Episode 42 of Hooked on Creek features my interview with Fred Moore. Fred has been a fan of Max Creek since the mid ’80s and has developed a strong connection with the band over the years.
In this episode, Fred talks about his introduction to Max Creek, his friendship with Scott Murawski, his memories seeing the band over the years and his role supporting the band’s live sound at concerts. Fred also hints at some future official releases from Max Creek featuring multitrack recordings that Fred captured last year.
Related links:
- Max Creek performing Dark Water live on July 31, 1999
- Max Creek performing Burgers and Fries > The Other One live on September 1, 2019
- Bill & Fred’s Excellent Adventure
Transcript of episode 42
You’re listening to Hooked on Creek, a podcast celebrating the music, history and fans of the legendary jam band Max Creek. I am your host, Korre Johnson, and you are listening to episode 42.
Thank you for joining me on episode 42 of Hooked on Creek. In this episode, I am very excited to share my interview with Fred Moore. Fred has been a fan of Max Creek since the mid ’80s and has developed a strong connection with the band over the years. Coming up, you are going to hear Fred talk about his introduction to Max Creek, his friendship with Scott Murawski and his memories seeing the band over all these years. Fred also talks about his role supporting the band’s live sound at concerts and Fred hints at some future official releases from Max Creek featuring multitrack recordings that Fred captured last year.
Fred and I cover a lot in our conversation, so I really think you are going to enjoy listening to it. But then stick around, because I conclude this episode with a couple Max Creek songs referenced in this episode that I think you are really going to enjoy.
As a reminder, if you have feedback about this episode head over to hookedoncreek.com and click the contact link and let me know what you think. All right, now let’s get started.
Korre: Fred Moore, welcome to Hooked on Creek.
Fred: Korre, thanks so much for having me on.
Korre: I’ve gotten to know you just a little bit as I see your name pop up online when I look through old Creek recordings. And I’ve seen you supporting the band’s live sound at the last two Camp Creeks. But maybe to begin with, tell me about your first introduction to the music of Max Creek.
Fred: Well, it’s pretty interesting, actually. I’m a Deadhead from way back. My first concert was Grateful Dead 5-4-81 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. Go Phillies. I went to a bunch of other concerts after that, like bigger concerts like Rush and Rossington Collins Band. I saw a couple other ones in there. I realized wow, there’s nothing else like a Grateful Dead concert. So I started seeing them more and after I saw them again, I was like, “Yeah, this is where it’s at.” And I was pretty much a metal head at that point. When I say metalhead, like Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.
Korre: In 1981, how old are you? Just take me back.
Fred: Obviously math is not my forte. I was 15.
Korre: You’re a teenager, you’re getting exposed to the Grateful Dead, and you found something there that worked for you. You liked what you were hearing then, right?
Fred: Yeah. I noticed it was different than what I had heard on their records. Like their records were, like the songs were three to seven minutes long. And when you go there and you see a tune that you’ve heard them play on the record that sounds completely different and is like stretched out and created into a a new thing — that’s what really got me with the Grateful Dead. So, that made me realize, wow, I need to explore this more. And then I found out that they did different shows — like none of their shows were the same. And that was another thing because you go to other bands and they pretty much play the record verbatim. Front to back sounds just like it does. And they play that every night. Grateful Dead were just like, “Nah, we do what we want. We don’t even have a set list. We don’t know what we’re gonna play when we come out.” I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And then I saw this whole other thing — like a whole following — all these people that just were there, went to every show. To me as a suburban white kid, that was a really cool foreign thing that I was never exposed to.
Korre: So, did you have a group of friends at that age that were also into the Grateful Dead that you got to hang out with? Or were you kind of on your own?
