Scott Stapp says that he and guitarist Mark Tremonti wrote almost an album’s worth of material for CREED nearly a decade ago before abandoning the band and focusing on their respective individual projects.
Scott discussed his old group during a new appearance on the “Stop! Drop & Talk” podcast, co-hosted by HALESTORM drummer Arejay Hale.
Addressing the possibility of CREED making a comeback — eight years after the band completed a tour in support of its fourth album, 2009’s “Full Circle” — Stapp said (see video below): “I actually was just with Mark and [CREED drummer] Scott Phillips Friday. Everything is good. Everything is positive. We are friends. And communcation is there.
“Nothing is planned,” he continued. “Right now, there is nothing on the schedule. There is nothing that I am keeping from you.
“When there’s an announcement to be made [about a possible reunion], I promise you guys will know.”
Asked if it’s true that there was some material left over from the “Full Circle” sessions that was never used, Stapp said: “Mark and I got together, I think it was in 2012, and I actually crashed at his place for, I wanna say, a couple of weeks — I can’t remember exactly — and we wrote eight or nine songs. So we’ve got some stuff that we put together in 2012. I was listening to a couple of ’em the other day, and I was, like, ‘You know what? It doesn’t sound old to me.’ It’s something we could demo for a new record. I’m not saying that that’s gonna happen. Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m just saying we did write some songs, and we’re sitting on those.”
This past June, CREED updated its Facebook profile with an old photo, igniting rumors of the band’s imminent return. Nearly five months later, Phillips confirmed that there has been “some chatter” about renewed activity from the group, but cautioned that there are “no specific plans” for CREED to perform or make music again.
CREED disbanded in 2004 but reunited five years later for the aforementioned “Full Circle” LP and an extensive tour. 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.
Last year, 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.”
Tremonti, who also leads his own self-named band and plays in ALTER BRIDGE with the other instrumental members of CREED, told The Pulse Of Radio a while back he doesn’t see CREED working again anytime soon. “I’m just so full of commitments between TREMONTI and ALTER BRIDGE, and juggling these two bands writing-wise and just touring-wise, it’s like almost impossible to do all three, and I’m very satisfied with what I’m doing now,” he said.
