus. If I need help from one of the guys, I'll go over to the other bus and say, "Listen, I need a keyboard solo on this song," or whatever. And they'll come over and put a part on a song. That's how we write. I demo everything on the bus, which has its problems.

Like what? There are lots of ground problems when you try to record, especially when you're trying to get a bass-and-drum sound. When you're on the bus there's this insane hum. The demos are really just buzzing and noisy. So on our days off I bring my stuff into the hotel room and redo them.

So it sounds like you get a lot done on the road. Yeah, I do. I have a sampler-I do all my drums with a sampler and a turntable. You can record voice on the bus, too, but if you have too much gain, it's like "Bzzzzsshhh." You can't use any compression or anything like that.

So when you're home do you still write? Actually I write way more when I'm home. But it's funny-if I really wanna write some songs, I have to rent a car and drive around. I have a little digital recorder I bought that has saved my ass more than a few times. There are so many things that go through my head, and I sing the different parts into the recorder: the bass part, the guitar part, the drum part, and the vocal part. Production ideas-I put those down, too. Then once the memory's used up I go back and try to decipher what I was feeling at the time. I even say little things like: "You've had four cups of coffee. You're driving 95 mph in a 25 zone right now and you're writing a song. Remember that vibe." Most of it happens when I'm driving. I can put down an entire song's worth of ideas on one channel of this little digital recorder, and there are four channels on it altogether.

Do you have some advice for musicians trying to break through? Play a lot locally, play a lot of all-ages shows. Make friends with your local radio stations. College radio is always good. Don't give up. Be persuasive. Steve is the most persuasive person. He persuaded us to join his band, he persuaded radio stations to play our songs, he persuaded people to go to our shows. Also, listen to a lot of different kinds of music. See what's out there. Make sure you know what's going on. Don't create your music in a vacuum. If you do, it'll sound that way.

So much of what is written about you has to do with the idea of the band being a "one-hit wonder." Does that bother you? I understand why they say that. There are a lot of bands I listen to that make me say, "Oh, God, here it comes, another flavor of the week." The thing was, once we proved them wrong by grabbing a second hit, a lot of people didn't want to believe it. They said we were just lucky. Even today, people are saying, "I'm tellin' you dammit! These guys are gonna be gone next month. You just watch!"

Bob Gulla writes for a number of national publications, including Rolling Stone and People.

Guitarist Greg Camp's gear lineup features three guitars: a Fender Jaguar reissue, a Fender Jazzmaster, and a Guild DCE-3 acoustic. He has two amps: a Fender Dual Showman head with a 2 5 12 Tonemaster cabinet and a Marshall JCM900 head with a 4 5 12 Marshall cabinet. His effects collection includes a Boss Hyper Fuzz, a Boss Chorus, a Dunlop wah pedal, a Dunlop Rotovibe, a Tech-21 Sans-Amp GT-2, and a Z-Vex Fuzz Factory (the effect he uses on "Walkin' on the Sun").

Lead singer Steve Harwell uses a wireless Shure SM58 vocal mic and a Shure PSM-600 in-ear monitor system. The other band members also use PSM-600s, with the exception of Camp and bassist Paul DeLisle, who prefer not to use in-ears. Drummer Mitch Marine supplements his PSM-600 with a Clark Synthesis thumper (also known as a "shaker") that's attached to the underside of his drum seat and transmits low-end vibrations to help him feel the bottom end. (By virtue of their size, in-ear monitors have limited low-end response, so many drummers use thumpers to supplement them.)

Marine plays a five-piece Mapex kit (he uses a single kick drum with a double pedal) and Sabian cymbals. Bassist DeLisle tours with a pair of Fender Jazz basses. His amp is an Ampeg SVT Classic bass head with two 8 5 10 cabinets.

Keyboardist Michael Klooster's rig includes a Korg Trinity keyboard and a Roland VK-77 organ with a Motion Sound Pro-3 (with a Low-Pro)-a Leslie-like rotating speaker unit. He also uses a Roland SP 808 Groove Sampler.

Percussionist Mark Cervantes uses a wide variety of instruments, including timbales, bongos, congas, cowbells, and shakers. He also plays some samples from a Roland Octopad.

-Mike Levine (Thanks to Danny Baird from the Smash Mouth crew.)

Smash Mouth: The Astro Lounge www.smashmouth.com The official home page, featuring lots of information presented with the band's cheeky glitter-and-cocktail vibe.

Smash Mouth mattshome.simplenet.com/smash.htm

Smash Mouth members.tripod.com/~FushYuManf/SmashMouth.htm Here's another pretty decent fan page with lyrics, tour information, and other fanatical band details.