Fred: We were kind of on our own. Me and my buddy Joe. He’s the one. He was my next door neighbor growing up, and his brother Jeff. I was friends with them. They had older brothers. I was the oldest in my family, so I was blazing the path musically. When that whole thing entered, it was just a whole other — I was into rock and roll. But, like I said, Led Zeppelin, Foghat, Blue Öyster Cult — some of the heavier edged stuff for the time. And then when I saw that, it was just like, wow, this is really something else. So me and my buddies were some of the first ones at our school to be “Deadheads.” And, we were not viewed as cool at all.
Korre: So were you then traveling to see the Dead at that point in time? Or did that come later?
Fred: Right around 1983, after I saw them a couple times at the Spectrum, I realized, wow, this is really — instead of going to the prom, I went to see the Dead at Merriweather Post Pavilion. That was like my first true, wow. Camped in the parking lot overnight. Saw the two shows and was just absolutely blown away by the whole scene. And then not long after that, my buddy Larry Gottenberg, I had met him and he was like, “Did you ever hear of this band Max Creek?” And I was like, “Nah, I never heard of them.” He’s like, “Check this tape out.” So he gave me this tape of Max Creek from the Rusty Nail in Sunderland, Mass. Never heard of the place. Never heard of the band.
And the first song that I heard by Max Creek was Jones. And I was like — it was so hauntingly awesome and hard edged. I came from more of a hard edged thing. So it was like they combined the Grateful Dead and this like almost Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin thing together where I was just like, “What is this band? Do you have more tapes of this band? Who is this band? Where do I see this band?” It was the first band I had ever heard that was even anything close to the Grateful Dead — the same idea, just doing it their way.
Korre: That’s something I’ve come to learn as I’ve explored Max Creek, too, is at that period in time in maybe in the early to mid ’80s, what other bands out there were doing what Max Creek was doing, contemporaneously with the Grateful Dead being who they are? I don’t know, maybe there were, but it seems like Max Creek found something there. Right?
Fred: They definitely blazed the trail. Like they started as a Dead cover band and there was nobody that was doing that. And then they eventually became an original band. And they still had sort of the same kind of feel as the Grateful Dead, but they still did it a little more hard-edged way, a little more just their way. They made it their own. Same way the Dead make cover songs their own.
Korre: So you heard some Creek on a tape. It peaked your interest. So then what happened next?
Fred: Well, I talked to my buddy Larry, and I was like, “Give me everything you got.” So he handed over a bunch of tapes and they all sounded OK. And, then I met his buddy Howard [Radis], who was originally from this area and then moved to Vermont and he was all about Max Creek. So he was the one that was sending Larry the tapes. So, I finally got to see them in the Philly area in November of 1985 at this place called the Ambler Cabaret. And, I had been listening to them for about a year and a half at that point on tape. I just remember I was dancing up front and I jumped up in the light. I was only 20. I wasn’t actually old enough to be in the bar. I jumped up and I came down on my right foot and my right ankle gave out on me. I went down right in front of the band. Their roadie at the time helped me up and took me to the side and totally took care of me for the rest of the show. Fed me shots. I don’t really drink, but I did that night. At the end of the show he was like, “Do you want to meet the band?” And the band was kind of like, “Hey, the guy that fell down.” So that was how I actually met them. It was completely by my own idiocy
Korre: So 1985, that was a transition year from Bob Gosselin to DeGuglielmo. Who was playing drums at that point in time? Do you remember?
Fred: DeGugs.
Korre: OK. What was it like to meet them? What did you talk about?
Fred: That night I don’t really have the best memory of exactly what I talked to them about. But I went to see them again that New Year’s, ’85, ’86 at the Agora Ballroom. And, Howard was there. And he was friends with the band. So, that’s where I really got to first meet them and go backstage and talk to Scott. And Scott and I just got along immediately. And I just became friends with all of them. They were all just super cool. And they were like, “Hey man, you should come to more shows.” And I was like, “Well, I live in Philly.” “You live in Philly? You came all the way up here to see us.?” I was like, “Yeah.” So they were like, “Any show you want to come to, you’re in.” So, that was a good motivation for me. I just had to drive to New England.
