MARK TREMONTI On CREED Comeback: 'This Is Something We All Hope We Can Just Continue To Do'

During a September 9 appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk", CREED guitarist Mark Tremonti spoke about the band's future plans beyond the group's current tour. He said: "This is something we all hope we can just continue to do. Now we have to just do a lot of pre-planning. We already had to do a lot of pre-planning when it was just ALTER BRIDGE. With me, it was ALTER BRIDGE, TREMONTI and the [Frank] Sinatra band, but now CREED has become such a force in our careers, we have to just now add one more element to that balance.

"We tour with CREED through the end of the year this year," he continued. "I've been trying to push the [other] guys [in CREED] to be able to do a New Year's show this year, 'cause that would be a fun way to end this year out. We haven't played [Las] Vegas this whole year, for some reason, so Vegas would be perfect for New Year's for CREED. So I really want that to happen. And then in December, I'll be performing the Sinatra shows, doing the charitable shows in December, and then in January, I'll head off to Europe with TREMONTI. And that's for two months. And then I'll come back home and hit the studio in March with ALTER BRIDGE. And after that is kind of where it becomes a question mark as to do we do a short CREED run. I've gotta keep pushing the [new] TREMONTI album as much as I can. That's the biggest risk I face, is the TREMONTI album getting gobbled up by CREED. So it's definitely a delicate balance."

Asked if he and his CREED bandmates have talked about writing new music, Mark said: "We've talked about it. We know that the big driver for this [current CREED] tour was just the fact that we've been gone for so long. Everybody wants to come see it. But in the future, we're gonna need to have, year after year if we're doing this, people are gonna wanna hear new music and people have been asking about it. And I know most people would be happy just to hear the stuff that is already out there, but we're active songwriters — I know I'm an active songwriter. I love creating. I'd be bored just doing the same thing. But at this point I've got, like I said, four different bands, so I'm pretty satisfied with where I'm at. But I also wanna put out new music. Right now as I'm writing, I'm writing an ALTER BRIDGE record, and then every now and then I'll hear a song that sounds like it could be a CREED song and I'll set that aside. So it's kind of see what happens."

CREED kicked off its first tour in 12 years, "Summer Of '99", on July 17 at Resch Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Last month, Tremonti told Michael Christopher of Vanyaland that he had "thousands" of riffs and other ideas stockpiled for CREED's next album. "Literally thousands," he said. "I hoarded my ideas since I was, gosh, since I bought my first little handheld tape recorder — the little micro cassettes — saved my ideas since I was maybe in junior high school, high school."

Regarding the fact that a whole new generation of fans is discovering CREED for the first time and coming out to see the band on the current reunion tour, Mark said: "I think slowly but surely the world's come around and I think people have just kind of aged out of that mind frame with the band. A lot of people went after the personal behind-the-scenes stuff with CREED as well, instead of just listening to the music. I think people just grew up with this music now. They don't care about all that stuff. They don't care about the drama; they just appreciate the music.

"A lot of our fans, the largest base that we have now is under 30, 40 years old, which is very surprising to us," he continued. "When you sell a ticket nowadays, you find out the gender of the person buying the ticket and where they're from, and how old they are. So, when we saw those statistics, we were blown away with the age groups that were buying these tickets. When we play a live show now and Scott [Stapp, CREED singer] asks the crowd, 'How many of you are seeing your very first CREED show tonight?', it seems like almost every hand is up in the air, which blows us away."

Earlier last month, Tremonti told Guitar Interactive magazine that he would like to work on some fresh music with his CREED bandmates. He said: "Yeah, I love writing music and I love doing it in many different ways. I love challenging ourselves, I love to be challenged, and writing for all these different acts, when you get into it, you're, like, how am I gonna differentiate this from my other projects? How are we gonna make this its own thing and not sound like this other band with just a different vocalist on it?"

Elaborating on CREED's possible mindset while working on new music, Tremonti said: "I think putting a fresh look, but also um realizing what people loved about the band and trying to trying to keep that intact and not get too progressive in any way with CREED. We keep that to [my other bands] ALTER BRIDGE and TREMONTI and we keep CREED a little more the way it was back in the day — the big melodies, just the stuff that worked back in the day. I think on [CREED's last album, 2009's] 'Full Circle' record, we got somewhat a little more — I think we strayed a little bit from our original sound with that album. So I think it'd be good to try to get back to that original sound a little more."

With more than 53 million albums sold worldwide, CREED remains one of modern rock's most successful acts. Now, 30 years into their incredible journey, CREED is bigger than ever. In late 2023, the Texas Rangers made "Higher" their unofficial anthem, as it spurred them to their first World Series win. Earlier this year, the song appeared in a high-profile Paramount+ Super Bowl commercial, while a NASCAR Daytona 500 campaign also incorporated the hit single. Along the way, CREED has gained a new generation of fans, thanks to countless TikTok videos that feature their songs.

Last summer, after an 11-year hiatus, CREED announced their long-awaited reunion — returning to the stage for the first time in April 2024 at the sold-out Summer Of '99 cruise and Summer Of '99 And Beyond cruise. In May, meanwhile, the band's multiplatinum-selling "Greatest Hits" collection made its wide debut on vinyl (via Craft),this month landing the collection back into the Billboard Top 200, as well as hitting Top Hard Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Alternative Albums, and moving up the Top Hard Rock Albums rankings. Originally issued in 2004, the 14-track compilation spans the band's first three albums (1997's "My Own Prison", 1999's "Human Clay" and 2001's "Weathered"). Fans can catch the band on their "Summer Of '99" tour, running through September, where they are joined by the likes of 3 DOORS DOWN, FINGER ELEVEN, SWITCHFOOT, FUEL, BIG WRECK and DAUGHTRY. The band will be heading into arenas this November and December on the "Are You Ready?" tour with 3 DOORS DOWN and MAMMOTH WVH in the U.S. and MAMMOTH WVH and FINGER ELEVEN in Canada.

Photo credit: Chuck Brueckmann