» Tramps

Was there a keyboard player for Smash Mouth? If so,
I might have met him.

I had the privilege of making the All-New Jersey Honors Orchestra, with the illustrious gig of playing a concert in Atlantic City for the annual teacher's convention. The 'honor' part of the orchestra meant that your mode of travel from the cushy Howard-Johnson Motel to the Convention Hall was by hoofing it down the boardwalk, in concert attire. So now there's about a hundred kids walking down the boardwalk in fancy dress in the middle of the day in November. This is when myself and a fellow musician met the keyboardist for that band Smash Mouth.

He walked up to us, Trump Taj Mahal Casino cup in his hand and wearing varying shades of brown. With the cup outstretched, he comes up to the two of us and says: "Hey, is there a wedding going on or something?"

I wanted to just say yes and keep moving along, but my companion decided to stop and answer him, explaining how we were all musicians that were going to be playing in a concert for the teacher's convention, etc. etc. Why I stopped along with him, I'll never know. But the rest of the conversation I will remember forever.

The bum nods his head in understanding, "Oh, neat. I played piano for the longest times. Piano/keyboards."

"Oh."

"Yeah, I was actually in that band Smash Mouth, you remember them right? 'Walking on the Sun' 'All-Star'..." He named a few others, but honestly--who actually listened to any of their other songs? And before we could even respond to that, the story kept on coming.

"Yeah, I played keyboards for them. Got pretty rich off from doing it too, if you can imagine. A couple million for a couple of hits. But then I got ALS--Lou Gehrig's, you know? And that all messed up my sense of timing and pitch and everything else. I was pretty much useless to them and couldn't play piano or anything like that anymore so I was out of the band.

"And, I was living in California at the time. So my wife sued me all I had; because under California law, a spouse can sue for having power of attorney over their spouse's funds if they have any sort of mental illness. Lou Gehrig's Disease counts as a mental illness under state law so she took everything."
(That's a huge bunch of bullshit-smelling legal babble, but kudos to this man if he thought it up on the spot.)

Here was the spot where I thought he was going to give his plea for some spare cash (it was the perfect set-up for it, in a way). Instead, he said this: "So anyways, I was broke and my wife took all my money--so I came back home to here in Jersey. But, everyone gets what they deserve you know? Like my wife--I killed the bitch. Shoved her through our third floor window into the driveway, the cops thought I had a seizure because of the ALS. They don't know shit."

That certainly came as a shock to me, and there was a very uncomfortable moment of silence between me, my fellow musician, and the (alleged) former keyboardist from Smash Mouth who confessed to killing his wife. Then he nods his head again, and with cup still outstretched towards us says "You guys have a nice day." And walks away.
(Wed 8th Jul 2009, 21:49, More)