In episode 53 of Hooked on Creek, I talk with Bill Hoy. Bill is a huge fan of Max Creek and a taper who has recorded the band’s live performances for many years.
Bill talks about his experiences recording live Max Creek performances, the incredible community that supports the band, the rewards of recording live music and the importance of preserving the band’s legacy.
This episode features the following songs performed live by Max Creek that were recorded by Bill Hoy:
- I Will Always See Your Face performed at The Living Room in Providence, Rhode Island, on May 7, 1994
- Dark Water performed at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, on April 13, 1994
- You Write the Book performed at The Met in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on April 22, 2022
Transcript of episode 53
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 53.
Welcome back to Hooked on Creek. I am glad you are here with me because I have an exciting show lined up for your ears. In this episode, I am joined by Bill Hoy, a dedicated fan and avid taper who has recorded many live performances of Max Creek over the years, capturing the magic of the band’s live shows for posterity.
In our conversation, Bill shares his journey from discovering the band in high school to becoming a key figure in the taping community. I think you will really enjoy our conversation because it offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of live music recording and the incredible sense of community that surrounds Max Creek.
As a reminder, you will find links to the music featured in this episode in the show notes, and if you head over to hookedoncreek.com you can read a full transcript of my conversation with Bill. Alright, now let’s get started.
Korre: Bill Hoy, welcome to Hooked on Creek.
Bill: Very glad to be here with you talking about Max Creek, a band I followed for many, many years. So glad to reach out to other people that are into the band and glad to talk to you.
Korre: Bill, you are a long-time fan of Max Creek and you’ve supported the community by taping live Max Creek shows over the years, so I’m curious to learn more about you and hear about your connections to Max Creek. So to begin our conversation, tell me where are you from and how did you first become a fan of Max Creek.
Bill: I am from Somerset, Massachusetts, and I first got into Max Creek senior year of high school. I had a friend that kind of introduced me to the Grateful Dead, Neil Young. At the time Phish was coming up. Phish was just starting, kind of local to Massachusetts, Vermont — so we were interested in Phish. And he suggested that we go see Max Creek. So I think at the time I was 17. My friend was 17.
We were able to get into the Living Room show maybe in the summer of ’90. A couple of weeks later we tried to go to a Channel show in Boston and that one we couldn’t get in because you had to be 18 and I think they were checking IDs. So I think after that we didn’t go to shows until I turned 18 in February of 1991. And once that happened, I could go to any 18 and older show, which most shows were
Korre: At that age, were you then trading Grateful Dead tapes or Phish tapes or CDs? How were you being exposed to some of this music?
Bill: Yes, it was mainly through Relix — the magazine, the jam band magazine — and through little ads in the back of that. The internet — 1990 there weren’t too many people on the internet. So it was mostly by ads and just meeting people at shows and as you mentioned, trading boxes of XLIIs, stuff like that.
Korre: Well, I understand that you then started to be a taper yourself. So talk about that transition from listening to tapes and trading tapes to wanting to get into doing it yourself. How did you gain that curiosity or that interest?
Bill: I was always interested in concerts, even back in the early ’80s when I used to have my dad drive me to shows. I think my first actual concert was Def Leppard in 1983. My father went with me, drove me to the Providence Civic Center — something I looked forward to for a very long time. As soon as you bought the ticket, sometimes you had five or six months to look forward to the show.
At the time, I used to swim at Brown University. Down the street from the swimming pool was Fair Street with four or five used music shops. Back in those days, college towns had a lot of record shops where students would come in and sell their records.
So, I was buying a lot of records and I want to say that around that time there was a record shop that was selling bootleg cassettes. So at the same time, I think I picked up a Rush live cassette and that was my first exposure to anything recorded with a microphone in the audience like that. And I was just blown away that that type of stuff exists. So, as soon as I heard that in the mid ’80s, I was like, “Ah, that’s what I want to do.”
When I go to shows, I want to make a recording and be able to walk out of there with a recording and have something to remember the show by. That was in the early ’80s. And then by the time I got to Max Creek in the summer of ’90, spring of 1991, yes, I had already started accumulating more professional taping equipment to do the job correctly, like the other guys were.
Korre: What was some of the equipment that you had access to or that you were using back in the early days?
Bill: So back in the early days, the basic tape deck was a Sony D5, kind of like a laptop-portable type recorder. And then along the same lines of that there was the Marantz PMD430 and then these smaller tape decks like a Sony D6 and a Sony D3, which would’ve been suitable for just patching out of somebody.
Korre: Well then talk to me about the first time you recorded a Max Creek show. How long after you first started seeing Max Creek did it take you to first start taping Max Creek?
