Episode 58 of Hooked on Creek features my conversation with Phil Simon, a booking agent for Max Creek and life-long fan of the band.
In this episode, Phil discusses his professional relationship with Max Creek and shares his insights on what makes Max Creek so special. Phil explains how his personal connection to Max Creek as a fan has shaped his approach to booking their gigs, allowing him to understand the band’s needs and the expectations of fans. Phil also reflects on the challenges facing the live music industry today.
This episode features segments of the following songs performed live by Max Creek at The Living Room in Providence, Rhode Island:
- Just a Rose performed on December 14, 1988
- Orange Sunshine performed on November 30, 1988
- Big Boat performed on December 14, 1988
- Rainbow performed on October 5, 1988
Transcript of episode 58
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 58.
Welcome back Creek Freeks to another episode of Hooked on Creek. Today, I am excited to share my recent conversation with Phil Simon. Phil is a life-long fan of Max Creek and the owner of Simon Says Booking.
In this episode, I explore how Phil first fell in love with Max Creek as a teenager in the late 1980s and how his passion for music led to his decades-long career promoting live music and a professional relationship as a booking agent for Max Creek.
Phil provides a unique behind-the-scenes look at the live-music scene, describing the relationship between the band, the fans and the venues where Max Creek performs. I think you are really going to enjoy learning about Phil’s love of Max Creek, his perspectives on promoting live music and his insights on what makes Max Creek truly special.
As a reminder, you can 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 Phil. Alright, now let’s get started.
[interview begins]
Korre: Phil Simon, welcome to Hooked on Creek.
Phil: Hey Korre, thanks so much for having me. I’m honored to be on Hooked on Creek.
Korre: Phil, to kick off our conversation, tell me about Simon Says Booking and what your company does to promote Max Creek.
Phil: So, I am a booking agent and head of this agency, which means that I get work for musicians and help them to arrange live music appearances. Max Creek has been a client on and off for 24 years, and I’ve been a fan of the band since the late 1980s.
Korre: For somebody like me who doesn’t really understand the behind the scenes of how bands get gigs, what is that relationship like between you and a band?
Phil: Well, it varies based on different bands and the needs of each individual band. A booking agent is the front person who negotiates contracts, arranges and organizes live music appearances by a band on their behalf. And each individual band has their own needs and perspectives — some are more about logistics, some are more about marketing. It’s my job as an agent to make festivals, clubs, venues, colleges, ski areas, aware that a band exists, to focus on their value and to try and arrange live music engagements on behalf of the band. So that’s what I do for Max Creek and that’s what I do for about a dozen other bands and it’s what I’ve been doing for my professional life for almost 35 years.
Korre: Well, I’d love to learn more about your professional relationship with Max Creek, but why don’t we take a step back and tell me about how you first were exposed to Max Creek. It sounds like that was in the 1980s. Tell me about that.
Phil: It’s interesting because my career as a booking agent and my discovery and love for Max Creek were born at the same time. So a lot of people, when I was a younger person, would ask, “What is it that you want to do with your life? What are you going to be when you grow up?” And as I became more educated and evolved as a teenager and in high school, I could get to the point where I verbalized and I said, “Hey, I have this really strong interest in music and live music and I also seem to have pretty decent interest and skills in business. And so I would like to figure out how to combine those two things.” And at that time, I didn’t even know what the music business was. Those were just two words to me that were separate but could be put together.
And so, if you ask, “What does that mean?” to you as a 15-year-old, I’d be like, “I don’t know, selling trumpets and sheet music and stuff. I don’t know.” There was a notion that there was a record industry or something like that, but I didn’t really know how I could put those things together and what that meant. I went to the University of Massachusetts as an 18-year-old from Connecticut and I was already into the Dead and seeing live shows. I’d seen a lot of live shows in high school and shortly after I started at UMass, one of my Connecticut friends said, “Hey, there’s this cool band. They play Wednesday nights at a club in Providence, Rhode Island, and it’s kind of like going to a Dead show. Everybody goes every Wednesday night. It’s like a really good time, so we should go.” I was like, “Well, that’s cool.”
Particularly as an 18-year-old, I hadn’t done a lot of what you might consider smaller shows. I was just going to concerts at the New Haven Coliseum or whatever. So we packed up and drove a couple hours from UMass down to Providence and saw Max Creek at The Living Room, and I walked in there and I think everybody was paying like 10 bucks or something like that. And I remember the moment very specifically, I was standing on the floor and the band was getting ready to play and I was looking at the front door and I was just watching person after person hand over a $10 bill and I looked around and I was like, “Well, geez, there’s like 600, 700, 800 people here times 10. Well, that seems to be a lot of money.” Then I looked at the bar and people were just throwing dollar bills across the bar in exchange for Bd long necks or whatever.