Korre: You’re listening to a lot of Dead at this point in time and you’re being exposed to this new to you band, Max Creek. What were you seeing as far as the similarities or the differences that stuck out to you in the mid to late ’80s?
Fred: Max Creek was just more hard driving. It just had more verve behind — I guess a younger energy. Just a little more enthusiasm towards the whole thing. And it was fun. They used to play after Dead shows, like at the Hartford Civic Center. They used to play at this place called Dagney’s. So it was within walking distance. You could walk over and see Max Creek after the Dead played, which was just awesome. They would do that a lot.
Korre: So you’re seeing them when you can, because you’re in Philadelphia. So, maybe not as often as you want to, but you’re getting a chance to see them. How did that change over the next maybe 5 or 10 years? Were you seeing them more? How did you get a chance to expose yourself to more Creek?
Fred: Yeah, well I just started to go see them and just showing up, like, “Hey. What’s up?” We would see them in New England and it would be like, “Oh, we’re playing in upstate New York next weekend — Rochester and Syracuse. You should definitely come check us out there. Those people are crazy.” So then we started doing those weekends, like the upstate New York runs. Then some of those two nighters at the old Warehouse in Rochester, people would scream at the top of their lungs, but nobody would clap because they’d all be holding two beers.
Korre: Well, I understand that you, over the years, have developed a pretty strong friendship with Scott Murawski. Can you tell me about that relationship and maybe where that comes from or what strengthens that relationship?
Fred: It’s hard to really say. We just clicked. We just made each other laugh. He would invite me to come to his house. I started coming to his house on weekends when there wasn’t Creek shows. We would stay over at his house, my ex-wife and myself. We would stay at his house quite a bit. They would be playing a show somewhere in Massachusetts or whatever and we’d go there between shows. Some nights, depending on which direction it was and how tired we were, we would either go back to his house after the show or just drive home. But most times we didn’t drive home. It was a pretty good clip back here — usually at least five hours. So that was tough to do at two in the morning.
And we started doing a lot of recording together. And then my buddy Peter Wroblewski and him were pretty good friends, too. So we helped him right around 1996 — helped him put that Scottness record together. He had all these other songs that he wasn’t playing with Creek that were just sitting there. And we were like, “You should really do something with this stuff. This is some good stuff.” And so he did.
Korre: How did that come about?
Fred: Pete threw it out there one day, like, “Hey, why don’t you come to my house and record your record? You have these songs.” And, Pete threw it out there a couple times. And then one day Scott said, “Are you serious about that?” And he was like, “Yeah.” So him and Scott Allshouse came to Peter’s house in Harleysville, Pennsylvania — where it was at the time. Stormfield — it was on Stormfield Road. That’s why it’s called Stormfield. Stormfield sessions. They recorded in the basement. We put up deadening insulation and we had a buddy of ours who was in the sound industry come in and fire a blank gun and record how loud it was in this part of the room compared to that part of the room and where the drums should go. We did the whole thing and we recorded it on ADAT.
So we had the whole thing set up in the basement and we ran all the wires upstairs to the living room and listened through headphones up there. We had a microphone so we could talk down to them. So that was about a five-day event, recording all that stuff. And then it sat. Scott Allshouse had the masters. We did a rough mix at the very end of the sessions, just so we all had something to listen to. And luckily I backed up everything on DAT. Scott Allshouse had those masters and his house burned down on Christmas Eve and the masters with it. So that’s why the cover of the Stormfield CD is just a burned up reel-to-reel. My buddy Mark did the cover and he took a blow torch to an old reel-to-real tape he had — and that’s the cover.
Korre: At that point in time in your life, were you playing music or how did you know how to even help?
Fred: No, I wasn’t.
Korre: Were you just curious and that’s all you needed?
