Creed to headline rock concert Friday at Great Jones County Fair

This summer is seeing the return of Creed — one of the biggest music acts of the late 1990s. The band has recently completed a pair of cruises and now embarks on an extensive tour that visits outdoor amphitheaters this summer and arenas in the fall.

It’s not the first time Creed has reunited. The first time, in 2009, the band’s reunion tour the following year saw fairly lackluster ticket sales. But this year, the cruises were instant sellouts and ticket sales for the tour have been robust. What’s more, the band’s 2004 greatest hits album has been rereleased and is climbing the charts for multiple rock genres.

Guitarist Mark Tremonti offered his take on why Creed is enjoying this renewed wave of popularity.

“I think ‘90s music in general is having a resurgence,” he said in an early July phone interview. “I think people want to go back and relive some of their younger years when they were going through college or whatever it was and want to get back out and relive those days. So I think people just want to get back together with their friends and go see the concert that they saw 20 years ago.”

It’s not just fans who bought some of the more than 20 million copies of the first three Creed albums — “My Own Prison,” “Human Clay” and “Weathered” — that are snapping up tickets for the tour. A new generation of fans has discovered Creed on TikTok and other online sites, through the use of the Creed hit single “Higher” by last season’s Texas Rangers as the team’s theme song and via a popular Super Bowl ad that included Tremonti and singer Scott Stapp.

“It turns out our largest fan base of the tickets that have been sold is between 25 and 35 years old,” Tremonti said, citing data the band receives from ticketing outlets. ‘Those are (mainly) people that wouldn't have quite been old enough to experience a Creed concert.”

The rock band will headline the Great Jones County Fair in Monticello Friday, July 19. Also performing will be Switchfoot and Finger Eleven.

Fans will be seeing the classic Creed lineup of Stapp, Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips. That unit formed in 1995 in Tallahassee, Florida, made a big splash with its 1997 debut CD, “My Own Prison,” which sold 6 million copies and spawned four No. 1 hits on “Billboard” magazine’s Hot Mainstream Rock Hits chart.

The follow-up, 1999’s “Human Clay” (which is getting an expanded deluxe reissue in August) was an even bigger blockbuster, selling more than 10 million copies and producing multiple hits, including “Higher” and “With Arms Wide Open.” That latter song won the 2001 Grammy for Best Rock Song.

The third CD, “Weathered” became another big hit, selling 6 million copies, but after that CD was released in November 2001, things started to go off track for the band when Stapp was involved in a 2002 car accident that delayed a Creed tour. The singer then developed nodules on his vocal cords and was prescribed prednisone to combat the inflammation. Unfortunately, he began having anxiety issues as a side effect of the drug, and hoping to counteract his anxiety attacks, began drinking to excess.

A couple of embarrassing public incidents — the release of a sex tape he made with Kid Rock and some willing female participants and a drunken performance at a Creed show in December 2002 in Chicago — only made things worse, and in 2004 the band called it quits, with Tremonti, Marshall and Phillips moving on to form Alter Bridge with singer Myles Kennedy.

Tremonti said the four musicians are hoping this second reunion sticks, and there will be Creed albums and/or tours every few years. Creed’s activities will have to happen between solo (Stapp and Tremonti both continue to release solo albums) and projects by Alter Bridge, which very much remains an active group.

“I think at this point now we’ve all seen enough, we’ve all been in enough bands, we’ve all had all our projects, to know that we're all going to be busy doing all our own things throughout the years,” Tremonti said. “We’re going make it a best effort to be able to continue to keep Creed active at least every few years.

“We just have to plan way ahead, just gotta make sure that everybody has all their T’s crossed and I’s dotted in advance so we can make sure that everybody’s other projects have their time and a life as well,” the guitarist said.

But for now, the four band members are taking things one day at a time. The shows on the cruises went well, Tremonti said, but prior to the tour, there weren’t opportunities to just hang out. The tour will give them down time to see how the four personalities mesh and perhaps try writing music again.

“It's been pretty much all business and we haven't had time to really sit and reminisce,” Tremonti said. “It was such a fire drill getting the cruises ready. Since we've done that, I’ve recorded an album and Scott went and did all kinds of things, got out touring (behind) his solo record. So when we get back together, the tour’s really long, so we'll be able to really spend time.”

For now, Creed will tour, and fans can expect to hear the songs they know and love.

“Our set list will initially start out pretty similar to what we had done on the cruises, playing the hits along with some of the favorite album tracks,” Tremonti said.