I had this eureka moment where I was like, “This is the music business,” and just like a bulb went off over my head. And then one minute later, the band walked on stage and [Scott] Murawski picked up his guitar and they started playing Orange Sunshine or something and I was like, “Wow, this band’s great.” And that first show was epic. I’m pretty sure it’s fall of ’88 at The Living Room — Orange Sunshine and there was a Werewolves of London. Now of course, a lot of those Living Room shows bleed together because they did so many of them, but I just kind of filed that away and I was like, “Wow, this is great.”
And I developed a love for Max Creek and was seeing them at places like Katina’s in Hadley, Massachusetts, which was the nearest venue to UMass, and we went down to UConn to see them. It wasn’t until I transferred from University of Massachusetts to the University of Oregon, and it was actually getting a degree in business management and marketing when I stumbled on some friends of mine playing in the basement of the cooperative house we lived in.
And one thing led to another, and I ended up becoming their manager — you know, finger quotes manager. I figured incorrectly that if there was anything that a manager should do, it’s get gigs for the band. They got to play if they’re going to be a band. And this band had already played lots of gigs and were already great, but they gave me the opportunity to try and help them out. A really cool band out of Oregon called International Anthem, a really great band. And so I just started writing down on a piece of paper just clubs around and just started calling around getting them gigs and signing up on mailing lists. This was back when that was a thing. People would send you a postcard with their upcoming shows. I just signed up for all of them that I could and just started becoming a booking agent.
I didn’t actually make the connection in 1991 that I made in 1988 in terms of, “Oh, this is how I’m going to build my career in the music business.” I just started doing it and one thing led to another. When I graduated in 1992, the economy was terrible and there weren’t a lot of job opportunities, so I just kept up with the booking thing that I had been doing and it took about seven years until I was moving back to the East Coast to take a job as a booking agent with the Planetary Group in Boston when I reconnected with Max Creek and became their booking agent back then.
It’s been a great relationship between me and the band for the decade since. Sometimes I’ve been their agent and sometimes I haven’t. And I’ve been lucky enough to have been their agent the last five years or so, and it’s a great thing for me because I believe so much in the band and I love their music so much. I’ve lost count on, I’m guessing somewhere around 100 shows or more that I’ve been lucky enough to see the band play. So I’m really stoked about that as much as I am about working for them.
Korre: Well, as someone who has worked with probably a lot of musicians over the years, how would you describe the chemistry between the members of Max Creek both on and off the stage?
Phil: Well, I mean this is their 53rd year together, so there has to be something magical that ties these people together, particularly the three guys who have been doing it together for 50 years or more. So there’s a magic that happens between them both on stage and off that enables the music that we all love to be created. They are a legacy original jam band, which a lot of the other bands that people love from Phish to Blues Traveler to other more modern bands, drew original inspiration from Max Creek who had been doing it for so long. They are the originators of a lot of these concepts. The full weekend festival surrounding one band — Camp Creek, something that we’ve all gone to and loved — is much more of an original concept to Max Creek than a lot of these festivals that people have been going to for decades.
So, the entire scene owes a tremendous amount to the creativity of this band Max Creek, both professionally and musically. I’m pretty sure I’ve strayed far from your question, but yeah, musically speaking, I have been mesmerized with them since the first notes back in the fall of ’88. The interplay between the different musicians, the high quality writing, the ability to share the stage, to share the sound, how supportive they are of each other musically is something that I think that any great band should be emulating.
The band really is perhaps my favorite band of all time and certainly one of my favorite things to do is to go to wherever Max Creek is playing and to hang out, see my friends who also love Max Creek and just see what they’re going to do on a nightly basis. I’m continually dumbfounded by how great of a band they are, which for me is I think a big part of the connection between me and the band — hopefully that I understand both what they’re trying to do musically and also have skills in the booking world that is helpful to them.
Korre: I would imagine that you being a fan of Max Creek before you had this opportunity to work with them must give you, I don’t know, perspective or credibility or just a sense of understanding on what that band needs and maybe the venues they need to go to. Can you talk about how your understanding of Max Creek has shaped your ability to I book gigs for them or work for them?
Phil: In addition to knowing the guys in Max Creek and doing that job for them, I’m also going to all these shows, and I’ve gotten to know so many people who love the band. So when I’m operating trying to get engagements for the band, I could hear the thoughts of fans who are like, “Oh, they’ve been to this region too much, how come they don’t go to that region?” I think the most important thing for me is that I absorbed some things that people really felt about the show experience that they were having and am able to keep those things in mind when we’re booking a show, like how many people might need seats versus how much people want to stand and dance and participate with the band. And so being able to go to a venue and say, “OK, we do need some area for fans to be able to circulate,” or “We do really need fans to be able to leave the show and come back.”
