What comes in between years of singing in small clubs with such homegrown San Diego indie-rock favorites as Geezer and Ghoulspoon, and then performing to tens of thousands of people across the nation as the front man in the chart-topping band Smash Mouth?
For Zach Goode, the multiple answers began with a move to Los Angeles in 2012. It was the start of a decadelong slog that included going nowhere with the aptly named band Secret Seven, recording a little-heard solo EP, doing voice-over work for Taco Bell and Dr. Pepper commercials, playing private corporate gigs with a yacht-rock group called Windbreakers. Plus, nailing songs by The Beatles — note-for-note — as a key member in the multimedia production “Abbey Road: A Musical Documentary.”
“Then COVID happened in 2020, and everything stopped,” said Goode, who replaced original Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell in March 2022, 18 months before Harwell’s death.
Homebound and with all his jobs dried up, Goode began recording and posting online his versions of songs by some of his favorite artists. They included Elvis Costello, Sam Cooke, Nick Lowe, Tom Petty, The Kinks, Chris Cornell The Beatles and fellow former San Diegan Tom Waits.
“I did that for 100 days straight and included an online tip jar for my local food bank,” said Goode, who performs Saturday with Smash Mouth at the SoCal Taco Fest at San Diego’s Waterfront Park. “It kept me busy and I was able to have new content to put on my YouTube page.
“When I saw an ad (in 2021) that Smash Mouth was looking for a new singer after Steve had retired, I wrote to them, included links to my (cover) videos, and said: ‘Have you seen this, and this, and this?’ I didn’t think they’d respond, but they did pretty quickly. They dug it and invited me to audition. They said: ‘This is great, can you record a video singing (the 1997 Smash Mouth hit) ‘Walkin’ On The Sun’?”
Goode did, and the band’s members liked what they saw and heard. They asked him to record another Smash Mouth song. He happily complied. Although he is a tenor and Harwell was a baritone, he demonstrated the skills to deliver winning versions of such Smash Mouth hits as “All Star” and the Neil Diamond-penned “I’m a Believer,” both of which were featured in the soundtrack to the animated film hit “Shrek” in 2001.
“We started to talk on the phone and they told me about what the gig is and why Steve left the band (for health reasons),” Goode, 54, said. “They told me they didn’t want a bunch of (short-lived replacement) singers; they wanted to do this one time only. And they also asked could I do the Smash Mouth gig having a day job and young kids. It’s worked out great because Smash Mouth almost always only travels on weekends for gigs.”
There were no under-the-radar warmup gigs for him with Smash Mouth. Goode’s debut with the band in May 2022 was at Mexico’s Corona Capital festival in front an audience of between 40,000 and 50,000.
“It was kind of like the Coachella of Guadalajara!” he said, speaking from his Los Angeles home. “The lineup included Kings of Leon, The Strokes and Blondie. It went great. I was stone-cold sober, I was well rehearsed, I was ready.
“Paul (De Lisle, Smash Mouth’s bassist and co-founder) asked me: ‘Are you nervous?’ I was like: ‘No, I’m not. This is what we do.’ The crowd was super-enthusiastic and accepting. It was an incredible show.”
New York, Kona, San Diego
Goode moved to San Diego from Hawaii after hitting a series of musical dead ends in Kona. A New York native who grew up in an arts-oriented community on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, he was a devoted theater kid who enthusiastically sang in musicals and appeared in his first off-Broadway play when he was 12.
Goode spent some of his summers studying at upstate New York’s Stagedoor Manor, whose other past students include Natalie Portman, Robert Downey Jr. and Mandy Moore. He also attended St. Ann’s Performing Arts School in Brooklyn, where Jennifer Connelly was his sixth-grade classmate.
“That was a year or so before she got cast in ‘Labyrinth’ with David Bowie,” Goode recalled. “Until I was 15 or 16, I was almost all-Beatles and all-Broadway. Then, I caught the rock ‘n’ roll bug. I’d already gone through my Beatles and Cat Stevens’ phases.
“Then, I got into Devo, new wave and punk — The Clash, Elvis Costello, The Police. When I was 15 or 16, I discovered classic rock, grew my hair long and got into Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. There was a Cape Cod band in Provincetown called 40 Thieves. Half the time they didn’t have a lead singer, so I’d get up and sing Zeppelin and The Doors with them.”
