Barring the occasional appearance on movie soundtracks or random fan lip sync videos, former ’90s headlining act Smash Mouth has mostly fallen prey to the same thing that eventually happens to all former ’90s headlining acts. That’s to say, they’re more familiar with the small-town festival circuit than any big arenas these days. Last year, at a street festival in Fort Collins, the band’s front man Steve Harwell verbally berated the crowd watching the band play and caused a bit of a scene.
Apparently, the singer wanted to one-up his previous festival news-making performance with by making a scene at the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival in Illinois. Appearing at the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival is probably not where this band wants to be playing, but they showed up and did their jobs anyway. That is, for the first part of the set. Just before they were getting set to play I’m A Believer (their version of the song from the Shrek soundtrack) things went south.
According to reddit user named “junkinthehatchback” relays the following story from the performance.
So, we’re watching the mendoza line of bands, live at our hick ass corn festival, and Steve Harwell, that Guy Fieri looking mofo, sits his fatass down and waves over the roadies, who then proceed to carry him off stage. The remaining band members finish, first by playing “I’m a Believer” because the crowd kept screaming “Shrek” when there was a break (which made me feel incredibly old, because I realized 90% of the crowd grew up on that movie, then they played “All Star”. The crowd went wild.
No one cared that the lead singer left. Seriously.
Then the show was over and a couple ambulances showed up.
Overall, the show exceeded my expectations. Good show.
Edit: Got his last name wrong.
I don’t know what’s crazier – that no one cared that Harwell had to be helped off the stage right in front of everyone attending and not one person blinked an eye, or that the show still “exceeded” this poster’s expectations. Looks like there’s a pretty low bar for what it takes to enjoy a Smash Mouth concert these days.
Speculation is that Harwell either was under the influence of drugs or too intoxicated to continue performing, and some are concerned that it could have been a medical emergency based on the presence of the ambulances post-show. Until a confirmation on what actually went wrong with Harwell emerges, we wish him well and hope he recovers from the incident soon.
(via Consequence of Sound)