The storied venue in Max Creek lore of the Pearl Street in North Hampton was a place that the band had played for years and years and years, and then didn’t play for a long time. And then we began to have them play again over the last 5 or 10 years. And as a fan, I truly knew what it was going to take for the Pearl Street to become a viable venue for Max Creek again. And I had long talks with both the venue operator and the fans about what needed to happen for those shows in that room in the center of the Max Creek geographic universe — what it was going to take for that to be a successful show for both the band and the fans, and the component that people frequently don’t consider, the venue, as well and the community that it’s in.
So, we knew that there were complaints about the Pearl Street and fans being able to leave and come back or security searches on the way inside the show. And having heard that so many times as a fan and having done it and walking into the show and being searched myself or wanting to go to my car myself or wanting to leave and have a smoke and come back into a show myself, it was something that I felt was really important that I needed to negotiate with the venue.
And then once I had, it was equally important for me to be able to then inform the fans what it was that was happening, the updates that were coming, the differences in the rules as the shows unfolded and what the fans needed to understand about the circumstance and how they could help the venue succeed while being provided the environment that they wanted for a great Creek show. So I feel like that’s somewhat unique for me. I don’t know that there’s a lot of agents that could come in and work for Max Creek that would be able to have both of those perspectives.
Korre: Well, as a fan of live music, I just want to thank you for advocating on behalf of us, the people in the audience. That’s great.
Phil: Well, I want to share that the power that I wield is indeed mightily small. So I know that everybody loves to think that the band has control over a lot more things than they might. We are all just trying to have a really good time on one night in one place. And while I wish we could wave a magic wand and make every venue perfect for every Creek fan, we’re working within the parameters of what a venue can afford, what a community will tolerate, what laws exist. But if I could make any shows a little bit better by helping to communicate the priorities of the fans to the people that define how good of a night that we can all have, then it will be a worthwhile effort for sure.
Korre: I imagine you’ve seen the band at a lot of venues. Which venues or maybe settings do you think bring out the best in Max Creek?
Phil: Well, I think that’s changed over time. For me when I was a lot younger, being inside in a hot and crowded venue at night, like people are smoking pot and being like a young guy, that was magical. The lights going down and just making out the faces and the bodies of the people around you and the rising throng that it was in the late 80s, that was a real club experience and particularly for me at that age, that was just a really great thing. And now I see totally other environments in which the band can have a different mind frame.
A festival is entirely different than a club play. Outdoors is radically different than indoors, both in terms of how somebody might set the tones on their amplifier to what songs you might choose and how you might choose to perform those songs. Something I’ve always been interested in, and it’s been cool to observe it through the lens of my love of seeing Max Creek, is what effect what band members see on stage has on the music that they play.
So, when the band is standing on stage at Wormtown or StrangeCreek and they’re looking out at the Saturday-night crowd and a couple thousand people there and the shadows of the trees that line that field and the stars that are overhead and the lights that are passing by and the neon and the fire — that’s going to cause them to perform in a certain way. And how is that different than when they’re standing at Marty’s in New Hampshire and it’s a beautiful afternoon in New Hampshire and they’re looking out at the lush green of a driving range.
How is New Hampshire different than Massachusetts and how is a festival play or an outdoor show different than a Living Room show? And that’s always been interesting for me for a lot of different bands. With Creek because we get to see them so often and their journey and our journey is so closely tied, it’s just wonderful to watch how those things play out, live on stage in front of their audience-family of Creek Freaks.
So, it’s just so great because it parallels my interest in live music in general. So it is just great because if you love sports, you love all sports, you’re involved in so many different things, but then you have your team, there is that team that’s like yours, Red Sox or the Celtics or some other out-of-region inferior team. And the same thing with live music. For me, the love, the obsession, the fascination is with the live music experience and Max Creek is my hometown team and I get the opportunity to see them in all these different situations and it’s just so great.
Seeing them open for Bruce Hornsby is totally different than seeing them on stage of the Colonial for New Year’s Eve. Them playing with moe. is different than them playing at Wormtown or at Camp Creek. It’s just so great to see them in all these different environments. I think we’re all lucky to be able to experience our live music journey through that band.
Korre: I’m wondering, it sounds like you’ve been close to the music at least from the late ’80s through the ’90s, and then obviously more after that. At the same time in the early ’90s there were a few jam bands that sort of broke through a bit. How do you think Max Creek navigated that and what was your perspective at that time?