Goode was still only 16 when he started his own cover band, The Reach, and began doing three-set-a-night club gigs. The Reach teamed him with older, more experienced musicians. Its repertoire included favorites by such artists as Aerosmith, Stevie Ray Vaughan and ZZ Top.
“I was doing both the band and school plays,” Goode recalled. “No other feeling is more invigorating, terrifying and edifying than being ready and prepared to go on stage to do a theatrical performance, and stepping out on stage from behind the curtain when it goes up.
“Once you’ve done that, screaming in a rock band is easy!”
Goode qualified for a National Merit Scholarship, but never applied to any colleges.
“I wanted to be a rock star,” he said. “My dad had moved to Kona to start a coffee farm, so I tried starting a band there with these metal dudes. I was into bands like the Pixies and Fishbone, and the other guys were all into Metallica and Anthrax.”
In 1990, the other members of the metal band Goode was in moved from Kona to Tacoma to start over with a new singer. About a year later, they kicked out the singer and invited Goode to move to Tacoma and assume lead vocal duties.
But before he could get there, the band decided to relocate to San Diego and he joined them here instead. Renamed Ghoulspoon — “We all liked monster movies,” Goode noted — the group mixed metal, rap, punk, grunge, ska, reggae and more. Its first San Diego performance was at the Casbah and the band went on to appear alongside such rising young homegrown artists as blink-182, P.O.D. and Unwritten Law.
Ghoulspoon also played Southern California shows with No Doubt, Sublime, The Cult, 311, System of a Down and others. The five-man group released three albums, worked relentlessly and won the 2001 San Diego Music Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Band.
in 2002, Ghoulspoon changed its name to Divided By Zero and soldiered on for several more years. But Goode and his four band mates never hit it big, albeit not for a lack of effort.
“We always had day jobs, which was one of the main things that limited our success,” he said. “We had bills to pay; I sold ads and worked as a medical courier driving around with blood samples and, sometimes, body parts. Because none of us in the band were from San Diego, we didn’t have family here for a support system. All the other bands we played with that went on to the next level had managers, agents or record labels. We never had any of that.”
Weezer, meet Geezer
Goode was also a member of Geezer, which was launched here in 2005 by musical parody specialist Adam Gimbel with the goal of reimagining the Los Angeles band Weezer as a group of senior citizens. Gimbel brought Goode in around 2008 to be the new bassist in Geezer. Neither was daunted that Goode had never played the instrument before.
Geezer earned the attention of Weezer when the San Diego band opened a concert for Weezer at SDSU’s Cox (now Viejas) Arena. Goode’s then-wife, Marissa, who was dressed as a “hot nurse,” also earned Weezer’s attention.
“Playing with Geezer is some of the most fun I’ve ever had on stage,” Goode said. “It taught me so much about improv and how to fly by the seat of my pants on stage.”
A job opportunity in Los Angeles led Goode and Marissa to move to Culver City in 2012. Ten years later, he made his debut with Smash Mouth and has rarely looked back since.
“Doing shows with Smash Mouth is super fun and joyous,” Goode said. “Before I joined, I thought of Smash Mouth as a big-hits radio band. Their songwriting is amazing and has a lot of depth and ’60s influences I really enjoy. We usually play to about 10,000 people at each show and the audiences are so enthusiastic it’s crazy.”
Smash Mouth has upcoming performances in Chile, Malaysia and Australia, although most of the band’s concert dates are in the U.S.
“Nearly every show is on a weekend and usually involves three days of travel to go there, perform and fly back,” Goode said. “That gives me weekdays to be in L.A. with my sons, who are 8 and 10.”
The veteran singer laughed heartily about his four-decade career trajectory and recent rise from anonymity to the national spotlight.
“I joined Smash Mouth almost exactly 32 years after I moved to San Diego,” Goode said. “I’m incredibly fortunate how things worked out.”
SoCal Taco Fest, with Vanilla Ice, Smash Mouth, Los Amigos Invisbles, and more
When: Noon to 10 p.m. Saturday
Where: Waterfront Park, 1600 Pacific Highway, San Diego
Tickets: $56.94-$188.88
Online: socaltacofest.com
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