Bill: As soon as I had turned 18, at my first show, I think. My birthday is February 26th, they were playing the 27th at the new Campus Club in Providence. So I showed up there on the 27th with my Marantz tape deck. I think at the time I had some fairly affordable Radio Shack mics, but as soon as I got in, I ran into a couple other guys. Greg Logan was a big taper at that time. Joe LeClair was another guy that was a great taper. I ran into those guys. They were both extremely friendly. They came in with more professional rigs and we all set up together and I ended up patching out of those guys.
Korre: The fans who show up to a Max Creek show who are taping, do you guys get to know each other and kind of learn from each other over the years? Or what is that like to have those relationships with other tapers at a Creek show?
Bill: Oh, absolutely. All great guys that you meet and it seems like tapers come into Max Creek and they might do a whole bunch of shows for several years. And like everything else, life moves on. You don’t get to go to as many shows as you used to. But yes, because people are taping the band night after night, you do become friendly with them and you get to know them and you look forward to hanging out with the same group of tapers every night. So I know those guys. Greg Logan still goes to shows even now, and we’re talking 30 some years ago, 34 years ago now.
So yes, definitely everybody at Max Creek is always friendly, down to the crew, the tapers, the non-tapers, everybody. And as much as it’s about going to a show and hearing the band and seeing the band, it’s about seeing friends and catching up with friends and continuing to tape with friends.
Korre: I’m going to ask you a question I’ve always wondered. So when you go into a venue, let’s say it’s Max Creek, where do you set up your microphone and how do you ensure, if it’s an audience recording, that there’s not somebody right next to you talking really loudly on your tape?
Bill: Yes. That’s always the challenge. Generally we would set up by the soundboard if the soundboard was in a good location to the stage, which they usually are for most of the more professional clubs that Max Creek plays. Sometimes there are clubs where the soundboard is shoved way in the back of the room and you’re very far away from the stage. But ideally, yeah, we used to always like to be at the soundboard not only for protection, but for what should be the best sound.
There were times where we would try to go closer, but you have to always trade off — you don’t want to plop down a whole bunch of mic stands and block everyone’s view or block the flow of traffic. So, it’s always a tradeoff between trying to make the best tape without being intrusive to the show and disturbing other people or making it so that the guy’s running the lights and the sound guy are looking through a bunch of mic stands at the stage. You don’t want that to happen.
Most of the time we set up at the soundboard and there’s enough of us, three or four people, where we can all kind of gather, protect the equipment and try to keep people from running through it or holding onto it as they’re falling over, things like that.
Korre: I wonder how many shows do you think you have taped of Max Creek? Do you have a count or do you have a guess?
Bill: Oh God. Maybe close to 150 or 200 or so over the years.
Korre: Wow. When you think back over those shows that you’ve taped, are there any that stand out to you as everything worked, like the music was spot on, the venue acoustics were great, the recording was good, and it’s just a really good version of what you’re able to do? Does anything stand out to you?
Bill: Most of the places they play are all very comfortable places. The band, they don’t do as many shows as they used to, so when they do do shows, I’m sure they’re picking places where they know they’re comfortable, the fans are comfortable. So we have a great time at The Met in Pawtucket. That’s always a good time there. There’s plenty of area for tapers, plenty of area for people. The tapes always sound good in there. There was a place, the Stafford Theater in Stafford Springs was always a good time. I would think most venues we’ve been at the past 10 or 15 years have all been comfortable and great and we’re able to make good tapes.
Korre: Do you think that Max Creek as a band on some level is aware that not only is this performance going to the audience live right now, the fans out there dancing along, but it’s also being recorded for history and maybe gets into their head a little bit at all? Or a band like Max Creek doesn’t worry about that?
Bill: That’s a good question. Yes. I’m not sure. I’d say the past 10 years we’ve concentrated on doing a lot of video. A lot of the nights we’ll do a live stream, and most of the nights the video will go up on YouTube, not too many days after the show. So I’m sure they’re aware that people are watching the video on YouTube. But yeah, I don’t think it bothers them or it certainly doesn’t make them nervous or cause them any worry. But I think they do realize that people are engaging with the music after the show and being able to see it, listen to it again and enjoy it again.
Korre: Fans of this podcast might know that I only know Max Creek because, Bill, somebody like you was out there taping and a community of fans did this for so many years, and then somebody like me on the other side of the country was able to just stumble across these recordings online. And it was so transformational for me as a fan of music to be able to consume it this way over such a long period of time with so much great material out there. And it just seems like it’s contributed to the band’s legacy and just the experience of Max Creek.
I’m wondering how you think about Max Creek from the perspective of all of this music that’s online and what it means to us as the fans?