Phil: Well, at that time, me personally, I wasn’t connected really to Max Creek yet professionally — as a fan I was. I didn’t get to meet them until 2000, but I was on the West Coast a lot. And so a lot of what was happening between 1990 and 1999 in the Max Creek world I just really wasn’t a part of. But the explosion of jam bands, it’s funny because my introduction to Max Creek was around the same time that I got introduced to Phish, who I saw at UMass for the first time. And this little band from Georgia opened for them, Widespread Panic, and so to watch Phish explode out of New England and become a national band.
And while all this interest in jam bands was developing all over, and I was on the complete other side of the country in Oregon, and to be able to, while I’m developing these relationships with live music fans on the West Coast, to be able the whole time to be like, “Max Creek. Max Creek. You guys want to check out Max Creek.”
And I was lucky to catch them in like ’97 in California on one of their few West Coast tours and through some magic was able to get my garage band from Oregon to open for Max Creek in Chico, California. And I was like, “Oh my God, this is a dream come true for me.” I hadn’t really yet met the band and my band was called Freaks of Nature. We were out of Eugene, Oregon, and we drove down to Chico on a California tour ourselves and shared the stage with Max Creek at this really weird room called The Brick Works. And I remember Max Creek had to fly from Connecticut to California and we were driving down and they arrived and they had all of this gear that they had picked up and rented on the West Coast.
They met us at this club and we were coming down from our studio and I was just lucky enough that there was a guy in the band who was just really into great gear. We showed up as this little garage band that had been together for six months or nine months at this point, and we showed up with this great gear and Scott [Murawski] was like, “Hey, you think I could use that amplifier that you brought there, buddy?”
It was kind of the first time that I was dealing with Max Creek. That wasn’t me just staring at them and listening. And so that was really great and I had a conversation with John Rider afterwards. This is just kind of interesting to me because it has absolutely nothing to do with my nearly 25-year relationship in booking with them, and I don’t think that any of them recognize or remember that I played with them on that night. It’s like this secret I’ve been carrying myself.
But afterwards I was standing there and John Rider was having a glass of red wine and he and I were chatting. And to me I was still like, “Oh my God, I’m talking to somebody from Max Creek. This is amazing.” And he was talking about how long they’d been together. It was kind of ironic because it was like 25 or 30 years ago, but they’d been together for decades already, and he was like, “You guys are so young and such a fresh band. You got such new energy. I’m a little jealous of the youthful energy you guys have.” And I was like, “Oh my God, John Rider,” or whatever.
It was just so interesting in retrospect. It’s nearly 30 years later now and to piece that together with the beginning of my relationship with Max Creek strictly as a fan and then the maturity of my relationship with Max Creek as doing a job for them. And there’s that one moment that bridged that gap, this random isolated moment in 1997 in which I was like maybe mapping out where the linchpin is going to go, that’s going to connect me back to Max Creek for an extended period of time, and I’m very lucky.
Korre: I wonder from a promoter’s perspective, how do you describe the sound of Max Creek to potential venue owners when you’re out trying to book gigs for them? I mean, is it hard to describe who Max Creek is because they often blend genres together?
Phil: As a deep jam band fan myself, we like to think of genre bending and we like to think of like, well, there’s country stuff that’s going on, there’s some deep jazz stuff going on, and there’s the classic rock stuff going on. From a venue perspective when on one night you’re going to have metal and another night you might have folk and another night you might have a tribute band, we view Max Creek as this multi-genre band, venues view Max Creek in the jam band sense. For some musicians that might be a pejorative, they might not love that label. But for us as fans, it’s genre bending. For someone who is putting on 10, 20, 50, 100 shows a year, they fit very neatly into the jam band category.
When we’re talking about who they are, like several other clients that I have, we lean a lot on legacy and the history of the band. So most of the places the band plays, they either have a long history with that place, say The Met in Rhode Island, which extends back to the days of Lupo’s. They have a long history with that room. Toad’s, there’s a long history. We mentioned Pearl Street before, those are long historical relationships with the band.
A lot of other places, the Colonial or the Infinity Music Hall in Connecticut or a variety of other venues, those venues are recognizing the legacy of the band and the business and the history that they bring, even though the relationship with that venue might not go back decades. So they’ve been playing the Colonial for 5 or 10 years. They’ve been playing the Infinity Music Hall for three or five or eight years or whatever it is, and I’m sure someone’s going to correct me by looking in at Creek base or whatever, but those relationships that are more new are still built on the legacy of the band.
So, a new festival that comes along and says, “Hey, we’re not a 50-year festival, but we want the strength and experience and the crowd that Max Creek brings.” So even though it’s a new relationship, it’s built on the history and the legacy of the band, which is a great resource for me to be able to tap into to sell the band. For me, my job is to sell a band to a buyer, someone who’s providing an opportunity for a live music performance. And oftentimes that can be difficult. It’s like, well, this is a band from a place and they play a kind of music and they’re not necessarily huge and popular yet.
