Episode 48 of Hooked on Creek features my conversation with Peter Hurley. Peter is a huge fan of Max Creek and has been part of the Creek scene since 1978.
In this episode, Peter talks about what it was like seeing Max Creek in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He also talks about seeing Max Creek perform at different venues during that time period, as well as his experiences attending the first three Camp Creeks.
This episode also features the following live performances by Max Creek:
- Fire & Brimstone performed December 31, 1981, at Cell Block Eleven in Hartford, Connecticut
- High Flying Bird performed November 25, 1978, at Mad Murphy’s in Hartford, Connecticut
- Rainbow performed January 7, 1982, at the Great American Music Hall in New Haven, Connecticut
- Emerald Eyes performed December 17, 2022, at The Met in Pawtucket, Rhode Island
- Devil’s Heart > The Field > Signature performed July 27, 1978, at the Shaboo Inn in Willimantic, Connecticut
Transcript of episode 48
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 48.
Thank you for joining me on episode 48 of Hooked on Creek. If you love digging into the history of Max Creek, then I think you are really going to enjoy this episode. Coming up, I am going to share a recent conversation I had with Peter Hurley. Peter is a huge fan of Max Creek and he has been part of the Creek scene since 1978.
In this episode, Peter talks about what it was like seeing Max Creek in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He also talks about seeing the band perform at venues like Mad Murphy’s and the Shaboo Inn during that time period, as well as his experiences attending the first three Camp Creeks. Peter covers a lot of interesting topics in our conversation, so I am really excited to share this episode with you.
But first, I want to quickly acknowledge I had a great time seeing Mike Gordon with Scott Murawski in Chicago on June 24th and 25th of this year. Both shows were incredible. On Sunday night, Scott invited me backstage to hang out with the band between the first and second sets. And then after that Sunday show, I got another opportunity to go backstage with the band. That night, Scott introduced me to Mike Gordon and we chatted about my podcast. Later that night, Scott and his wife also brought me on the tour bus to hang out.
Scott really went out of his way to make the experience extra special for me. So, huge thanks to Scott. I had a great time. And, I highly recommend you check out Mike Gordon’s new album Flying Games. It’s really good.
OK, now back to today’s episode. In the episode show notes, you will find links to the music featured in this episode, and if you head over to hookedoncreek.com you can read a full transcript of my conversation with Peter. Alright, now let’s get started.
Korre: Peter Hurley, welcome to Hooked on Creek.
Peter: Well, thanks for having me, Korre.
Korre: Peter, I understand you’ve been listening to Max Creek for quite a long time. How long have you been a fan of Max Creek?
Peter: Pretty much since 1978. So 45 years, I guess.
Korre: Talk to me about what it was like to see Max Creek back in 1978.
Peter: The first time we saw them, we had been at a Grateful Dead concert three weeks before. We were out waiting for the gates to open at 3:00 AM outside the Giants stadium, and there was a tape playing. I just heard the music and it was like, “Oh, what’s this?” You know? My friend told me. He said, “We got to go see these guys.” And we went and saw them.
The big difference between them and everything else that was out there — they were all southern rock bands, almost all of them, or they were hard rock bands. And then we come in and we’re like, “Wow, a great piano player, a female singer.” We were just blown away by the whole thing. And, it continued. I went up with like one friend the first time and by about a couple months later, we were going with a crew — a couple carloads. And that continued for a couple years, so that was really fun.
Korre: So you were already a Deadhead in 1978?
Peter: I started following the Grateful Dead in ’76. I used to listen to my brother’s albums going back as far as ’73 or ’74. I was into the music for a long time and this style of music as well. I just thought it to be very different and it kind of spoke to me — just the whole free flowing nature of the concerts as well as a lot of bands, even back then, you go see them two nights in a bar and you’re going to see the same songs.
Max Creek back then they would do two nights. They’d start at like 10:15, 10:30. They would play until 2:45 in the morning. And so they would do six-plus hours of music over two nights. They had to have a lot of songs to play. And they’d play three sets. They were young. We were young. And the energy level of these things was crazy. And some of the places we were in were really tightly packed, as well. But it was just all fun.
Korre: If you don’t mind me asking, how old were you roughly in 1978?
Peter: I was 19.
Korre: So you’re a teenager. You’re seeing the Grateful Dead. You’re going to a show. You overhear somebody playing some music that sounds pretty good to you, and you find out it’s Max Creek.
Peter: Yeah, exactly.
Korre: So in 1978, Amy’s in the band. You end up going to one of these Creek shows. Were they covering the Grateful Dead?
