Yelling America! –At a Little Place Called PAC
Creed Fisher to Bring Hard-Core, True-Blue, Allegiance to Town
Tammie Hetzer-Womack
The Ashland Beacon
The roads that carry Creed Fisher to Ashland are long and winding. Regardless of how he makes it here, we’re happy he’s coming.
From all that, comes this man – the kind of guy you want to string along with, an unwavering country boy who always takes a knee. He’s quickly getting right on this reporter’s level, with a ‘ma’am’ and veracious Southern laugh. A man of his word, cavalier, with honor.
Pardon me, your Texas is showing.
There’s plenty to be said about our new friend, Creed Fisher, about to play the Paramount Arts Center on Feb. 25 at 8 p.m. When those doors swing open consider the theater an old-timey saloon of sorts, where Willie or Hank would find a good resting place. The brew is ice-cold, and hearts are warm.
That’s who Mr. Fisher is at age 48. He’s learned his lessons, sometimes the hard way. The old saws of coming up hard in the heartland, folktales, ATV cliffhangers, and romance gone all wrong. The long and short of it, put to plainsong, for the work-ingman, who’s been thru it.
“It’s been a journey,” Fisher opens his soul and roots. “I was 19, crashing in friends’ houses, parties all night, roofing houses, being a journeyman, you know. I needed some direction. Had to straighten up my life. I couldn’t even get up to get to my job.”
From 1993 to 1996 he lived in “the between.”
The military seemed the only way. Fisher enlisted, assigned to Basic Training at Fort Leonard Wood, MO. He speaks of climbing off the bus to this new land where you take your hat off to rank.
“Aw, man, it scared me to death,” he swings, time to grow up. His father was a veteran, but their kinship was rocky.
“He was just hard to get along with. I had a rough childhood,” the country superstar veers. “My Mom was the rock of the family. She’s so strong. I don’t know where she gets that kind of strength.”
Two uncles stepped in as father figures for Fisher, there for him, teaching the ways of the world, how to be a man.
All of this reverberates in the rhythms of Creed Fisher songs. Throwbacks, overgrown patches, hookups, splitsville, hoosegow, all the hard parts of life – a denouement into today.
Stardom, Eagle Rare, backwater, and upcountry. This is where he gives his two cents’ worth to the kids of this new GenZ.
“Life is about getting up. You fight every day. Looking back, my life was awesome and amazing in a lot of ways. I fought, because I had something I wanted to be.”
Life hasn’t always brought boots or diesel trucks with bells and whistles.
Christopher Creed Fisher moved out of his parents’ home at age 16, couch-crashed with friends who took him in and fed him supper. He got an apartment at 17-years-old, and, rather indecorously, befittingly, partied every single night.
“I made a lot of mistakes back then,” he reflects. “But we don’t dwell on that stuff.”
There were a few stints in the clink, piddly misdemeanors which caught Creed.
“That was absolutely the worst experience. I spent four days locked-up down in Fort Worth; but I understood some Spanish, so I got by.”
It made him stronger. “I knew I had to cleanup.”
Poetry was always a place for him to vent the darkness – from age 9. Maybe songwriting would work.
“I think most people figured I lost it,” he laughs, as he speaks of a “sticky” portion of life, failed marriages, a parting of the ways. “It just didn’t work out. Didn’t feel like it did at first. I went from three women in the house, down to zero.
“I couldn’t even look up from my plate. If it wasn’t for music, I probably wouldn’t have made it.”
He has two grown daughters who made him a granddaddy to share 4-wheelers and Shimano with. Good always comes out of bad.
Fisher also gave semi-pro football minors a try – his stint with the Texas Drillers paid some bills.
Country music remained in the recesses of his heart. He wanted to sing about what’s “relevant” in today’s times: single, working moms; the bitter bottom of a rock glass of Bourbon; the sad day daddy’s coal mine shutdown; and America – every bit of Her, from his New Braunfels, TX homestead, to the Boyd County line.
He has tenderness for a veteran with PTSD or a soldier sleeping on the Central Park bench, just getting by. He sings of the nature of the political beast, very frankly. Broken backbones of those who work too little, and those who make too much. The be-all and end-all of everything fractured in our land.
At the same time, there are main ideas in his songs:
Fisher tells it as he sees it – if you don’t like it, there’s the power-off switch.
“America can be really depressing if you let it,” adds Fisher. “I don’t watch TV anymore. Maybe some ESPN now and then. But, people need to start listening, and worrying. The law only works for some types of people.”
Fisher has a fandom consisting of Harley, Heaven, and Heart – the good ones. He sings of the Stars and Stripes in 17 of his songs. He’s played bike rallies and big arenas. The finest people he meets are veterans.
“Those are the friends who can always count on. If you’re down, that’s who to go-to. That’s who I sing for,” he brings down the curtain, unreservedly. “Kentucky loves me and I love Kentucky. I’ll see y’all real soon.”