You have to come up with creative ways in which to sell the band. And so you have to grasp at resources like, oh, well, they play a certain kind of music or somebody’s related to somebody, or there’s a reason why anybody would pay attention to this band out of the million bands that are out there. With Max Creek, this wonderful resource exists, which is the compiled experience of the band. So it’s great for me as a salesperson to be able to say, “Hey, they’re bringing this legacy, this history, this collective culture to your event.”
Korre: I wonder, does the audience loyalty that’s built up around Max Creek, how does that play into your success when you’re out booking gigs?
Phil: I mean, those things are intrinsically tied. So this is something that is difficult for me as a live music fan to absorb, but me as a booking agent is fundamental. So the days of a patron sponsoring Beethoven to write a particular piece of music, to be performed at a certain particular time and being sponsored by that person, that patron to create that music — that’s not how music works anymore. So as much as we are selling a live music performance that is art and music and sound that is being created, we’re also selling commerce, which is on this particular night, these particular people are going to show up and they’re going to perform and you can sell tickets to see them. Once you’ve commodified things in that manner, there’s no difference between Max Creek and Phish and the New England Patriots and the DaVinci Exhibit and Hulk Hogan and a professional golf tournament.
So, what you begin to get to is, in order to sell a certain number of tickets — which will in turn sell you a certain number of beverages and chicken wings — you have to be able to illustrate that you will be able to drive the commerce. And this is all stuff that is like, “Not only do I not understand it as a person who’s a live music fan, who’s not a booking agent, I don’t want to understand it, I don’t want to know anything about it — I want to just see a killer Big Boat and I want to hear Rainbow and don’t tell me anything about split points and ticketing fees and local tax rates.” But in reality, the thing that makes it all possible — gas isn’t free, guitar strings have to be replaced. People who go to places to work on turning knobs on a soundboard or loading gear into a place or serving drinks or arranging shows or playing a guitar, all of those people have to be able to afford to do that for the night.
So, there’s this whole commerce that drives the whole thing and the fact that when Max Creek plays at a place in a certain geographic location that will create the money necessary to throw the show and for everybody involved to work for the night, that’s a complex set of variables. Because the band’s economic engine is one thing in Hartford versus another thing in Syracuse versus another thing entirely in San Francisco. And so there’s always this challenge to outline the resource and expense, the goals and how all of those things align.
And it’s wonderful that Max Creek has a relationship with so many customers that can help to drive and create the resource necessary on any given night for them to create the art and music that we love. All of those things are totally tied together in a way that isn’t in painting or sculpting or poetry or writing a novel. These guys are creating live music on a stage, and in order to do that, that costs money every night. Luckily they have enough people who support them that make it possible to build that stage and sound system every night and to open doors and have artwork and have posters and have a sound system and people to put it all together, and then suddenly there’s this live music experience. What a wonderful world we live in, right, man, this is like crazy.
Korre: We’re lucky for everything you said. Max Creek, 54 years I think now, almost.
Phil: Yeah, 54 in Spring, yeah. So we’re knocking on the door
Korre: How many things could have happened that could have stopped this band from continuing on, and we’re lucky still here today to be listening to this music and hearing this art and just enjoying it. We are very lucky for sure,
Phil: And just all the different twists and turns. Something could happen to somebody and it’s possible that they couldn’t have devoted the time necessary to be in Max Creek. What happens to the band if Mark Mercier in 1992 had something happen that prevented him from being able to continue to play for us for three more decades?
At the same time, there’s also this other world like what would’ve happened if Rainbow got picked up and was in the Almost Famous soundtrack? Or they ended up on Woodstock Two? Or something happened that propelled them, and what if we were paying $200 a night to see them now and we had to go to Madison Square Garden or we had to do something else and our relationship with the band would be so much different, right?
Korre: Yeah.
Phil: And so, there’s this really amazing world that we live in where you could still go up after a show and be like, “Ah, Bill [Carbone], man, you were so great on the drums tonight.” And he’d be like, “Oh, hey, thanks man.” And you could still be like, “Hey, I really love this. You guys played this Low Cut Connie song. Like, wow, that’s amazing. I didn’t realize that you guys were in the Philly stuff. Are we ever going to get a Hall & Oates cover?” You can still relate to the band. How special is that?
Korre: I’m curious, what are some of your just favorite Max Creek songs? Either you are just eager to hear them all the time or they don’t play them enough for you?
