All photography provided by Stefhan Gordon of SHGfoto.com
Last Saturday night at the Hotel Cafe, The 3DVB's fronted by Creed Bratton on vocals and rhythm guitar played a tight, fun, enthusiastic set of songs from their newly released LP "Bounce Back." Though currently best known for his role in the hit television show The Office, Bratton's history in the music industry goes back to the early sixties and includes generating top hits during that era. Earlier in the day, before the Hotel Cafe show, the Examiner had a moment to sit down and talk with Creed about this history, changes in the Los Angeles music scene over time, and the relationship between his acting and music careers.
Bratton has lived in Los Angeles since 1966. In 1964 and 1965, he toured Europe with the folk group the Young Californians. Creed was in England in 1964 when the Beatles' album Rubber Soul was released. This album had a profound impact on him. He said he really couldn't "put into words how much Rubber Soul moved me." He literally wore down the vinyl playing and re-playing the album so many times. For him, Rubber Soul made him realize that music wasn't just entertainment, but was also art.
When Creed came back to LA in '66, he joined the group the 13th Floor which shortly thereafter became The Grass Roots, a group that had the top ten hit "Let's Live for Today" in 1967. The band released three albums, the third of which was entirely recorded with session musicians. In Los Angeles, many famous albums of that time from the late '50s to the early '70s were recorded with session musicians known as "The Wrecking Crew." Creed stated that this use of entirely session musicians was one of the big differences between now and then. The Wrecking Crew were the LA sound.
As noted in this linked article on The Wrecking Crew, the record companies didn't want the general public to know that these sessions musicians were being used, so these session musicians weren't credited on most of the albums on which they performed. However, on the Grass Roots' albums, The Wrecking Crew members were recognized. This recognition was acknowledged in 2007 when Creed helped induct The Wrecking Crew into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville.
After leaving the Grass Roots, Creed continued to play in a number of other bands including Lucy Goosey, Latigo, Lowly Worm, and the Creed Bratton Band. These other groups over the past few decades, though, never achieved the commercial success of the Grass Roots. With Lucy Goosey, when clubs started to require "pay to play," Creed stopped performing live. Having to pay to play was one of the other major things that Creed noted changed on the Los Angeles music scene. Paying to play just made it too difficult for new musicians. Though Creed couldn't give an exact date, and noted that "pay to play" has gone on for a while, Creed said clubs weren't always this way.
Though Creed stopped playing live, he never stopped songwriting. During all of these years as a musician, through the various sounds that have come and gone, Creed's own songwriting came from whatever came to and inspired him.
He never tried to do or replicate a sound. He simply is not a guy who can copy. Lamenting a bit about the record industry over the past two decades, Creed noted how record companies during this time simply had templates of what sells. Creed noted though at the three gigs he performed at SXSW earlier this year that the performing artists he heard were refreshingly individual" plus "reminded him a lot of the sixties." He conceded, though, that it was easy for him to be rah-rah and not worry about actually making money from music due to his successful acting career being part of a hit comedy series. As an aside, regarding auto-tunes, Creed stated, "In my opinion, if you can't walk up in front of someone with an acoustic guitar or piano and your voice, there is something inherently wrong with that."
Regarding what makes a good song, Creed went back to when he listened to Rubber Soul. A good song has that "intangible magic" that helps you "leave the present and takes you away." For Creed and his songwriting, sometimes he gets a lyric or melody first or sometimes both. He's never been someone who could just sit down and write. Sometimes he gets up in the middle of the night, picks up his guitar and tape recorder, goes back to sleep, and then wakes up later to discover he wrote a song in the middle of the night. On his current LP, Bounce Back, he wrote all the songs except for one that he co-wrote with Colin Callowhan, and another that's a Chet Baker cover. New material for his group's next LP includes another song he co-wrote with a band member. 
Acting on a hit television show though doesn't leave much time for touring or doing other acting projects. With The Office, he's taping 26 episodes over the course of nine months a year. During these nine months, he works on the set five days a week, twelve hours a day. But the acting world does give him inspiration for material and opportunities to get his songs synced in his show and movies. One of his new songs, not on the current LP, he performed this past Saturday night entitled "Moses Is a Runner" initially started as a song about another cast member who left The Office to be a show runner between the show and the network. However, by the time Creed came up with the second verse, the story of the song changed to something completely different. Creed during the Saturday night set also noted how a song his group was performing was a song he had sung during a karaoke episode of the show.
While on hiatus from The Office during the three months of the year he wasn't committed to the show, Creed acted in a movie with Lindsey Lohan called "Labor Pains." The director of that movie liked two of Creed's songs and used these songs in the film. Though Creed doesn't actively pursue syncs with a publishing deal, Creed stated, "if people in the film/TV industry are familiar with my songs and want to use them, that's great."
Thus for Creed, who acts the role of Creed, a sixties musician on television working as a quality assurance officer in an office in Scranton, PA, the two worlds of acting and music are intertwined, especially given the opportunities that these two worlds of performing art have afforded Creed recently and through the years. Moreover, the ease and levity from acting with which Creed bantered between his songs about music, his show, and life are something that all young musicians could learn from. Such banter made Creed likable and thus his music more memorable, for the connection he made with the audience as both a person and a musician worked extremely well.
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