December 16, 2025 • 10 mins
We spoke with CREED guitarist Mark Tremonti about the upcoming concert at Mohegan Sun, his family, singing Sinatra and his Christmas music!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Thank you for listening to Community Access. I'm
Alison de Merz. Please welcome to the show. Founding member,
Grammy Award winner and guitarist of Creed, Mark TREMONTI.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What's happening.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm good? How about yourself?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I'm doing great? Oh my gosh. So Creed is coming
to Mohegan Sun on December thirtieth. You're calling it Creed?
Miss who came up with that?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I think it was our crazy manager, Tim turn here
that came up with that one.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Love It, Love It. I saw you twice in the
last two years. I saw you at Hartford and the
year before that I saw you at Bridgeport. I hadn't
seen you. Guys are by ten years. Let's say, blown
out of the water. Scott STAB's voice, your guitar skills, pyrotechnics,
the band was tight, the vocals, the harmonies.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, thank you so much. You know, we're just excited
to be on that stage again.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It was so so good. Of course I'm going to
this concert as well. What can fans expect at this concert?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Oh, you know, this is the guys, you know, after
a big break, coming back and hitting the stage and
being all refired up to do it, you know, and
I think that would be the last show we do
until the springtime, so it'll be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
What was it like sharing the road with Mammoth and Daughtry.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Oh it's awesome, you know, Like Wolfe is like a
brother to me. Now we've been in a band and
on a tour bus for years together, so it's and
then with Chris, you know, we I've known Chris Ford
it seems like almost decades now, so it's it's all
become one big family, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
In fact, I was just thinking it was the day
that Ozzie passed that I saw you guys at Hartford, Connecticut,
and Wolfe's saying, Mama, I'm coming home.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Oh yeah, that was awesome, and that performance was awesome,
but that what a crazy day. That was depressing, and
you know, Ozzie will never be replaced. That was, you know,
one of the first concerts I ever went to in
my life. And I actually got to work road crew
for Ozzie for a day when I was in Clemson,
South Carolina. So it was really a big hit to.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Me and everybody I was reading. Total Guitar Magazine rated
you as the fourth greatest heavy metal guitarist of all time?
What does that feel like?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You know, it just makes you want to work harder
because you want to deserve those accolades. You know, I
think most guitar players feel they have much further to
go in their learning journey, so I know what I do.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Did you ever think as a child, looking back, all
of this would happen?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I hoped, you know, this is the number one thing
I wanted to do. I remember working all night. I
had the worst jobs in the world growing up, and
I just remember working these terrible jobs and saying, one
day I'm going to be doing what I'm going to
be on stage and write music, and thank goodness it happened,
because it was kind of naive for me to think
that it would actually happen, but it did, and I'm
very happy for it.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Like Chili's, you worked at Chili's.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, I worked at Chili's. I worked at the Octopus
car wash, which was a pretty rough job for about
four years. And I've worked washing cars at my dad's
dealership and you know, grocery store. I worked. I just
worked since I was about twelve years old. But I'm
glad I did tell you something.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
We put something out on Facebook that I was interviewing you,
and I asked everybody what should I ask? What should
I ask? And the women were losing their minds over you.
They were like, I love him, he's beautiful. Is he single?
Is he married? So then that led to you singing
Frank Sinatra. I'm Italian, so my mother I tell her mom,
I'm going to interview Creed. You know how great is this?
(03:23):
She's like, Ellie, he sings Sinatra. I'm like, what Elly,
let me just say this and you're good. For those
who don't know about this, Tremante sings Sinatra? What is
that about?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
That's actually one of my favorite things I've ever done
in my career. But it's I really just was obsessed
with Frank Sinatra, And when I got older, I decided
to try to sing like him. And because I was
at I was at a Christmas party of all things,
and I was doing karaoke and I was starting to
sing bing Crosby's White Christmas. I was like, you know,
this kind of singing suits my voice better than the
(03:56):
rock thing. Then I went down the rabbit hole with Sinatra,
read all his books, read that he was he raised
over a billion dollars for charity. And when I got
the diagnosis that my daughter was going to be born
with Down syndrome, I'm like, you know, why not record
a Frank Sinatra tribute record have all the money go
to the down Centroom community. So I partnered with the
National Down Centrome Society and it's been one of the
(04:17):
best rides of my life. We've opened up the first
life Span Down centrom clinic in the southeastern United States
and we have well over four hundred patients already in
its first two years. So we are happy as gonna
be with it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
And could people make a donation to this?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
If so, how absolutely just go to the National Down
Centerm Society website or that if you go to Tremani
Singh Sinatra website, there's links on both spots. And you know,
we do the shows every year. All those shows go
to charity. There's a gala in New York in March.