Phil: It’s so funny because I’m just a totally regular Creek Freak, like everybody else. I freaking love it. So who doesn’t love Just a Rose? I’m a big Scott Murawski fan in terms of his playing and his songwriting. Great material coming out of Scott, so Just a Rose and Orange Sunshine, Willow Tree, The Field, Emerald Eyes, like this stuff is like wow, amazing to me. And also I have this affinity for the material that was the peaks of their sets when I was first seeing them in ’88, ’89, ’90. So, Big Boat, Fire & Brimstone, Gypsy Blue, Rainbow, Windows.
I remember being a junior guitar player learning how to play and being like, “Oh, these are the chords to Band from Chicago,” and me and my buddies would play it in a dorm room at UMass. How cool is that? And of course, over time we develop and there’s new and interesting material and to just watch them play new stuff. But I do have this affinity for the songs that they had reached a mastery of in the late ’80s. Just a Rose at the end of the show, was just like, “Oh my God, I’m so blown away.” I just love this band.
Korre: What do you think the future of the music scene looks like from your perspective booking gigs? You’re on the front lines of this, I mean, how easy or hard is it out there to book gigs?
Phil: Well, the trend in live music is not great for people who love going to clubs, throwing down 20 books and going into a club and hanging out with 300 or 400 or 500 people. That’s increasingly difficult. The environment for venue operators is just terrible — insurance, the way that so many things are structured, it makes it very difficult to generate enough money to make great live music shows happen. In the course of the time that we’re talking about from the mid ’80s until now, there have been multiple watershed moments that have had a negative impact on live music attendance.
In the ’80s and going back to the ’70s and a lot longer ago than that, if you met somebody and you wanted to go out on a date — it’s 1988 and let’s go out on a date. There was dinner and a movie or let’s go to the show, that was it. Your television got a few stations, you cruise around with your friends in a car. That’s what social life was — keg parties going to shows — that’s what life in America was in the late ’80s.
And then a bunch of things happened. I don’t remember the year, like ’86 or ’87, it was before I started going to see shows, the drinking age went from 18 to 21, and it happened a little bit over a couple of years, but that had a huge impact. It was a sizable portion of the audience that suddenly couldn’t come, huge. I’m not saying that that was wrong, I’m just saying it had a negative impact on selling tickets to shows. Then the completely appropriate strengthening of drunk driving laws and the nation’s focus on reducing drunk driving — completely appropriate, absolutely had to happen. But people drive to shows and alcohol sales drive the small live-music industry. So that was the second thing that suddenly started to squeeze ease.
If somebody comes to a show and only has two or three beers over the course of four hours versus the way that things were earlier, it has a big impact on the economic opportunity for venue operators. And then just one thing after another, continue to chip away at the potential for sales at a show and the potential for crowd size. The Station nightclub fire — horrible, terrible tragedy — resulted in, again, an appropriate and necessary examination of safety procedures at clubs and then the insurance industry’s relationship with nightclubs. So suddenly things for venue operators got a lot more expensive, again for good reason and absolutely necessary, but it did add a layer of expense and just an awareness of what was going on in nightclubs across the country.
Then one thing after another, 9/11 made America really conscious of being out together in public crowds. The rise of the internet. Going back to the 1980s example, we had a couple of professional sports leagues and we had a couple of television stations, but now live music is but one of hundreds of entertainment options from sports to television to live music to the museum experience, to any myriad of things — going to a bar and learning how to paint or anything like that. Those are all live music dollars.
And going to see a show at a club with the best band around was one of only a small handful of options before, but is now only one of what seems like thousands of options that people have for entertainment. And you really had to leave your house to be entertained 30, 40 years ago because again, the television wasn’t entertaining, so you really had to leave and meet your friends and go somewhere to have a good time and hear great music.
So, it’s a lot more challenging for live music venues, venue operators, than it ever has been. So if you like live music, all you Creek freaks who are listening. If you love Max Creek and you love going to a show and having that experience, the only way to preserve it both for Max Creek and for the entire experience is to go to the show. And we’re older than we used to be. We’re not going to four shows a week anymore, but get up out of your couch, drive to the venue, whether it’s seeing Max Creek or somebody else. But hey man, if you like the fact that Max Creek plays on New Year’s Eve, you got to go or it’s not going to be possible. If you like that Max Creek plays in the town square in the summertime, you have to go to those shows or the economics won’t be there that enabled them to do that.
Korre: Well, speaking of shows, is there a Max Creek show from your history of seeing this band that stands out to you as that’s your favorite show, that’s your favorite performance you’ve ever seen of them?