Fred: I was a taper at the time and a quasi-soundman. And as the years went on, after I got divorced, I decided to take up guitar. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do. And when I was a kid, I always played guitar. And Scott was always after me. “Dude, you should play guitar. You should play. You could do it. I can tell you could do it.” And I was always like, “Nah.” I’d always just kind of poo poo it or whatever. And then after I got divorced, I had this guitar. So I started playing it. And then I started playing it five hours a day. And I just went from there. I had to stop doing that because I stopped taking out the trash. I would literally go to work, come home and play the guitar until it was time to go to bed. Wake up in the morning, play guitar, go to work, come home — I just got into that. I used to play the guitar until my fingers bled. Because I wanted to be good. It was like I was on a mission to do it. So, now it’s 22 years later.
Korre: Staying in the ’90s for a second, I just had the opportunity recently to listen to Scott Murawski’s interview on a podcast. And he talked about turning down H.O.R.D.E. tour in ’92. And I’m wondering, were you close to him or the band at that point in time?
Fred: Yes.
Korre: What do you think was going on at that point in time that led to that decision?
Fred: I’m not really sure. I was really mad. Like, why? It’s like the boat pulled up, but you just let it go. It didn’t make any sense to me. I’m still not sure about that one. I’m really not. It’s a head scratcher.
Korre: It’ll remain a mystery.
Fred: Yeah. I mean it just was like — baffled. Because I think that would’ve really put them on the map. Would they have been as popular as Phish? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. But that was definitely ground floor.
Korre: Were you listening to Phish back then?
Fred: No. I didn’t really get into Phish. I had seen them and it really wasn’t my thing. And then I started to get into them later, seeing them, and I was friends with their tour manager. So, if I wanted to go see them, it was pretty easy to do so. And it was before the level they are now. I went, I saw them a bunch and I just kind of fell off. Right around ’98, ’99, I was like, “Alright, I’m good with this band.” Things changed and for me, it just wasn’t for me anymore going to see them.
Korre: How do you think the Max Creek scene has changed from what you saw in the mid ’80s through the years?
Fred: It’s fluctuated a lot. It was really big and then the whole Phish thing happened and it sort of wasn’t as big. Everybody gravitated more towards that end of things. And they’ve really built it up quite a bit since then. It seems like they’ve gotten a lot more new people. And that’s really what you need is the younger folks. It seems they stay at this level of about 2,000 to 3,000 people they could draw at certain places. They could do that. So it’s always kind of been that way. But I think they were a little bigger in the ’80s, I would say.
Korre: Do you think in a way, because Max Creek has sort of been at that level, that sort of defines who they are and that’s what makes them special, too? Because for me, as a long-distance fan who had never seen this band, Fred, let me tell you what I imagined they were from Milwaukee. Listening to recordings on archive.org, I thought they were the biggest band in the world, right? Because I had no way to know. And then when I had the curiosity to lean into this and learn more and connect with people online, I started uncovering this history of the band. And that just made it even more fascinating to me — that this band isn’t as big as some of these others, but their level of playing and the music they produce is so incredible.
Fred: Absolutely. And nobody is better at dynamics than Max Creek. Nobody. I mean, I see a lot of bands, I work with a lot of bands. I’ve been in a bunch bands. And nobody, nobody, can touch them in my opinion as far as dynamics and just overall playing.
Korre: Recently I saw you at Camp Creek, last year and this past year, onstage supporting the bands live sound. Can you tell me what is your role in helping Max Creek produce that live sound and what do you do and how long have you been doing it?
Fred: Well, it’s a relatively new thing for me. That’s actually a pretty funny story. I’ve been a sound man for a long time and I’ve had my own sound business now for about 20 years. And I’ve been on my own for about four. I’ve made it a full-time job through the pandemic, somehow I managed to survive. I decided right before the pandemic to go full-time with this and the pandemic hit. But I survived it and so it’s all good in that respect. But summer of 2021, Creek were playing up in upstate New York at Oswego, somewhere up that way, an outside thing. Steve [DesJardins] — DJ, their sound man — couldn’t make it. He had COVID or something and [Mike] Maresca called me and he was like, “You want to do front of house or monitors? I said, “I’ll take front of house, thank you.” So, I was really excited. It was kind of a bucket-list moment for me to actually do front of house for Max Creek. Do the sound. So that was the first time.