We have our annual golf event that we do edge
all kinds of ways. You know, that's kind of our
(04:53):
new life submission is to help the community.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Your daughter's name is Stella. What a beautiful name. How
old does she now?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Still us four. Yeah, she's the sunshine of our lives. Yep.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Well, I have a niece, Macy, who's twenty one now
and she has downs too, and she's really involved with
the Special Olympics, and she's been nothing but a great
blessing to us.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Oh. I'm sure everyone I've met with down syndrom is
just kind of the anchor of their family and everybody
is just so supportive and everybody loves them. So it's
I've met some incredible people of you these last four years.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
All that, and I have to ask you about your
Christmas album again. Thinking about this rock star in Creed
and then I hear from my Italian mother he sings Sinatra,
and then I hear Christmas music and it's good, Mark,
you can really sing. I don't know who can I
compare you to Michael Bublay maybe better?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Oh? Thank well, thank you so much. It's you know,
that's how I got to start into thinking I could
do the Sinatra thing. Was like I said, with the
Christmas stuff. And when we released the Sinatra record, some
folks were like, in all, you should do some Christmas
songs and I was like, oh, I should do I
should do a Christmas record cause I love the music.
And we just got done doing a tour with the
band that just ended two days ago, actually in Atlantic City,
(06:11):
so you know, we do half Sinatra, half Christmas and
I love it.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Someone told me to ask you if you like the
amps you're making. They said they're using the MT fifteen
the last three years and it's sweet.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Well, I have an amplifier I called the MT fifteen
and the MT one hundred. That's kind of my signature amplifier.
I've got a signature guitar. The amp is definitely special.
We put years into designing it and a lot of
people love it and it's my go to amp for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
What was it like when in the Grammy.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
It's a funny story. We you know, we got nominated.
That was the third time I think we had been nominated.
We didn't win the first couple of times, and we
didn't even think to go to the Grammys. I don't
think we were invited because they weren't televising the Songwriter
of the Year award. But I remember was just griding
my bike and I got a call from my brother
(07:03):
and he said congratulations, Like what for He's like, you
want to Grammy and I had no idea. So then
I called Scott and I said I told him the news,
and he had no idea either, So it was it
was a great surprise.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Wow, what a wonderful life you have, right, absolutely, it's
it's been quite a ride. So for those who have
never attended a Creed concert, Scott kind of narrates throughout
as you do these different songs.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, Scott's just he's just a great front man, you know,
He's he's just has that magnetism I guess when he speaks,
he just he loves to get up there and just
relate what these songs mean to the band. And fans
seemed to love it, so it's you know, I think
he's just a great front man.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
It's like a spiritual experience. On one side of me,
I felt like, wow, this is like church. But then
you've got these biker dudes, these hells angels who got
their hands up too, you know what I mean. It's
awesome because people of all different walks just dig the music.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, you know, it's I think Scott got some of
that those frontman qualities from growing up in a church
where his folks, you know, I think that was kind
of a big influence on him was the way that
the pastor or the priest kind of presented themselves. I
think he at least like a rock and roll priest
up there. But we we enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
We totally enjoy it. What do you hope people take
away with them when the concert's over?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Oh, I just I just hope they they had a
great time. They're going to see a band that's that's
played their last show that we're going to do for
a few months after that, so we'll, you know, we
we won't play again until we hit the Creed Cruise
in the springtime, so we'll put everything we have into
that last show, so everybody, hopefully everybody sees the show
and says they can't wait to see the next one.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
And the last question I have for you is do
you have a favorite song that you perform on stage
with Creed?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
You know, nowadays, one Last Breath has just taken off.
You know, when we when we started out, uh, when
we were toured way back in the day with that song,
it was it was one of our bigger songs. But
now it's I think the biggest song that we play,
and it's just the best response. So that's that's definitely
one of them.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
When I was pregnant with my daughter, the morning of
I had to have a Plan C section, and I
woke up and I said, I don't think something's right,
and all this fear came over me. I got in
the car with my husband, I hit the radio and
with arms wide open, started from the heartbeat. And you know,
I was a DJ and I had played all this music,
(09:27):
you know, and you don't know this about me, but
I'm also a minister. And I was like, wow, God,
really the heartbeat. And I looked at my husband and
I was like, it's all going to be okay. And
something did happen during childbirth. And twenty something years later,
she's awesome. She's great. So just want to let you
know how much your music has blessed me and so
(09:50):
many others. I'm speaking with Mark Tremonti. He is the
guitarist for Creed. Go see Creed Missed December thirtieth a
Mohegan Sun. Get your tickets at Mohegan. Thank you so
much for being here today and for all the amazing
work you're doing.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Awesome, thanks for having me. I hope to see at
the show.