Phil: They are all like my children, Korre. There’s so many times where I have this moment where the music is breaking new ground or reaching some sort of cosmic peak and the people around me, I love them so much and they love me so much, that I have this moment where I can zip back to The Living Room in 1988 and feel the rightness of my dual decisions of deciding to love Max Creek and deciding to devote my life, my career, to the music business. When I can feel all the elements come together and it frequently happens — there’s usually a moment late in the set at StrangeCreek, but it can happen anywhere — when all of the elements come together in such a way that it validates the decisions I’ve made to devote myself in this way, that is a really enriching experience and it’s personal to me. Though it’s personal to me, I know that it’s something that every Creek Freak can share.
I was lucky enough to be involved and bless a wedding that was happening at StrangeCreek a few years ago, Dan and Beth, and their whole Creek experience that led them to that moment and their union. And to see other people who have met at Creek shows and gotten together romantically or to see the validation that people feel through community and experiencing live music, when all of those elements come together, for me in the ways that it does and for those people in the ways that it does for them, it validates the lifestyle choices that we’ve made. So how about you, Korre?
Korre: Well, Phil, we don’t know each other that well. I’m not sure if you know my backstory, but I’ve only seen Max Creek a couple times. I started this podcast and had it for years before I ever actually saw Max Creek. It’s because I saw Scott Murawski play in Milwaukee with Mike Gordon, and then I learned about Max Creek and then I found all the music posted online. It just took over my life for a few months, partly because I was so curious who this band is that I’ve never heard of called Max Creek. Then unfortunately in Milwaukee, nobody’s ever heard of Max Creek.
And so I created the podcast as just an outlet for me to talk about the band, and I didn’t expect anything would ever happen with this podcast. And now this many years later, I’ve had the opportunity to meet all the band members, they’ve been on the podcast, and then finally at some point I got to fly out to see Max Creek. My first show was Camp Creek 2021. That weekend I had the warmest reception from the band and all the fans.
Phil: Wild. So Odetah was your first show?
Korre: Yeah.
Phil: That’s not a small dose either, man. You started drinking by drinking a whole keg. Like, “Oh, well let me go see Max Creek. Why don’t I check them out for 14 hours on this weekend?”
Korre: Yeah, and I should say fans of Max Creek who listen to this podcast have been so nice to me, reaching out to me here in Milwaukee and helping me understand the band and connecting me to people. Certainly when I was there that weekend and got to see everybody in person, it was so special and everybody was so nice and helpful. It is one of the most amazing weekends of my life, for sure.
Phil: Wild
Korre: Yeah. I went back to Camp Creek the next year in 2022. The great news is, Phil, I’m going to see Max Creek in two weeks at The Met. So I’m flying out to Rhode Island. I’m going to be there that weekend, and yeah, that’ll be my third weekend seeing them ever.
Phil: Oh, my goodness. You’re having the whole Creekend experience, which is great because by going to two shows in a row, you’re going to have the maximum amount of material that you could see. Oh man.
Korre: Yeah. I’m probably the oddest Max Creek fan you’ll ever meet because of my backstory.
Phil: Here you are. This is like, it’s going to be your fifth and sixth show or something like that or whatever. It’s going to be like, “Oh wow.” I wish I could experience that Creekend at The Met the way that you will. All these songs will be just like, “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen that song!” Oh, wow.
Korre: You’ve nailed my anticipation and the feelings I had the last two times I saw them. I have this podcast. I spend so much time talking about the band and listening to the band and talking to fans of the band. When I finally take a bite of that apple, it tastes damn good.
Phil: I bet.
Korre: My last two experiences, only two previous experiences, were Camp Creek. So I am looking forward to a different setting, a different environment, a different just feel. Yeah, it’s going to be cool.
Phil: Yeah, I mean, Camp Creek is like being at a banquet or thrown a feast. We’re going to do 82 hours and every member of Max Creek is going to bring out their side project and do it to the fullest and everybody’s going to sit in with everybody else and it’s like gluttony. But now you’re going to get to go and have the standard family dinner. You’re going to go and they’re going to give the presentation to you, and the opener is going to be like your appetizer and the first and second sets are going to be your meat and potatoes, and then bam, you’re going to have an encore dessert.
Korre: It’s going to be great.
Phil: Oh man, I’m so happy for you.
Korre: Thank you.
Phil: Wow. Wow. What a great experience. Now, I wish for you that I had the ability to wave this magic wand and be like, “We’re going to do Chicago, Madison, and Milwaukee. We’re going to do Martyrs’, we’re going to do the High Noon, and then we’re going to two nights of Shank Hall. Man, we’re doing it.”
Korre: You know about Shank Hall?
Phil: This is my stupid parlor trick. You can name like any town in America and I can tell you what venue is in it.
Korre: The challenge is out there. You just get Max Creek out here and I’ll be there and as many people as I can bring.
