creed bratton tour reddit

Creed Bratton Has a Story to Tell

He left The Grass Roots in ’69 and showed up on The Office in ’05. What the hell happened in between? Some highs, some lows, a little music, and a lot of pain.

A Note from the Author: I believe what I’m setting down here to be true. I fact-checked, reported out, and cross-referenced what was possible to verify, what hadn’t been eroded by 65 years and cocaine. I tracked down and emailed cold an old flame. " This might seem like an odd question," I wrote to her. Did you have a brief affair in the Greek islands with a man named Chuck Ertmoed around 1965? Yes, she said, she had. Why was I asking about Chuck? And why did I also call him Creed? She had no idea. The few inconsistencies I found amounted to misremembered details. I have no reason to doubt anything Creed’s told me, but I’ve also not forgotten the time he stopped me during a line of questioning and said, “We don’t want the truth to get in the way of a good story, do we?”

Creed Bratton is a troubadour. If you’ll listen, he’d like to tell you a story. It’s his, and it’s complicated. There’s so much of it, so much you need to know no matter where he begins. He’s lived three lives, had five names. At least. He’s most well-known, of course, for playing the seedy, scheming octogenarian, with whom he shares a name, on the American version of the television show The Office . He turned a non-speaking background role into a cult-favorite character on one of the most successful comedies of all time, but that’s not the story. So much came before that. Like when he hitched his way, penniless, around the globe, formed a band in Germany, played gigs for oil camps in the Sahara, a brothel full of sheikhs in Beirut, smoked the most potent pot imaginable in Lebanon, chilled with Kirk Douglas in Israel, played some more music, came home, still penniless, formed another band, and then scored two certified gold singles and a gold album–all by the age of 26. Those are just highlights of the highlights, and anyway, that's not the story, either. Not to Creed.

We started talking via FaceTime in June of 2020 (he’s in L.A.; I’m in New York). COVID still felt as unpredictable as it did deadly and Creed, then 77, had confined himself to his townhouse. He was a month away from dropping his ninth solo album, Slightly Altered , and the idea was to pair a profile–Did you know Creed Bratton is a singer-songwriter?–with the release. But as we dug into his past, it became evident he was telling me a story much bigger than a pithy hidden-in-plain-sight piece.

He’s a performer to his core and I often got the sense that, having been locked inside, he was grateful for the opportunity to entertain–both me and himself. He’s spry in conversation, with the energy of an adolescent and a maddening ability to veer imperceptibly into improvised bits. As I interviewed his friends and collaborators, several people cautioned me, unprompted, no joke, Word. For. Word., in the same way: Creed fucks with you. But I’d already learned. Thirty minutes into our first interview, offhand, he mentioned he’d hidden a cryptic message about COVID in one of his songs.

Was that a joke? I paused before asking about it, just long enough to betray my uncertainty. He cackled. Have you ever heard someone actually cackle? It’s startling.

Also, no matter how heartfelt his plea seems, don’t buy it if he ever tells you he wants the group in Finland to stop sacrificing small animals in his name. I actually spent hours fact-checking before asking about it again months later. He loved that one.

What else? I don’t have space here for all of his antics. One day his iPhone’s Siri kept interrupting, “giving me shit,” he said. Soon after, she beeped and began playing J. Cole’s “False Prophets.” Somebody shoulda told me it would be like this… “Siri!” he yelled. “Stop breaking my balls!”

When Office cast-mate Kate Flannery calls while we’re talking: “It’s just Meredith trying to hook up.”

On his work ethic: “I have to admit I’m really one of those people. I’m not happy if I’m not working. Like right now talking to you, I’m just a miserable piece of shit.”

“This is good stuff,” he said. “This is good stuff. When I read it,” he said, referring to this article, “it better be as funny as this, too.” (Happy, Creed?)

We spoke weekly, sometimes daily, for months. Usually an hour or two at a time. Most often, he was sincere, committed to getting at the story, and apologetic when he couldn’t remember some detail. He sometimes called just to check in or to talk, including on my birthday, when he called to sing to me. He’s an earnest guy and, still, now 79, determined to find himself. He recently started therapy in hopes of treating his earliest traumas. A lucid dreaming class is helping him access his subconscious. He’s micro-dosing mushrooms. (Creed Bratton searching for his identity–irony, right?)