And it was funny because John Rider didn’t know that I was doing front of house. And he was like, “What do you mean you did front of house for us tonight?” I’m like, “I did front of house for you tonight.” He’s like, “We need to have a conversation.” So apparently he didn’t have the monitor tech for Camp Creek. He hired Mike Deary thinking that Mike was a sound man and a stage manager. And he’s just a stage manager, which is a job within itself. And Maresca couldn’t make it. Maresca used to handle both jobs. So he was like, “I need a monitor tech.” I’m like, “I’m your man.” And I already knew the band and a lot of the other bands, so it was just a natural fit.
Korre: So for those of us who might not be close to this level of the business, tell me about a stage manager versus a monitor tech versus front of house. What roles do these three people have helping a band in a live environment?
Fred: That’s a good question, actually. Front of house is the person that sits out in the booth, out in the crowd — Steve, DJ — and mixes for the crowd. So that’s what you hear when you’re standing out in the crowd. That’s the awesome, well should be awesome, sound that you hear out in the crowd. The monitor tech, that’s what I did — it controls all the monitors for all the mixes for all the individual musicians that are on the stage. Some of them have in-ears, some of them have a wedge, some have both. So you control that. They tell you what they need and you control that. And a stage manager does all the coordinating, making sure everyone gets on on time, off on time, where the cars get parked, who to talk to about getting food, making sure everyone’s fed, making sure everything is copacetic is pretty much what the stage manager does.
Korre: And you mentioned that you’ve been in the sound business on your own for a little while. What’s the hardest part of that job for you? What’s the most stressful thing that can happen to you when you’re out at a venue and something goes wrong?
Fred: The most stressful thing that can happen is when something works and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. Where you’re like, this should work. And 90% of the time it’s always something stupid that you’re not seeing or somebody else did something by accident. “Oh, I plugged this in here instead of there.” That kind of thing. Mispatching stuff. Musicians not showing up on time for sound check and then getting upset that they can’t hear themselves perfectly the way they wanted to. It’s like, “Well dude. If you were here for sound check, I could have probably helped you out a little more.”
Korre: You had mentioned earlier that you were a taper, you were taping Grateful Dead back in the day. Were you also taping Creek?
Fred: Yes. Oh yeah. To this day, anything I go to, for the most part, I make sure that I’m either recording or it is being recorded.
Korre: Why is that? What is it about you that wants to do that?
Fred: I think it’s an addiction at this point. It’s just one of those things. It’s like, this is forever, you know? And you just never know when the music is going to just be awesome. And you can guarantee if it’s not being taped, that moment will happen. Like Murawski said it the best, “The music knows.” He’s like, “Fred, just turn it off man. Just turn it off. It’ll be the best show ever.” I’m like, “I can’t do it.”
Korre: You’ve been around the band for a while now. What are some of the shows that stand out in your mind when you think back to all the years that you’ve seen Creek?
Fred: Well, just off the top of my head, Sterling Stage 2019. Those two shows, that second night, a lot of people left because of the rain. And, the band made sure that they regretted leaving. It just kept raining harder and harder and harder. And the band just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter. And they were pulling out tunes that they only play like once every five years to once a year kind of thing. And they just were killing it. And the people that were there were psyched. We didn’t care that we were wet. They were killing it. I mean, “Water? Nah. We’re gonna make that steam.” In the last 10 years, that second night at Sterling was one of the best I’ve seen — most solid Max Creek show in a long time, especially the second set.