Phil: Alright, so dude, I need you to go to your basement, man. I need you to look behind the furnace and find the bag of money and we’ll just throw Max Creek out there, man. We’re going back to what we talked about, the challenges, the realities of economics. So it’s very difficult getting the two night run that we do seemingly every year in Colorado. That is because we have a relationship with someone who has a very similar story to your story or my story about their relationship to Max Creek.
It happens to exist in Colorado, but the guy’s that’s been bringing us out there for a few years was involved in some of the first Colorado Creek shows that I was involved with like, I don’t know, 22 years ago at the Gothic Theater and other things out in Colorado. The Fox. The guy who’s bringing us out now was just starting his music career out there, and he met and had a first date with a woman at a Max Creek show in Colorado who he’s now married to, and he attributes a part of his lifestyle and a part of his career and a part of his life to Max Creek, as well.
And so, back to the Beethoven example. It takes that level of patron, someone who is willing to invest in the band’s presence in a place that is expensive to get them to. That exists because there’s somebody who wants to make that happen. There’s a natural environment that Max Creek grows in New England and the Northeast. It is because of this fertile ground, this strength that is built out of a fan base and the commerce that we talked about before. So that enables Max Creek to grow as a crop in these places. In order to transplant it into other places, you have to have the elements and resources necessary to make that happen. So it takes more than me wanting to send them to Milwaukee and your desire. How do we make 500 Korres who want Max Creek in Milwaukee? If I knew that we were going to sell 400 tickets to Shank Hall, we would be doing it. We’d be playing the Pabst, man, we’d be there. We’d be ready to go. That would be so cool.
Korre: Well, I can still dream. I can still dream, Phil. Don’t kill my dream. Okay, it’s alright.
Phil: Well, no, I’m not killing it. The funny thing is we don’t need to build a spaceship. We just got to move like eight guys from New England to Milwaukee or Colorado or California or Austin or Chicago or St. Louis or wherever or Florida. We just have to be able to get the people and the instruments to the right place in an economic way that makes sense for everybody. And I’m not throwing this out as a challenge to you, Korre, I’m just sort of illustrating. It’s oftentimes difficult, like, “Why isn’t Max Creek out on tour?”
Well, they’re actual people who have actual children and jobs and mortgages and cars and all these other things. When Creek does special things — Camp Creek, Jungle Jam in Costa Rica, oh my God, Eric Freitas, bless his heart, the Colorado shows, Camp Creek, StrangeCreek, Wormtown, Jerry Jam, the stuff that goes on in Maine and even just a two nights stand at the Met — it’s because so many people have to put so much effort and resource into making it happen.
Like the Camp Creek stuff — both when the Riders, the Rider Production team, did it in Odetah, back to when band members like Mark Mercier was the gatekeeper and the responsible person, other people like Ken Hays of Gathering of the Vibes, he was involved with Camp Creek, and probably a hundred people who’ve come and gone that I don’t know, never met or don’t know to mention — the amount of effort and energy and risk and money that people put in in order to make these things happen, it’s just incredible. And I’m lucky and honored and rewarded to be one of those people.
I just happen to be here now. Scott plays the guitar and I play the telephone and the email. Mike Maresca is the production manager and Kelly Drew who puts out the posts, back to Eric Freitas, back to so many different people, people who’ve been in the band — Greg Vasso and [Greg] DeGuglielmo and Rob Freid — and all these people who we’ve seen through the years how much effort and devotion and energy and love they put into making Max Creek what it is.
We’re also lucky. You see those things like there’s a billion planets and a trillion miles of the universe and the billions of years of existence of this planet, and we live in a time when Mark Mercier and John Rider and Scott Murawski and these days Bill Carbone and Jay Stanley, these guys are together and playing in that. How blessed are we that we get to hear the beauty and creativity that they make for us in Max Creek shows?
Korre: Phil Simon, I had a lot of fun talking with you today. I learned a lot. Thanks for joining me on the Hooked on Creek podcast.
Phil: Korre, thank you so much for having me. Like you, I have been hooked on Creek for a long time. I just love talking about Max Creek. I love talking about live music. I’m just happy that you’re as passionate as all of these great Creek Freaks who support the band.
[interview ends]
And that concludes episode 58 of Hooked on Creek. Huge thanks to Phil Simon for joining me on the podcast. I really hope you enjoyed listening to our conversation.
If you are curious, this episode featured clips of four songs performed live by Max Creek at The Living Room in Providence, Rhode Island. I played clips of Rainbow from October 5, 1988, Orange Sunshine from November 30, 1988, and Just a Rose and Big Boat both came from Max Creek’s performance on December 14, 1988.
If you have feedback about this episode or suggestions for future episodes, please visit hookedoncreek.com and click the contact link to send me a message. I would love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in!