Good morning, Thank you for listening to Community Access. I'm
Alison de Merz. Please welcome to the show. Founding member,
Grammy Award winner and guitarist of Creed, Mark TREMONTI.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What's happening.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm good? How about yourself?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I'm doing great? Oh my gosh. So Creed is coming
to Mohegan Sun on December thirtieth. You're calling it Creed?
Miss who came up with that?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I think it was our crazy manager, Tim turn here
that came up with that one.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Love It, Love It. I saw you twice in the
last two years. I saw you at Hartford and the
year before that I saw you at Bridgeport. I hadn't
seen you. Guys are by ten years. Let's say, blown
out of the water. Scott STAB's voice, your guitar skills, pyrotechnics,
the band was tight, the vocals, the harmonies.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, thank you so much. You know, we're just excited
to be on that stage again.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
It was so so good. Of course I'm going to
this concert as well. What can fans expect at this concert?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Oh, you know, this is the guys, you know, after
a big break, coming back and hitting the stage and
being all refired up to do it, you know, and
I think that would be the last show we do
until the springtime, so it'll be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
What was it like sharing the road with Mammoth and Daughtry.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Oh it's awesome, you know, Like Wolfe is like a
brother to me. Now we've been in a band and
on a tour bus for years together, so it's and
then with Chris, you know, we I've known Chris Ford
it seems like almost decades now, so it's it's all
become one big family, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
In fact, I was just thinking it was the day
that Ozzie passed that I saw you guys at Hartford, Connecticut,
and Wolfe's saying, Mama, I'm coming home.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Oh yeah, that was awesome, and that performance was awesome,
but that what a crazy day. That was depressing, and
you know, Ozzie will never be replaced. That was, you know,
one of the first concerts I ever went to in
my life. And I actually got to work road crew
for Ozzie for a day when I was in Clemson,
South Carolina. So it was really a big hit to.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Me and everybody I was reading. Total Guitar Magazine rated
you as the fourth greatest heavy metal guitarist of all time?
What does that feel like?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You know, it just makes you want to work harder
because you want to deserve those accolades. You know, I
think most guitar players feel they have much further to
go in their learning journey, so I know what I do.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Did you ever think as a child, looking back, all
of this would happen?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I hoped, you know, this is the number one thing
I wanted to do. I remember working all night. I
had the worst jobs in the world growing up, and
I just remember working these terrible jobs and saying, one
day I'm going to be doing what I'm going to
be on stage and write music, and thank goodness it happened,
because it was kind of naive for me to think
that it would actually happen, but it did, and I'm
very happy for it.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Like Chili's, you worked at Chili's.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, I worked at Chili's. I worked at the Octopus
car wash, which was a pretty rough job for about
four years. And I've worked washing cars at my dad's
dealership and you know, grocery store. I worked. I just
worked since I was about twelve years old. But I'm
glad I did tell you something.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
We put something out on Facebook that I was interviewing you,
and I asked everybody what should I ask? What should
I ask? And the women were losing their minds over you.
They were like, I love him, he's beautiful. Is he single?
Is he married? So then that led to you singing
Frank Sinatra. I'm Italian, so my mother I tell her mom,
I'm going to interview Creed. You know how great is this?
(03:23):
She's like, Ellie, he sings Sinatra. I'm like, what Elly,
let me just say this and you're good. For those
who don't know about this, Tremante sings Sinatra? What is
that about?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
That's actually one of my favorite things I've ever done
in my career. But it's I really just was obsessed
with Frank Sinatra, And when I got older, I decided
to try to sing like him. And because I was
at I was at a Christmas party of all things,
and I was doing karaoke and I was starting to
sing bing Crosby's White Christmas. I was like, you know,
this kind of singing suits my voice better than the
(03:56):
rock thing. Then I went down the rabbit hole with Sinatra,
read all his books, read that he was he raised
over a billion dollars for charity. And when I got
the diagnosis that my daughter was going to be born
with Down syndrome, I'm like, you know, why not record
a Frank Sinatra tribute record have all the money go
to the down Centroom community. So I partnered with the
National Down Centrome Society and it's been one of the
(04:17):
best rides of my life. We've opened up the first
life Span Down centrom clinic in the southeastern United States
and we have well over four hundred patients already in
its first two years. So we are happy as gonna
be with it.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
And could people make a donation to this?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
If so, how absolutely just go to the National Down
Centerm Society website or that if you go to Tremani
Singh Sinatra website, there's links on both spots. And you know,
we do the shows every year. All those shows go
to charity. There's a gala in New York in March.