Bill: First, I’m very glad to hear that someone other than myself is enjoying it. And as you’re not able to see shows, that’s your main way of connecting to the band. So that makes me very happy to hear, because I know I myself love the tapes and love being able to listen to a show and make great recordings that we can listen to in our headphones in our home. But yes, it’s good to know that other people are also enjoying it because we do have 50-plus years of recorded history, and it certainly gets overwhelming looking at the amount of tapes we still have in front of us to work on and the amount of tapes that are on Archive.
So, I do wonder sometimes, yes — are people enjoying these? I love preserving history, but is someone other than myself also enjoying this? So, I’m very glad to hear that that is true because yeah, it is important to me. But yeah, I wonder how many other people also find interest in joy in being able to look back on all this history?
Korre: Well, on behalf of every single music fan out there, I want to say thank you to you and every other taper out there that’s done this hard work. You have a different experience at the show because you are managing this recording and that is your sole attention during the show mainly, is that right? So, it’s work on your end and it’s very meaningful to us.
Bill: Oh yes. I do love it though. I enjoy recording, I enjoy doing the video. It does take a little bit of work and I mainly do the recording and I’ve got other people that are able to chop up the show, index it, document it, get it up on YouTube. So yes, thanks to those guys, too, that are able to process all the data and get it up on Archive. It takes a bunch of people, yes, doing work.
Korre: Bill, you’ve mentioned video a couple of times. Tell me more about what you’re doing to capture Max Creek on video.
Bill: Oh yeah. So video, like audio recording, is an excellent way to document the show. And back in the ’90s, good video equipment was very expensive. Even good video equipment didn’t always produce the best video. But now of course with iPhones and video technology improving vastly over the past 10, 15 years, good video equipment is very affordable and easily had. You can make great video, high-definition video, 4K video.
I think once YouTube came online, I think the band started embracing video as a way to gain exposure and reach people. I think along with that, the band started also allowing video. I think back in 2014, ’15, I started seeing more videos pop up and I said, “Oh yeah, as well as audio recording, I enjoy video, so can I participate in videoing Max Creek?” Yes, no problem, I could. And that’s when we started doing video.
I know the band appreciates video. I know Mike Maresca does a lot of video. He’s also working the show doing monitors, sound — so he can’t be attentive solely to a video camera, where if I’m there to videotape, yeah, I can follow the action and make a nice video that we can have at the end of the night.
Korre: Over the years, there’s been so many recordings of Max Creek. How many of them do you think are still sitting in boxes at people’s houses and they have yet to be posted on archive.org or shared and there’s just gold there, but we don’t know it yet?
Bill: That’s a good question. Yes, we are constantly on the lookout for tape collections. I probably think the ’90s through current time are probably fairly well documented. Once everything went digital, it got pretty easy to get data off DAT tapes and then get the data onto archive.org. But there are probably some gems out there, maybe from the late ’70s to the mid-’80s.
Again, people tape strong for four or five years and then they move on in their life. So as you mentioned, they have boxes of tapes and down in the basement they go. So yeah, that’s a good question. But yeah, I still believe there are quite a few good tapes out there to be had, to be found and documented and improved. We are always looking for if somebody recorded a show with an analog cassette, maybe that night there was also a guy there with a DAT and a different set of microphones.
So, we don’t mind having multiple versions of the same show. We don’t mind having soundboards and audience recordings that can be blended together to make different recordings. So yeah, I think there is still a lot that we can find out there.
Korre: One of the things I’ve enjoyed over the last few years is Max Creek, as a band, have released some of their live recordings, which has been great to have them professionally mixed and released by the band. I wonder, some of those band members, do they themselves have boxes of really great recordings of their work sitting somewhere and maybe they could release a couple more live shows? Wouldn’t that be great?
Bill: Yes. Oh absolutely. Yes. I think John Rider probably has a great collection of tapes. I don’t know what the other guys would have, probably their own stuff that they found interesting or shows that they wanted to keep for themselves. And there are many nights that were multi-tracked. So, I think as time goes on, it would be nice to hear some of those multi-tracked shows mixed down and professionally released.
So, yes. I know fans of the band, we all appreciate when they do take the time to release full shows for us, whether they be digitally or not so much cd, but sometimes they do vinyl these days or just a Bandcamp release.
Korre: Bill, I’m curious, what are some of the most memorable experiences you’ve had at a Max Creek show?
Bill: Just going to places like Rocky Point out in Warwick, Rhode Island. It was like an old amusement park and there was a big hall next to it where they used to hold shows in the fall and in the winter, and then they used to hold shows in the inside of the park. So Max Creek used to play many shows at that. I think it was called the Rocky Point Palladium. So many, many good times in that room. I think it has now all since been demolished. The amusement park is gone. I’m not sure what’s left, if it’s just a park nowadays, but anywhere that there was a concert is long gone there. So some of those shows bring back good memories of being in that area.
