Mark Tremonti says that a reunion of CREED is not possible right now.
More than a year ago, CREED updated its Facebook profile with an old photo, igniting rumors of the multi-platinum act’s imminent return.
Mark, who is promoting the fifth album from his solo band TREMONTI, “Marching In Time”, discussed the chances of a CREED comeback during a new interview with The Rock Experience With Mike Brunn.
Asked how he feels about the possibility of a CREED reunion, Mark said: “Right now it’s almost impossible to do it. I’ve got a solo record coming out. I’m frantically trying to write another ALTER BRIDGE record, and we have touring booked all through next year, all through next Christmas. So to do a CREED tour even, we’d have to jam it in, and there’s no [way we can do it]. I leave it up to the people that run our business — from our managers to our agents to everybody involved. They are nice enough to let me be an artist and only present things that are doable when they are doable, and right now it’s just not doable.”
As for how it feels to constantly be associated with CREED — eight years after the band completed a tour in support of its fourth album, 2009’s “Full Circle” — Mark said: “It’s definitely both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now if it weren’t for CREED; I wouldn’t have this career, this long career. But at the same time, for my entire life, I will be that guy from the band CREED, which is good and band. ‘Cause certain people loved CREED, certain people hated CREED. So no matter what I do artistically, I’m gonna be the guy who was in CREED that was, at certain points critics liked to come after us. So I’ve kind of lived in both worlds — I was in a band that sold lots of records but got some critical attacks, but I also got to be in a band that didn’t sell as many records but got critical praise. So I got to see both sides of it. It would be great to have it all in one. But it’s tough.”
CREED disbanded in 2004 but reunited five years later for the aforementioned “Full Circle” LP and an extensive tour. Singer Scott Stapp has since toured and recorded as a solo artist, although he suffered a drug-related mental breakdown in 2014 and spent several years recovering from that.
In 2019, Tremonti said in an interview on Jamey Jasta‘s podcast that he was sitting on an album’s worth of material for CREED. Asked whether CREED could reunite again, Tremonti said, “People say, ‘Is it done? Is it over? Is there new music coming out?’ I’m sitting on an entire CREED album… When we were together doing the reunion tour, we put a lot of music together and I have like really sketchy little demos of probably 13 songs. I listened to them maybe a year ago and they’re good songs.”
Tremonti added: “It’s just, there’s no time. Is it good enough for me to put everything on the back burner that I’ve been working on for the past 14 years? No. Is it good enough to maybe 10 years from now or seven years from now… or some big resurgence happens or there’s an anniversary where everybody’s like, ‘We want to see CREED and the world demands it like they used to.’ I wouldn’t say no.”