He sings about this search for himself on his most recent album, Slightly Altered , a collection of folk-adjacent songs ultimately unconcerned with genre and, instead, strung together by the humble lyrical honesty of a man longing for love and purpose. “Not Comfortable,” a gentle acoustic ballad with a naked insecurity that unfolds over four short verses, begins: “I’m not comfortable where you lead/It’s your smile I don’t believe/And not knowing quite for sure/that I have what you need.” On “Bubble & Squeak,” a jazzy confessional, he sings, “An ad hoc angel took my soul/Said she’d keep it safe for me/I keep hoping I’ll wind up/Where I’m supposed to be.”

The album was produced by Grammy-winning producer/mixer Dave Way (Michael Jackson, Fiona Apple, Echo in the Canyon) and producer/songwriter Dillon O’Brian. “Creed has this jazzy side to him,” Way said. “He has a love of country music. He loves to rock out. He loves the psychedelic stuff. He loves a sweet, down-home ballad. We can cover all this ground. And in some ways they shouldn’t exist on the same album, but just because it’s Creed at the center, he pulls it all in. He’s never fake. It might be all these different styles, but he’s always himself in the middle of it.”

The album is his ninth. The eight before it bear the same transparency. I walked him through these earliest albums, written primarily in the late ’70s and early ’80s, as a way of exhuming 40-year-old memories. Where were you living when you recorded this? Who is this you're singing about? In nearly all of them, he’s longing for something, usually love. “I’m always looking for, and maybe it’s unrealistic, that kismet, that soul mate,” he said. “Until I die I’m probably going to look for that.” And those few in the ’80s, aggressive with driving bass and yakkity sax, the ones that “really cook,” Creed said, those are pure cocaine.

Considering these songs back-to-back for the first time, he recognized a thread of despair running through them. He gave up everything—money, family, even fame—to be the artist he wanted to be. He’d seen early success as a member of the hit band The Grass Roots (“La la la la la la live for today…”), but left the group in search of creative freedom, to pursue a truer artistic destiny he felt awaited. He never found his footing, though, and instead became a failing artist falling to his vices. Those were dark years. Dark, but defining. Not the pain and not the drugs, what others want to glamorize, but that he worked his way out of both. He fought, hard, to hold onto his belief that something great waited in his future.

“There’s a lot of tragedy in these songs,” he said. “But, there’s also a wistfulness, a yearning for it to be better.” His music is what it is because he’s honest. “I’m not just trying to entertain,” he said. “I’m opening myself up and saying, ‘Here’s my fuckin’ hurt heart.’”

He’s a troubadour. What’s not clear is whether his persistently young audience, which seems intent on preserving him as his Office character, can hear the story he’s telling.

I haven’t yet seen Creed’s show live. COVID compressed his tour to a few dates late last fall and the show I could make happen, L.A. in January, was cancelled during the Omicron surge. A bootlegged video of a show he played in San Antonio in 2019 made it to YouTube. I was grateful to find it, but he’s not thrilled it’s out there. He said it feels dated, the material unfinished, that it doesn’t capture all the show’s become. But he’ll let it live. In the video, he riffs out the ending of “Spinnin’ N Reelin’,” a poppy love song he wrote when he was longing for companionship in the ’80s. A few whoops sound from the audience, he strums the final chord, the audience cheers. And then a voice shouts, “Boboddy!,” quoting from an Office skit that sees his character leading his co-workers through an exercise in which they must create an acronym (about what and why is unclear) from “BOBODDY,” a word he ostensibly had just invented. On stage, Creed smiles and offers a quiet, “Boboddy, boboddy.” The audience screams. Others lob phrases, but it’s hard to make them out. Someone tries to keep the joke rolling: “B is for business!” But Creed is already moving on.

After joining The Office , he relied more on material from the show between songs; less so these days, though he feels audiences pulling him in that direction. He’ll give them a bit of that character and then he’ll sing his songs about heartbreak and loneliness and addiction and self-doubt. He and his tour manager, Mark Evans, recently wrote a bit to break this tension. “I know you’re all here to laugh and joke about The Office , and I really appreciate that,” he’ll tell the crowd. “So, here’s another song about a dead drug dealer.”

Creed was born William Charles Schneider and raised in Coarsegold, California, a small mining outpost on the road between Fresno and Yosemite National Park. He was close with his mother, Cozzette, who he summarized as cool and beautiful, with violet eyes and the expressive charisma of Lucille Ball. She married a firefighting forest ranger named Frank and moved into his tent up in the mountains bordering Yosemite, and then convinced several of her friends to marry Frank’s friends and do the same. Two years after Creed—or Chuck Schneider—was born, his father died while serving on a naval base in Hawaii. “She was never the same after my father died,” Creed said of his mother; he wouldn’t say how exactly, just that he’d heard stories from her younger years. She eventually remarried a man named Sam Ertmoed and Chuck assumed the Ertmoed moniker (though not legally, he learned years later during another name change). Creed refused to say anything more about this time, citing some trauma.