Peter: Yeah, that was the thing. And there was, I guess, a little general criticism because OK, they had their own music. But like I was saying, they would play six-hours plus music and if they play a different song for two nights, that’s six hours worth of different songs. Yeah, they mixed it in.
But the other thing was when we first started seeing them, they also covered a lot of other bands. Amy didn’t sing any Grateful Dead songs, for instance. She sang Bonnie Raitt, she sang Grace Slick, she sang Joni Mitchell and a couple other women singers whose names I don’t remember now. But the styles of her songs were very different than what everybody else played.
And they also had five people who sang at that point. So you never ever knew what was coming. As it has been for probably quite a while, it’s usually John, Scott, Mark — one of the orders and they rotate. But when they had five fingers, you never know what was coming next. And that was kind of fun. It was always kind of a surprise. And then a couple years into seeing them, I started dating the girl in the band. After I started seeing Amy, I was in the dressing room. And after a few months, I stopped being in there when they were making the set list because I didn’t want to know. I liked being surprised, so that was fun, too.
Korre: What venues are you seeing the band at this point in time? Where are you?
Peter: OK. Shaboo Inn was the first place we went. Mad Murphy’s in Hartford was basically their home base. It was a very small place — capacity maybe 150. There would be 400 people in there. You’d sit on windowsills, you’d stand on tables. Yeah, it was a party for sure.
Korre: So Creek is drawing this crowd in, or are these people who just happened to stumble across them?
Peter: This is my opinion, somebody else may have a different opinion, but I would say 90% of the people that were at these shows were there to see them if it was in a club. I mean, if it was outdoors somewhere and there was something else going on — something like they were playing at like at UConn or someplace where they might be more in a public place where it was not like you just come there to see that — but I would say in a bar, yeah, you’d have to be really into Max Creek to even be inside some of these places. Because yeah, it was crazy. Yeah.
And the other thing was, at that point — I mean especially after 1980 — I met a whole bunch of more people. I met the band and everybody knew me. For a few years there that’s what it was like, when they played in Hartford anyways. I grew up in Simsbury, where some of the people in the band have lived in the past. A lot of people have lived in Farmington Valley here — John Rider lives here. In this town I live in Granby, Amy lives here now. Some of the other members have lived in Simsbury and Granby and some of them still live around here. Simsbury was almost like a home base for them and then they’d play in Hartford. Yeah, it was a fun time.
Creek is playing and the great thing was, they’d always be in Connecticut for at least for a couple shows. They’d play somewhere for two nights. So it’d be like, OK, one weekend they be somewhere else and then they’d be back in Connecticut. So you could always go see them. And that was the great fun of it.
Korre: Well, take me back to the late 70s, early 80s. What is the band like? Because it sounds like you had some chances to interact with the band or meet the band.
Peter: This is just a very general description, I won’t get too personal. Like the dressing room scene was basically kind of silly. A lot of people cracking jokes. I wouldn’t say they weren’t taking it seriously, but they were just like — because when they got on stage, it was serious. They played great. But they weren’t like intense. They were just so comfortable in what they were doing. And they were so comfortable that the crowd would love it. They were very relaxed as from what I pretty much noticed.
But it was all very fun. Everybody in the band enjoyed it at that point. Because they were all young and nobody had kids yet and stuff like that, which kind of changes things as well. So it was just a bunch of pretty young guys playing music all the time, and then all their friends and then now all their friends. And they have a huge following in Providence.
But it was Hartford and New Haven. There’s a venue in New Haven called Great American Music Hall. And it was just like the perfect site. It had a relatively high ceiling. There was rafters and stuff, but it wasn’t like some of the places they played were the ceiling was really low. The Shaboo Inn had a 10-foot ceiling and they had national acts there for years, but it was at a 10-foot ceiling. So that was kind of claustrophobic. But this place was beautiful. It was close. And I’d drive, I was working second shift, I dropped my friends off. We would go, we went every time they played there for God. I mean, probably a year and a half, like every single time. That was one of her favorites there.
Korre: Max Creek released their debut album in 1977. 1980 they had Rainbow come out. 1982, Drink the Stars. Did you get a sense that the band was really at that point trying to make something out of it?
Peter: I know things, I just don’t feel comfortable talking about it because I think it’s a touchy subject. You know, people ask the question, “Why didn’t they ever do this? Why didn’t they ever do that?” And the way I look at it is, well if they had, we wouldn’t be able to see them all the time. What they’ve been doing is they’ve been making music here for 50-plus years — the three front guys anyways. And they’ve been a huge part of people’s lives at different times in their lives, and for most of mine, I met my ex-wife there. I met Amy there. I met a lot of people that I became involved in with Max Creek.