We have our annual golf event that we do edge
all kinds of ways. You know, that's kind of our
(04:53):
new life submission is to help the community.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Your daughter's name is Stella. What a beautiful name. How
old does she now?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Still us four. Yeah, she's the sunshine of our lives. Yep.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Well, I have a niece, Macy, who's twenty one now
and she has downs too, and she's really involved with
the Special Olympics, and she's been nothing but a great
blessing to us.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Oh. I'm sure everyone I've met with down syndrom is
just kind of the anchor of their family and everybody
is just so supportive and everybody loves them. So it's
I've met some incredible people of you these last four years.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
All that, and I have to ask you about your
Christmas album again. Thinking about this rock star in Creed
and then I hear from my Italian mother he sings Sinatra,
and then I hear Christmas music and it's good, Mark,
you can really sing. I don't know who can I
compare you to Michael Bublay maybe better?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Oh? Thank well, thank you so much. It's you know,
that's how I got to start into thinking I could
do the Sinatra thing. Was like I said, with the
Christmas stuff. And when we released the Sinatra record, some
folks were like, in all, you should do some Christmas
songs and I was like, oh, I should do I
should do a Christmas record cause I love the music.
And we just got done doing a tour with the
band that just ended two days ago, actually in Atlantic City,
(06:11):
so you know, we do half Sinatra, half Christmas and
I love it.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Someone told me to ask you if you like the
amps you're making. They said they're using the MT fifteen
the last three years and it's sweet.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Well, I have an amplifier I called the MT fifteen
and the MT one hundred. That's kind of my signature amplifier.
I've got a signature guitar. The amp is definitely special.
We put years into designing it and a lot of
people love it and it's my go to amp for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
What was it like when in the Grammy.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
It's a funny story. We you know, we got nominated.
That was the third time I think we had been nominated.
We didn't win the first couple of times, and we
didn't even think to go to the Grammys. I don't
think we were invited because they weren't televising the Songwriter
of the Year award. But I remember was just griding
my bike and I got a call from my brother
(07:03):
and he said congratulations, Like what for He's like, you
want to Grammy and I had no idea. So then
I called Scott and I said I told him the news,
and he had no idea either, So it was it
was a great surprise.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Wow, what a wonderful life you have, right, absolutely, it's
it's been quite a ride. So for those who have
never attended a Creed concert, Scott kind of narrates throughout
as you do these different songs.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, Scott's just he's just a great front man, you know,
He's he's just has that magnetism I guess when he speaks,
he just he loves to get up there and just
relate what these songs mean to the band. And fans
seemed to love it, so it's you know, I think
he's just a great front man.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
It's like a spiritual experience. On one side of me,
I felt like, wow, this is like church. But then
you've got these biker dudes, these hells angels who got
their hands up too, you know what I mean. It's
awesome because people of all different walks just dig the music.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, you know, it's I think Scott got some of
that those frontman qualities from growing up in a church
where his folks, you know, I think that was kind
of a big influence on him was the way that
the pastor or the priest kind of presented themselves. I
think he at least like a rock and roll priest
up there. But we we enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
We totally enjoy it. What do you hope people take
away with them when the concert's over?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Oh, I just I just hope they they had a
great time. They're going to see a band that's that's
played their last show that we're going to do for
a few months after that, so we'll, you know, we
we won't play again until we hit the Creed Cruise
in the springtime, so we'll put everything we have into
that last show, so everybody, hopefully everybody sees the show
and says they can't wait to see the next one.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
And the last question I have for you is do
you have a favorite song that you perform on stage
with Creed?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
You know, nowadays, one Last Breath has just taken off.
You know, when we when we started out, uh, when
we were toured way back in the day with that song,
it was it was one of our bigger songs. But
now it's I think the biggest song that we play,
and it's just the best response. So that's that's definitely
one of them.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
When I was pregnant with my daughter, the morning of
I had to have a Plan C section, and I
woke up and I said, I don't think something's right,
and all this fear came over me. I got in
the car with my husband, I hit the radio and
with arms wide open, started from the heartbeat. And you know,
I was a DJ and I had played all this music,
(09:27):
you know, and you don't know this about me, but
I'm also a minister. And I was like, wow, God,
really the heartbeat. And I looked at my husband and
I was like, it's all going to be okay. And
something did happen during childbirth. And twenty something years later,
she's awesome. She's great. So just want to let you
know how much your music has blessed me and so
(09:50):
many others. I'm speaking with Mark Tremonti. He is the
guitarist for Creed. Go see Creed Missed December thirtieth a
Mohegan Sun. Get your tickets at Mohegan. Thank you so
much for being here today and for all the amazing
work you're doing.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Awesome, thanks for having me. I hope to see at
the show.
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