The music in Creed’s bones comes from his family. He spent summers with his grandparents, who played in a local country and western band, The Happy Timers, around Los Angeles. “When they rehearsed,” Creed said. “I remember falling asleep behind this old Gibson amplifier hearing all this old western swing, and I just loved it.” His grandfather taught him his first chords. “As soon as I heard that first E chord come out, that was it,” he said. “I was hooked.”

If Creed’s grandfather taught him to play music, his mother showed him how to love it. “To see her on that mandolin with her eyes up, being transported in spiritual rhapsody, a spiritual euphoria. Her mouth would open. And I would be playing my guitar and watching her going, ‘She is just amazing.’” During a later, unrelated conversation, Creed painted the same image of himself performing “Boxer in a Club,” one of his most mournful songs: “The audience was right there with me,” he said. “I got lost in it. I put my head back: ‘Oh Lord, you send me.’”

Teenage Ertmoed began acting by chance when, in high school, a speech therapist recommended performing on stage to overcome a stutter. He joined a play, got some attention for it, and joined another; by the time he arrived at Sacramento State College (now California State University, Sacramento), he was majoring in drama. Before he could graduate, one of his coaches pulled him aside and told him he had the chops to act, but that he needed some life experience from which he could draw. It was the best acting advice he would ever be given. Ertmoed dropped out of school soon after and convinced a friend to hitchhike with him to New Orleans, where the two then boarded a freighter for Venice.

What begins here are the stories Creed is tired of telling. The shortest possible version goes like this: Chuck Ertmoed arrived to Venice with 25 dollars in his pocket. He met two other Americans busking in Munich and formed a band, The Young Californians. They strung together gigs that took them throughout Africa, Portugal, Spain, back to Europe, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. The trio landed in Israel and worked on the set of the Melville Shavelson film Cast a Giant Shadow , and then Ertmoed ran off to the Greek islands with Shavelson’s daughter. He played a few more shows in Europe and then returned to L.A., 55 pounds lighter and calling himself Creed Bratton (a better name for rock and roll, he decided one drunken night).

Looking for his next band, Creed called Warren Entner, whom he’d met in Israel, and the two came together with Rick Coonce and Kenny Fukomoto (who soon left the band) to form The 13 th Floor. At the same time, Dunhill Records producers Steve Barri and P.F. Sloan charted a demo, “Where Were You When I Needed You,” for The Grass Roots, a band that didn’t exist. No matter–finding faces for the cover of Tiger Beat was easy, said Kent Hartman, whose book The Wrecking Crew tells the story of the studio musicians who sat in to record the music for most of the music produced in the ’60s, including the early Grass Roots albums. “This was very much a formula,” he said. When The 13th Floor, three good-looking kids competent on their instruments, walked into the Dunhill offices looking for a recording contract, the producers countered with the option to assume the Grass Roots name and tour an album. “Our vision was to be a self-contained writing group,” Entner told me. “But The Grass Roots really did turn into a vehicle for a couple of songwriters.”

Creed’s acceptance of this arrangement endured through this group’s first three albums together. “I mean, imagine,” he said. “We were on the road. We had hit records. I’m making money. I get to fly around the United States and play for people. This is the best.” But by 1968, Creed was feeling creatively stifled. “Can you imagine being Creed Bratton and stuck in that teenie-bopper world?” Hartman said. Creed remembers breaking down in a limo, making a tearful plea that the group start writing and recording their own music. He’d been listening to the The Band, notably, their album Music from Big Pink , the product of a songwriting retreat in a small town near Woodstock. He had a romantic vision of The Grass Roots doing something similar. The group didn’t agree and, by fall 1969, Creed was out.

Here, finally, is the story Creed is keen to tell. It begins in 1970. Freed from Dunhill’s control, he opened himself up to whatever artistic destiny the “powers that be” had waiting for him, the same powers that had led him to future bandmates in Munich and again in Israel. “I didn’t have a plan,” he said. “I was just sitting there watching it happen, you know. I always knew, though, when the opportunity arose, I would be told, because that’s how my life had been.” He read and meditated on Shakti Gawain’s book Creative Visualization . He had a vision, vague but persistent, of a room filled with love, a stage, an award in his hand. The trophy didn’t matter; it could be an award for being old for all he cared. He clung to the knowledge that something more, something , awaited.

He spent his days woodshedding with his guitars in a small studio outside his house in Malibu. He started acting again. Or, he tried. He landed an audition for a Shakespeare play with a prominent director, but he only glanced over the lines before showing up. “I drive in there and I’m in my rock and roll gear, and I’m thinking ta-da, here I am. ” He bombed and begged his way off stage.