Korre: So Peter, if I were to see you at a Creek show, do you have a spot that you stand or you up front dancing?
Peter: Yeah, about three feet in front of John Rider. Even now, I connect with people that that’s why they go to shows. They go to shows to dance. And when the music is not playing, they’ll talk to people. That’s the main point. Nothing else matters. And there’s quite a few of us, actually. It’s the same people that were doing it back then. Some of these people are a little younger, like I met them in the mid 80s or late 80s, but they’re still doing it. And it’s not a big group, but it’s just people that have the same mindsets. It’s always great to see these people from way back when that are still doing what they were doing before. Like I said, it all started back then though. I did want to mention the Camp Creeks that they played in Maine. Talked to anybody about Camp Creek before?
Korre: Yeah.
Peter: Later on they moved it to upstate New York. But they had one in somebody’s backyard here in Granby, I want to say 1981 or ’82. And that was just playing in somebody’s backyard and they had woods and people just slept there. But then they went to this place up in Maine. It was on a farm. It wasn’t really a working farm, it was just these guys that were on the farm. But they had a big barn with no walls. So it was outside, but it was inside, you know what I’m saying — so if the weather was bad. The amount of people wasn’t that great. It wasn’t that big of a place, but it was magical.
We came out one year, I think it was ’84, we came out after the show. It was Labor Day weekend. It was 32 degrees out and the stars were like, there was millions of them. Because there’s no ground light up there at all. But that was another sort of a milestone when they did those first two Camp Creeks up there.
Korre: So you were at both of those first Camp Creeks?
Peter: Oh yeah. There was three of them. I was at the third one as well. But it was just a really magical place. It was out in the middle of nowhere, some farm. They did a lot of shows like that where they just they just play somewhere. It’s like, “Why are we in this place?” But there was magical things that happened at some of those shows.
Korre: Well, I’m curious, what are some of your favorite Max Creek songs?
Peter: OK, I kind of go sort of era by era a little bit. So early on, Devil’s Heart, for one. I sort of have to go by each member favorite one because otherwise it gets too long. But I would say John Rider’s, Devil’s Heart is one of the first songs I really liked by him. Wild Side. I’ll Always See Your Face. I like songs that sort of like groove as opposed to rock.
My favorite Scott songs are The Field, Heartbeat, Emerald Eyes. December 17th this year in Providence, Scott actually wished me happy birthday during the intro to that. That kind of made my year. He hadn’t seen me there in like 20 years. He said, “What are you doing here?” And I told him it’s my birthday. He goes, “Do you want me to wish you happy birthday?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And he’s like, “OK.” So he did. But he did it then, which was really special because that’s my favorite song he played all night.
And I like original songs by Mark. He doesn’t have that many original songs. I kind of like them all. Fire & Brimstone I think is my favorite that he wrote. Right now he’s a choir director, next town over in Simsbury. And he used to always play piano or organ in church on Sundays, even after being up until 3:00 a.m. playing shows.
Korre: Do you have a favorite Max Creek show that you’ve attended? You mentioned the Camp Creeks earlier on. Is there one show that really stands out in your memory as like, that was the one?
Peter: I have a couple. One of them was, there was a state-owned beach called Hammonasset State Park. It’s a big summer destination. One Tuesday afternoon they opened up the beach for free because usually it cost like 10 bucks to park there or whatever. They had a Bruce Springsteen cover band, Max Creek and a three-guy metal cover band — they played just basically heavy metal songs. And there was 40,000 people there.
Korre: Wow.
Peter: I think the other one would be probably the first time I ever met Amy. It was in 1979, maybe it was 80, before I started seeing her. Somewhere in there. It was an outdoor show at the University of Connecticut. And they did this opening, they’d play one song into another and then back into the same song, that kind of thing. And that whole show was just like really — I remember that show a lot.
And there was one more, they played at a place called Connecticut College, which is in New London, Connecticut, which is right around where I used to live down there. And it was Rob Fried’s first show. And I had known Rob Fried since I was like 12. Him and my older brother were best friends in high school. He’d been in my house. I’d seen him at other places. So that was really cool. And that was also a really fun show because we got so many people that like lived around where we lived that would never like go anywhere to see Max Creek, but they would drive to New London, which is like 10 minutes away. But we got to introduce like 30, 40 people to Max Creek. And then a bunch of them started seeing him as well. So that was really a cool thing.
Korre: Well, talk to me about Rob Fried. I never got a chance to see the band with Rob Fried. What was it like to see him perform in Max Creek?