And then going back, like there was one Camp Creek that comes to mind, had to be somewhere around ’98, I want to say. There used to be this band, Sassagrass, that Creek were friends with. They were like a bluegrass band from Syracuse. I can’t remember the banjo player’s name, but he used to sit in with Creek all the time. And they did this thing where Sassagrass played first and then one by one, each Creek member came out with an acoustic instrument and joined Sassagrass. And suddenly it was everybody — all of Sassagrass and then all of Creek. And then the Sassagrass players all left one at a time until it was just Creek acoustic. And that was the first set of the first night of Camp Creek. And that was probably about three hours long because the one set just rolled right into the other. So that was really amazing. And then the second set, they did just no guests, just the Creek electric. And they did like a four-and-a-half-hour set. It was like, the Creek were just punching. Whack, whack —knocking people out. Whack. I mean the crowd was just dropping. There was only a few of us left by the end. They played until well after one o’clock in the morning. It was amazing.
One of my favorite places to Max Creek was also one of the most sketch places. It was this place called Woody’s Roadhouse. And the guy that owned it, his name was Woody, and it was in Washington, Massachusetts, out near Bucksteep. It was this old roadhouse in the middle of absolutely nowhere. And I remember one night they had a direct line from the telephone pole into the place, an electrical line, so that they were like stealing electricity. And it was somehow wired into the electrical box. And Linda [Cournoyer], their old light girl was like, “Hey, this isn’t cool, Woody. I can’t really do anything with this.” And Woody was like, “All right, look out.” And he goes into the box and whoosh — shoots him across the room, literally threw him across the room. And it was just like, “Wow. Did that just happen?” There weren’t very many people there for that one. I think it was me and it might have been [John] Archer was still the sound guy at that point, but I had gotten there really early just for whatever reason, and I happened to see that. That’s definitely not something that you see every day. That place was something else though. Woody’s Roadhouse, there was something about that room where they just absolutely killed it every time. It was a hard ride. It was in the middle of nowhere. There was not even a last chance gas station type of thing. But you knew you were going to see some serious shit if you went there. They did one New Year’s show there and it was awesome.
Korre: What are some of the creek tunes that you hear that it doesn’t matter how many times you hear them, you’re so glad you’re listening to it because they’re just your favorite songs?
Fred: It’s funny, people are going to laugh, but there’s so many that they play all the time that I just love. Like Dark Water, I could hear that every night. Mama Are You Ready, Scott doesn’t play that a lot, but that’s always one when he asks me what I want to hear, it’s usually that or Emerald Eyes, any of those. Fire and Brimstone is probably my favorite Mark song. Summer Sun, the list goes on. Like there’s not too many that I don’t like. I love the originals. Love the covers. Love what they’ve done with some of these new Dylan covers, the Paul Simon covers that Mark does. I love it all. But yeah, there’s certain ones like Burgers and Fries — that’s one they don’t play very often. I love hearing that one.
Korre: Why do you think this band has been able to stay together for so long? I mean, in the music industry bands don’t stay together for 51 years. That doesn’t happen.
Fred: That’s true. And well, they just do it on their own terms. They do it their way. They’ve been doing it together long enough and there’s no real pressure as far as touring and they do weekends. So it’s very humane as far as that’s concerned. Because touring can definitely get tedious if you’re doing like a six-week tour or something. Especially at their age, it definitely doesn’t get easier. Like Phil Lesh does residencies now. He’ll play like eight nights, one spot — Capital Theater.
Korre: I have a question here from one of the fans of Hooked on Creek. He wants to know, how did you get the name Salty Dog on the old Max Creek forum?
Fred: Self-named. I gave it to myself. Everybody needed some kind of moniker, a nickname for the old Creek forum.
Korre: I’m not familiar with that because it doesn’t exist now. So, what was the Max Creek forum?
Fred: It was a flash in the pan for about two years between the years of like ’97, maybe three years, ’97 and 2000. And it was just a one page stream of consciousness of people typing stuff. There was no filtering. It was the old days of the internet. It wasn’t threaded, it was just somebody could answer a question that you asked and you’d have to scroll all the way back. So, that was what the old Creek forum was. It started off so cool. And it ended up getting nasty just like everything else does on the internet. It was fun for about a year and a half. It was really fun.
