Between nearly every single song of its roughly 105-minute set, rock band Creed and frontman Scott Stapp (who, at first glance Wednesday, resembled a particularly toned Peloton instructor) exhorted the capacity audience with the kind of bromides that will absolutely read as cornball as they sounded spoken aloud.
“Tonight, we’re going to take you on a journey through the human experience, not just as we live it, but as we experience it in the spiritual realm,” Stapp intoned not long after the quintet took the stage. “Those two are acutely intertwined.”
Later: “Keep holding onto that child-like heart — to hope, to love and to dream — don’t ever let that die. It keeps us connected to the spirit.”
Even later: “It’s not how many times you get knocked down that defines you; it’s how many times you get back up!”
Later still: “Our birthright, our destiny — if we choose to believe, we will overcome!”
And so on.
The sentiment would have been grating but for the goofily sanctimonious gravity with which Stapp treated these inspirational asides. Standing at the foot of the stage, jabbing his finger toward the sold-out arena as he shouted into the mic, he looked for all the world as if he held the key to enlightenment — the crowd’s ecstatic reaction to his every utterance only intensifying that sensation.
In truth, it’s extremely difficult to discern if and whether Creed (or its fanbase) is in on the joke — on the one hand, the band stood before an arena full of screaming fans, babbling about cosmic perseverance, and on the other, it sold a $45 T-shirt at its merch stand that mocked Creed's widely derided 2001 Thanksgiving Day halftime performance for the Dallas Cowboys.
Nevertheless, the Florida rockers — Stapp, guitarist Mark Tremonti, drummer Scott Phillips, bassist Brian Marshall and touring rhythm guitarist Eric Friedman — who dominated radio at the turn of the millennium with quasi-spiritual anthems “Higher,” “My Own Prison” and “With Arms Wide Open,” have been reunited for a little over a year now, having benefited from the recent resurgence in nostalgia for the 1990s.
Creed definitely took us higher than we anticipated, but we aren't sure if everyone is in on the joke.
@brooksburrisphotography
Guitarist Mark Tremonti let fly with the heavy riffs, even giving a guitar away to a young fan mid-show.
@brooksburrisphotography
Wednesday’s set came quickly on the heels of Creed’s last trip through North Texas, a gig at Dos Equis Pavilion just two months prior.
Opening act 3 Doors Down was also returning to North Texas after that September date, and I’ll say this about the Mississippi quartet’s set: I treated myself to a funnel cake while they played, and it was delicious. (Traffic prevented me from making it in time to see Mammoth, the night’s other opener.)
The Dickies Arena stop was also the first time Creed has played Fort Worth, although it has been to Tarrant County. Way back in 1998, Creed shared a bill at Six Flags Over Texas with Our Lady Peace, Everclear and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones (a string of words which probably brought a fond tear to a few elder millennial eyes).
Stapp’s muscular baritone has aged surprisingly well — he was able to scale the peaks of most songs Wednesday: “Are You Ready?,” “What’s This Life For?” and “What If” all sounded as sturdy as the recorded versions — and the band was locked in from the get-go, chugging its way through the myriad mid-tempo tunes, as Tremonti regularly unfurled elaborate guitar riffs and Friedman’s tenor vocals helped fill in some of the high end.
All of it unfolded across a stage that leaned heavily on the tried-and-true: gouts of fire behind the band, plumes of fog blasting in front, a fierce drizzle of sparks on occasion and everything buttressed by a panoply of video screens and banks of ceaseless lights illuminating every last corner of the room — a frenzy of visual overload to bolster songs about strife, surrender and second chances.
What can seem profound in your teenage years can become profoundly flaky as you age. Rare is the act that can resonate as much at 38 as it did at 18. Creed is no more and no less than it was when it emerged in the late 1990s and, look, the band doesn’t need to be. The Grammy-winning group has sold 53 million albums worldwide to date, and can still pull a passionate crowd of 14,000 folks in the middle of the week — polished, powerful and preaching to a choir I came to realize no longer contains me as a member.
It's probably not the realization Creed intended as I stood inside the cacophony on Wednesday, but as Stapp himself told those gathered: “I’m gonna find purpose in this pain.” I guess this revelation is just how I’m (checks notes) “handling the prison I find myself in.”
