CREED

Riverbend Music Center – Cincinnati, OH

August 2, 2024

w/ 3 Doors Down & Finger 11

Creed Cincinnati Concert Review: I have to admit that at most times, I feel like a 40-something-year-old cliche. The music that I grew up on has now been dubbed dad rock. I start many sentences with the phrase, back in the day. And more often than not, I’m going to tell a dad joke to a helpless waitress at Texas Roadhouse. But something magical happened when I saw Creed live on stage after all of these years. If just for a night, I wasn’t the old guy. I was 22 years old again, and I was surrounded by 20,000 of my people who knew just how special this night was. It truly felt like the Summer of 1999, as the tour is rightfully named.

A lot has happened in the history of the band Creed, and there are a lot of strong feelings out there about them. But for me, the debut album, My Own Prison, and the follow-up, Human Clay, served as a soundtrack to my late teens and early twenties. Back in the day, those CDs were permanent fixtures in my car’s 5-disc changer. Oops, I did it again. Now that I think about it, the magic of the Creed reunion happened well before the night of the show. Once the tour was announced, I started to play those albums again, this time streaming from my Apple Music account. See, old guys can change with the times. With each listen, the volume got a little louder, and more of the lyrics came back to my memory. Then, just a few days before the show, I was driving down the road with the windows down and Human Clay blasting for all to hear. Yep, it felt like 1999 all over again!

With all of the build-up that I had in my mind leading up to the show, could a band that hasn’t played together in 15 years possibly live up to the expectation? You bet they did. They met those expectations and blew right past them halfway through the first song of the night. Creed made it clear they were not ready to be dubbed a retro or nostalgia act. Not by a long shot. This group of guys that took the stage on Friday night in Cincinnati could hold their own against any new band from today. The energy level never decreased throughout the 16-song set. And despite his problems over the years, Scott Stapp sounded amazing and rose to the occasion to shine as the ultimate frontman that he was when the band first started playing. And Mark Tremonti, well, Mark did what Mark always does. He absolutely rocked it. Whether it’s with Creed, Alter Bridge, his solo band, or singing Sinatra, you are always going to get nothing less than 100% out of Mark Tremonti. And I cannot leave out the amazing rhythm section of Bryan Marshall and Scott Phillips. These two guys did not miss a beat all night. It is like they had never quit playing these songs. It was just simply astonishing to watch the chemistry and connection that was shared between the men on the stage.

Creed in 2024 was arguably the best rock n’ roll show of 2024 so far. The sign of any great show is when you don’t want it to be over. And that is exactly how it was. Even though they played most of their biggest hits, and even one of my favorite deep cuts, “Faceless Man,” off the Human Clay record, the night simply ended too soon. I didn’t want the night to end. But there was no doubt the sold-out crowd got their money’s worth from Creed, and so much more. I walked back out to my car a young man who had just seen one of his favorite bands and I was pumped. But morning came, and so did the aches and the pains that come for no apparent reason. But I’ll never forget being young again in the Summer of 1999 with Creed! Thanks guys!