Korre: You’ve said that you’ve gotten to know the band members over the years. I’m curious, is there something you know about Max Creek or any of the band members that you don’t think many other people know? And if so, what is that? Because I want to know more about this band and you’re close to them. Tell me something I don’t know about Max Creek.
Fred: Let me think. Well, John Rider is hilarious. He’s one of the funniest people you will ever meet. When you see John Rider play, it’s hard to get a bearing on him. He seems so serious and so focused. And I always avoided him because I didn’t want to bother him. And then when I got to know him, I was really surprised. He tackled me one day. We were in a hotel room after a New Year’s show or something and he said something. He came in our room and I was sitting on the bed and I laughed. And at that point we hadn’t said more than maybe 20 words to each other. And we’d known each other for about 10 years at that point. And he stops and he goes, “I made Fred laugh. I’ve waited 10 years to make you laugh.” And then he runs and just tackled me. We’ve been great friends ever since.
Let’s see. Scott loves Star Trek and Star Wars and that’s another thing. We’re both nerds as far as that’s concerned. We’re always, “Hey, did you see the new She-Hulk?” We talk about that. Scott and I actually Snapchat like little girls, send each other pictures, goofy pictures, every day. We’ve done it now for like almost 200 days. And if one of us forgets, we’ll text the other one, “Dude, our streak.” At this point, it’s just a thing to see how long we can go.
And Mark Mercer, I guess you guys already know this, but he plays in a church thing every Sunday. It reminds me of that King of the Hill where you rock out on Saturday night and on Sunday you go to church and ask for forgiveness. So he’s been doing that a long time. And then the two new guys — I call them the new guys and they both have been in the band for 15 years. I know Bill and Jay pretty well, but I don’t really hang with them like I do the other guys.
Korre: When you go to a Creek show now, what do you look forward to most? Is it interacting with the band? Is it being in the crowd? Is it the music or is it everything?
Fred: Well, now it’s different because when I go to Creek shows now, I pretty much work for the band. I’ve been helping out as much as I can. When it was their 50th year, I put my foot down and I said, “You guys really need to multitrack every one of these shows. It’s your 50th year. There’s not a lot of bands that are around that long.” So they couldn’t disagree. And I said, “It’s really easy to do now with all these rooms you guys are playing and all the soundboards have the capability to do it. I just need to come in with a laptop.” So, the thing I look forward to the most, I guess is just getting there, getting everything set up and just hanging out with those guys and catching up. Before the show a lot of times is some of my favorite times. After sound check when everyone’s like hanging out and just chilling — that’s just a nice feeling. And then after the show, like “Yeah, we did it all right.”
Korre: Now, I noticed you said that you multitrack recorded a bunch of shows, are those going to be released in any formal way or are they just for your own private collection?
Fred: My own private collection, no. The plan is to try to release something. It remains to be seen exactly what that’s going to be. Whether it’s a whole show or like best of or both. I just was like, we have the technology. Let’s use it.
Korre: I understand you’re also a big fan of the band Ween. Have you ever requested that Max Creek or Scott cover a Ween tune?
Fred: You know, I never have. I should because Scott’s a Ween fan.
Korre: Oh, is he?
Fred: He enjoys — well come on, they can’t be denied.
Korre: Well, I saw Ween. I don’t know much about Ween, I’ll be honest with you, but I did see Ween in 2002 at the very first Bonnaroo Music Festival down in Tennessee. Drove down there and experienced the whole thing. I knew of Ween from my college days a little bit. I thought it was a great show and I have paid a little bit of attention to them over the years, but I think you’re all in.
Fred: Yeah.
Korre: Tell me about your love of Ween if you can in a short amount of time.
