Greg Brown, Founding Cake Guitarist Who Wrote ‘The Distance,’ Has Died

Greg Brown, the founding guitarist of the alternative rock group Cake who penned the band’s hit “The Distance,” has died.

Cake announced Brown’s death on social media, writing, “It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of Greg Brown’s passing after a brief illness. Greg was an integral part of Cake’s early sound and development. His creative contributions were immense, and his presence—both musical and personal—will be deeply missed. Godspeed, Greg.” Brown’s age and date of death were not provided.

The 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’s first two albums, 1994’s Motorcade of Generosity and 1996’s Fashion Nugget, and was the sole writer of Cake’s smash 1996 single “The Distance.”

“[McCrea] took to it right away, and I didn’t really understand what he saw in it so much,” Brown told Billboard of “The Distance” in 2021. “I liked the way it sounded and everything, but I thought [Fashion Nugget’s] ‘Frank Sinatra’ was a much stronger choice for the single. But the record label chose it and it worked out.”

However, following the tour in support of Fashion Nugget, Brown left Cake — “I 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,” he told Billboard — 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’s Rivers Cuomo; Brown plays on Homie’s lone release, the song “American Girls” from the soundtrack for 1998’s Meet the Deedles.

Following a pair of Deathray albums in the early 2000s, Brown reunited with Cake to play guitar on “Bound Away,” a song on the band’s 2011 album Showroom of Compassion.