First the bad news, Creed fans – your chance to play ping-pong with singer Scott Stapp isn’t going to happen this year.
But the good news is that the inaugural Creedfest gathering was postponed partly because the band is putting the finishing touches on its new album, Weathered (November 20), and the disc’s soaring first single is available now via an interactive online “pager.”
Creedfest was to be a multiple-day festival in Orlando, Florida, next month, providing fans an opportunity to meet the band. Two Creed performances, ping-pong and golf competitions, and other activities were planned.
“We were very disappointed, and I hope we can reschedule for sometime next year,” drummer Scott Phillips said from his home in Orlando. “We just found that it was going to be very hard for us to [finish Weathered] and still hold Creedfest. Also, there were supposed to be people from all over the world coming and getting to experience this with us, and that meant most of them would have had to fly. So there was a safety issue.”
Fans who want to keep tabs on Weathered’s progress can do so with the Creed Pager, available at the band’s Web site (http://www.creednet.com/). The software will transmit news updates and provide users with exclusive material, such as the new single, “My Sacrifice,” which Creed Pager users got to hear before radio listeners did.
The band began working on “My Sacrifice” in March, during Weathered’s pre-production stage, and at the time the tune wasn’t considered particularly radio-friendly.
“It was one of those songs that didn’t actually hit me as being a single until we had recorded it,” Phillips said. “Engineer Kirk Kelsey, who’s also co-producing this album, recorded it and mixed it and gave it to us. We listened to it on the way home and we went, ‘Damn, that sounds pretty good.’ Then after we had gotten all the other songs together, we decided this was probably our strongest single off of the album.”
Fans who download the Creed Pager will also get to hear the band working in the studio on “Don’t Stop Dancing” with the Tallahassee Boys’ Choir and recording “Who’s Got My Back” with a Cherokee Indian vocalist.