Fred: Sure. Well, it’s interesting. I went to see Ween back in 1989 and I thought they were terrible and I ended up leaving the show and going to see Greg Allman. So, then I never thought about them again until around ’98. My buddy Peter Wroblewski was like, “Ween this. Ween. Ween. Ween.” I’m like, “Dude, what’s all this Ween stuff? I saw those guys 10 years ago, they were terrible.” And he goes, “Oh yeah, listen to this.” And he put on A Tear for Eddie and I was like, “That is not the band that I saw. What the hell is this?” So, I’m like, “Give me all your records.” Same thing, sort of like with Max Creek. Like, “Give me everything you got.” It’s like, “These guys are from New Hope?” That’s 20 minutes from here. This is amazing. When did they become a band? They were two guys playing along to a drum machine or something when I saw them. They were funny, but I didn’t think that musically it was anything that interested me. A lot of screaming is what I remember. And then it was like, wow. They got a full band now.
They used to play John & Peter’s all the time, which is where I work every Wednesday night. I’m kind of the official/unofficial house guy there. It was just this band like playing this small room and just singing all these crazy songs about waving their dicks in the wind and all this other stuff. And then they play Stella Blue by the Grateful Dead. And it was like, “Wait a minute, are they really going to play Stella Blue?” And they killed it. And then the guy I play with, Bill Fowler, that’s where I first met him, they pulled him up out of the crowd. It was his birthday and they got him to play the lead on Stella Blue. And I was like, “What?” And then they went into a song called Let Me Lick Your Pussy. And I turned to my buddy Pete and I said, “This is my new favorite band.” So that’s pretty much my introduction to Ween in a nutshell. And then I became friends with those guys over the years because they’re all from the area. They all had their side projects and I ended up just getting to know all of them.
And Chris Harford played with all those guys. I knew all the JRAD guys before they were in JRAD. They all played with Harford. Like Joe Russo. Dave Dreiwitz is the bass player for Ween and JRAD. And then, Scott Metzger. I’ve known him since he was like 18. He used to play John & Peter’s with Chris Harford and his other band F-Hole and Rana. I’ve known these guys. They’re just dudes from up the street and they weren’t Deadheads. And the fact that they are playing in a Dead band is hilarious to me.
Korre: As I hear you talk about all of this, I can’t help but think — it sounds like music has shaped your life in so many ways.
Fred: Completely.
Korre: Your profession, your hobbies, your friends, your interests. Did you think when you were 15, that this would be so defining of who you would be as an adult? Or at 15, you didn’t know what you wanted to do.
Fred: No. I knew I wasn’t set up for an ordinary life. I knew that I was different very early on. I knew I was different. But it took me a long time. It really took me a long time to get the courage to actually go out on my own. It took me getting laid off from a job that I really wasn’t into. And that’s when I was like, “You know what? I’m going to take this opportunity. I’m going to take the leap.” And that was almost five years ago.
Korre: Fred Moore, thank you so much for joining me on Hooked on Creek.
Fred: Oh yeah, Korre. Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun.
All right, that concludes my interview with Fred Moore. But now stay tuned because coming up next I am going to play a couple tunes from that second set at Sterling Stage in 2019 that Fred mentioned during our conversation. But first, if you are curious, during the introduction to this episode I played a portion of Max Creek’s performance of Dark Water with Billy Constable from Sassagrass on banjo, recorded live during Camp Creek at Indian Lookout Country Club in Mariaville, New York, back on July 31, 1999. This is another one of the memorable shows Fred mentioned in our conversation.
OK, now hold on tight, because this is Max Creek performing Burgers and Fries into The Other One live at Sterling Stage in Sterling, New York, on September 1, 2019.
That concludes episode 42 of Hooked on Creek. Huge thanks to Fred Moore for joining me on the podcast. It was a lot of fun talking with Fred about his love of Max Creek. And big thanks to you for listening. If you have feedback about this episode, head over to the Hooked on Creek website at hookedoncreek.com and click to the contact link to send me a message. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for tuning in!