{"id":575999,"date":"2026-02-08T21:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T21:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/575999\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T21:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T21:23:11","slug":"greg-brown-founding-cake-guitarist-who-wrote-the-distance-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/575999\/","title":{"rendered":"Greg Brown, Founding Cake Guitarist Who Wrote ‘The Distance,’ Has Died"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGreg Brown<\/a>, the founding guitarist of the alternative rock group Cake<\/a> who penned the band\u2019s hit \u201cThe Distance,\u201d has died.<\/p>\n

\n\tCake announced Brown\u2019s death on social media, writing, \u201cIt is with heavy hearts that we share the news of Greg Brown\u2019s passing after a brief illness. Greg was an integral part of Cake\u2019s early sound and development. His creative contributions were immense, and his presence\u2014both musical and personal\u2014will be deeply missed. Godspeed, Greg.\u201d Brown\u2019s age and date of death were not provided.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Sacramento, California band formed in 1991, with Brown on guitar alongside singer John McCrea, multi-instrumentalist Vince DiFiore, and others. While McCrea served as the main songwriter, Brown co-wrote tracks on Cake\u2019s first two albums, 1994\u2019s Motorcade of Generosity and 1996\u2019s Fashion Nugget, and was the sole writer of Cake\u2019s smash 1996 single \u201cThe Distance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[McCrea] took to it right away, and I didn\u2019t really understand what he saw in it so much,\u201d Brown told Billboard<\/a> of \u201cThe Distance\u201d in 2021. \u201cI liked the way it sounded and everything, but I thought [Fashion Nugget\u2019s] \u2018Frank Sinatra\u2019 was a much stronger choice for the single. But the record label chose it and it worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, following the tour in support of Fashion Nugget, Brown left Cake \u2014 \u201cI would just say there was a lot of turmoil at the time, and I felt like leaving Cake would be a decision that would be good for my health,\u201d he told Billboard \u2014 to pursue other musical endeavors, including his own band Deathray (with fellow former Cake member Victor Damiani on bass) as well as Homie, a short-lived side project of Weezer\u2019s Rivers Cuomo; Brown plays on Homie\u2019s lone release, the song \u201cAmerican Girls\u201d from the soundtrack for 1998\u2019s Meet the Deedles.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing a pair of Deathray albums in the early 2000s, Brown reunited with Cake to play guitar on \u201cBound Away,\u201d a song on the band\u2019s 2011 album Showroom of Compassion<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greg Brown, the founding guitarist of the alternative rock group Cake who penned the band\u2019s hit \u201cThe Distance,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":576000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[82619,171,249987,32175,9455,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-575999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cake","tag-entertainment","tag-greg-brown","tag-obit","tag-obituary","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116037117683791332","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}