Creed, a band known for hits like ‘Higher,’ is riding a wave ’90s nostalgia
The past two years have seen the return of Creed — one of the biggest music acts of the late 1990s. The band completed a pair of cruises to start 2024 before launching an extensive tour in 2024 that spanned the summer and extended into December.
Now the band is back for a summer tour encore, including a stop at Wichita’s Intrust Bank Arena on Tuesday.
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 time, the cruises were instant sellouts and ticket sales for the tours have been robust. What’s more, the band’s 2004 greatest hits album has been re-released and charted well on 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 a recent 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 2023’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.”
Fans will see 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 six million copies and spawned four number one hits on Billboard magazine’s Hot Mainstream Rock Hits chart.
The follow-up, 1999’s “Human Clay” (which got an expanded deluxe reissue last 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 six 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. 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 that there will be Creed albums and/or tours every few years. Creed’s activities will have to happen between other projects. Stapp and Tremonti both continue to release solo albums, while Alter Bridge remains an active band and will release a new album in January.
“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 to 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.
Creed
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Intrust Bank Arena
Tickets: $62-$202 at selectaseat.com, by phone at 316-755-7328, or in person at the Select-a-Seat box office inside Intrust Bank Arena
Opening acts: Daughtry and Mammoth
This story was originally published July 27, 2025 at 3:58 AM.