Korre: What are some of your favorite Max Creek songs?
Bill: Songs I like, You Write the Book — probably because that’s one of the first songs I think I heard when I was taping, probably the first song they played that night on February 27th. So that’s one of my favorites. Hard Love. A lot of the John Rider tunes are great — LFS, Dark Water, I Will Always See Your Face. But yeah, there’s so many. What are some of yours? Let’s see if we can sync up on anything.
Korre: Well, I love The Field. That one just always gets me every time. I go into a dreamlike trance every time I hear The Field.
Bill: Oh, a great jam at the end of The Field. Yes,.
Korre: I love Cruel World, Said and Done, Fire & Brimstone, Devil’s Heart, The Seven. Oh, I have been listening to The Seven over and over again, partly because I’m trying to get the lyrics to put on the website and there’s a couple spots in The Seven that I’m not a 100 percent sure on. But that song, I don’t know what you think of The Seven, but it feels like prog rock almost. There is something about it that is just so different and cool and unique and I just love it.
Bill: Yes, and it’s not played that often these days.
Korre: Right.
Bill: Yes, you’re right. How about Heartbeat? Are you familiar with Heartbeat?
Korre: Yeah. I love that one.
Bill: Great jam on that. Yep. And they did that a weeks ago, a couple months ago, I think. Yeah, doesn’t get played that often.
Korre: Well, I’m wondering, have you had a chance to meet the band or interact with the band, and if so, what was that like? I’m not sure how close to the band you are or not.
Bill: That’s a funny thing. I have not had that many interactions with the band. Probably Bill Carbone is the one I’ve talked to the most. We’ve tried to get a few live projects out and he likes record collecting. We talk about record collecting. Other than that, I haven’t chatted with the band that much over the years.
I mostly hang out at shows with Mike Maresca, setting up video, talking about video, talking about shows and the tapers. Yeah, I would love to hear their thoughts on taping and what they think it all means. I think it would be interesting to kind of have a round table to see their take on taping and what they like about it.
Korre: Well, I have talked to all the band members, current and past, with one exception, that’s John Rider. He’s told me that he’s open to coming on the podcast and I’m going to hold him to that. And when he does, I’ll ask him about taping and get his answer for you. OK?
Bill: Yes, that’d be perfect. Yes.
Korre: Well, Bill, I’m wondering if you could talk about what it means to be part of this community of fans that supports Max Creek because you’re out there doing some amazing work for Max Creek and for us as fans. What does this community mean to you?
Bill: I like the way you use the word community because that’s precisely what the Max Creek fan base is. It’s a community. Whether you go to a show in western Massachusetts or deep into Connecticut or up in New Hampshire, you see the same people. And if you don’t see the same people at all places, in different areas you see people that will go to the show every time they play.
It’s a very welcoming community. Everybody is appreciative of the tapers. They make room for us. They know what we’re doing. They give us space. People are respectful around the microphones and they know what we’re doing. And it’s nice seeing the same people.
I’m not sure many other bands, that you do get to see the same crowd. If you’re looking at larger touring acts, a lot of times you don’t get the chance to go see the band three or four times on a tour. So you don’t really build up the community that you do have by having Max Creek shows in the area, several shows a month that you can go to and see the same people hang out with the same people. So it is a great sense of community that I think many other bands lack.
Korre: Bill Hoy, it was a lot of fun talking with you today. Thanks for joining me on Hooked on Creek,
Bill: Also great talking with you today. It’s always good to talk to another Max Creek fan. I look forward to seeing you on a show sometime. We got to get you out here to New England so you can be a part of this community.
Korre: Well, I’m coming out this fall. I know that Camp Creek isn’t happening unfortunately this year, at least that’s what I’ve heard. But I’m going to pick a weekend this fall and hopefully, Bill, I’ll see you there. OK?
Bill: That will be perfect. Looking forward to seeing you in person.
Big thanks to Bill Hoy for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate everything he has done to help preserve the legacy of Max Creek through his audio and video recordings of the band. But now stay with me, because I have some great tunes lined up for you that were recorded by Bill Hoy over the years.
First up, this is Max Creek performing Dark Water live at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, on April 13, 1994.
And now this is Max Creek performing You Write the Book performed live at The Met in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on April 22, 2022.
That concludes episode 53 of Hooked on Creek. Again, huge thanks to Bill Hoy for coming on the podcast. If you’re curious, during the introduction to this episode, I played a portion of I Will Always See Your Face performed live by Max Creek and recorded by Bill Hoy at The Living Room in Providence, Rhode Island, on May 7, 1994.
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!