Peter: Well, he did have a neurological condition that really deterred him much later on. But back then, if you got bored at a show, you could just watch him. He made faces. He was always chewing gum really fast. And he played with a lot of toys. It wasn’t just drums. It was triangles. He had a water whistle, cowbell, — any kind of hand percussion instrument you can think of. And on some of the earlier tapes and on the albums, you can hear him doing that.
And the other thing was he had so much stuff. He’d have like a little tiny space and he’d want to set up 30 things, literally, like all these stands of all this stuff. Like you can’t do that. If he had enough space, you wouldn’t have believed the amount of things he would bring with him. He’d just pack his VW bus. He didn’t have a drum kit either. There were certain shows. But like at Camp Creek they had a drum kit. At that day, they’d also have guest drummers, people come out and play the other drum stuff. He played a drum kit once in a while, but he just had an immense amount of stuff. His whole house was full of it.
Korre: So you’ve had an opportunity to see all of the drummers, I would imagine. Any reflections on how different drummers brought different things to the band over the years?
Peter: I think the best they sounded was when they had two drummers, when it was Scott Allshouse and Greg Vasso — two vastly different drummers. Scott went to Berkeley School of Music in Boston, which is where you wouldn’t believe how many musicians have gone there. Tedeschi Trucks is a perfect example. They both were going, that’s where they met. But there’s a ton of people that went there.
So he went to Berkeley, but he also went to Berkeley to be a sound engineer. And actually in the early days when he was in the band, he couldn’t work Labor Day weekend for two weeks because he was doing sound at the US Open in New York City, the tennis tournament. But Greg Vasso, he’s a Connecticut guy. He was more of a, I’m paraphrasing here, coming from maybe more of like a garage band kind of a thing. Like he was playing drums probably when he was really young. He never went to a music college. But he had that like really solid rock drum beat.
So you had this kind of jazzy guy with this guy and it was a really nice mix and they just sounded so great together. They really did. To me, that was the best.
Korre: Peter, are you a musician? Do you play music yourself?
Peter: Amateur. I play at open mics. I do play the guitar a lot. When I was younger, I didn’t play for a real long time. And then, I started playing again maybe two years ago. And then a friend of mine made me do her open mic one time. And I started doing it other places. And, it is almost tolerable for people now.
Korre: Peter, what role does music have in your life?
Peter: Live music is all important. I don’t listen to a lot of recorded music for the simple reason, basically at this point that I’d have to choose — what am I going to listen to? If you go out and see live music, you know what songs they are going to play at some point, but you don’t what you’re going to hear. And to me that’s what I really enjoy.
It is very important. It’s also not just the music itself, it’s the stories that are in the music. Not the stories about going to shows. A lot of the lyrics to a lot of the music I listen to it, it means a lot to me, as well. I can relate to things. And with Max Creek, it’s like sometimes I know what that song was about, which is kind of cool, as well.
In sort of a closing thing, it’s like the thing that I haven’t really talked about is the importance of having this kind of music to be able to go out and see from a personal perspective, from a psychological perspective to an extent. You know, you had a bad week and you need to go out and these guys never, ever disappointed. You always got what you wanted to get when you went there. You always wanted to be cheered up or whatever you needed to get from it, from the music that night, you always got it. I don’t other people feel like that, but that’s why I still do it because I still get it after all these years.
Korre: Peter Hurley, it’s been so great talking with you. Thank you for joining me on Hooked On Creek.
Peter: I really appreciate, it was fun to rehash the past.
Big thanks to Peter Hurley for joining me on the podcast. I really enjoyed his stories about Max Creek and learning about his appreciation for the band over the years. So now to round things off, let’s listen to a Max Creek live recording that dates back to 1978, the year Peter started going to Creek shows.
This is Max Creek performing Devil’s Heart into The Field into Signature live at the Shaboo Inn in Willimantic, Connecticut, on July 27, 1978.
That concludes episode 48 of Hooked on Creek. Again, huge thanks to Peter Hurley for coming on the podcast. If you’re curious, during the introduction to this episode, I played a portion of Fire & Brimstone performed live by Max Creek at Cell Block Eleven on December 31, 1981, in Hartford, Connecticut. And during my conversation with Peter, I played a portion of High Flying Bird performed live by Max Creek back on November 25, 1978, at Mad Murphy’s in Hartford, Connecticut. I played a portion of Rainbow performed live by Max Creek at the Great American Music Hall in New Haven, Connecticut, back on January 7, 1982, and I also played a portion of Emerald Eyes performed live by Max Creek just last year on December 17 at The Met in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
You can find links to stream or download all the music featured in this episode in the show notes or on the Hooked on Creek website at hookedoncreek.com. And while you’re on the website, go ahead and click the contact link and let me know what you think of this podcast. I would love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in!