With no other prospects in L.A., Creed sold his Porsche and, with his wife, Joanna, and young daughter, Amie, left for Europe. Eight months later, after a bit of gallivanting, a little pot, and a lot of wine, they returned to L.A., broke. He and Joanna separated two years later and Creed said it was for the best when mother and daughter eventually moved to New York. He could barely take care of himself. “I wasn’t able to be the dad and study acting and work and provide,” he said. He sent Amie to New York. “It helped me that Joanna took Amie at that time. I was able to focus more on my drugs.”

Two years prior, in 1968, he’d played the legendary Miami Pop Festival and shared the bill with The Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, Fleetwood Mac. He’d toured with The Doors. Now, he took any gig he could find. He landed a spot in a band backing an Elvis impersonator at a hotel lounge in Bakersfield, but was fired after a single show when he was caught laughing as Elvis took the stage dressed like Liberace, with his microphone tucked into his pants. As a memory, it still proved a riot. “Is that your microphone or are you just glad to see me?”

The fallout was less amusing. What little of him that was still intact crumbled. “I was on my own and thought this is pretty much over,” he said. Failure surprised him. “The Grass Roots happened really fast and at a really young age,” he said. “And then you think when things happen fast they’re going to continue happening fast. Well, in my case they certainly didn’t.” In the ’60s, various substances had aided his genuine spiritual quest by providing a shortcut to the other side of the veil, a glimpse at an alternate consciousness. Fog the mind to stir the soul. Now, a few years later, these drugs that had once served his self-exploration became an escape. He slid into heroin. “Basically, my cocaine guy was out of cocaine,” he said. “But I never put a needle in my arm. Never in my life. I was always snorting.” He laughed at the justification. “Heroin is fine, just don’t use the needle, kids!”

At his lowest, he said, he was laid out on the floor of his living room in front of the fireplace, alone and high on heroin. He’d been trying to write but his lyrics were stale, fake. “I’d read it and say, ‘I don’t know what the fuck this stuff is.’” He snapped, pulled out everything he’d written in the last five years, looked over all of it, said, “Fuck this, man,” and threw it into the fire. “It was a definitive moment when I knew I was burning bridges,” he said. “I was letting go of the past. I was trying to make a new start.”

I asked about this time in Creed’s life, and this scene specifically, more often than he wanted, I could tell. He called me after a sleepless night about a month into our conversations. His mind, he said, had been fixated on the picture his drugged-out stories had painted. “Does it sound like I’m a guy who just did a lot of fuckin’ drugs and ran around and just…” And again two weeks later: “I hope that they [the kids] know that this is just something that happened and I certainly don’t advocate…” And the week following: “I am, in a sense, a grandfatherly role model for these young kids now. I don’t want them to ever see that I think that’s a good thing to do.” He’d never deny the drug use. “I can’t sugar-coat it, I did it,” he said. “They’ve got to know Creed is Creed because of this stuff, too.” Context is important. “At the time, it was required,” he said. “In a rock band, you were worthless if you didn’t smoke dope. Who would want to hang with you? That’s how we looked at it.” Mick said so. He can’t be a man ‘cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me. “I didn’t really want to do it,” he joked. “I was reluctant, but it was my job. ‘Oh, damn, I’ve got to do drugs, today.’”

By the early ’80s, he’d stopped using heroin. No rehab necessary; he was never addicted, he said. He backed off his other vices, too. “I saw very clear that I had a choice to make,” he said. “I had a destiny that I had to fulfill, or I could escape.” He focused on finding work. He met and married his second wife, Claudia, and they had a son, Beau. These were good times, more stable times, but, as with his first, the marriage lasted only a few years. He moved in with a friend, the author James Riordan, and scrapped for cash. Riordan knew a cleaned-up version of Creed, a daily grinder with a sense his work would pay off. “He knew to get ahead in the arts you had to hustle and make business calls and get your work out there,” Riordan said. “I’d be like, ‘You're going to drive to Culver City to maybe see this guy to maybe give him your resume that maybe could get you a shot at getting this agent that would help you doing this? Fuck, I wouldn’t do that.’”

Creed met the actor Beau Bridges in 1972 when Bridges cast him in a musical staged in his parents’ living room. The play closed, but the two became friends. For years, Bridges hired Creed as his stand-in whenever possible. Film sets were unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people, Bridges told me, and Creed (Bridges calls him “Charles”) was a “positive being” with a great sense of humor. “He was my hook to reality,” he said. Creed did earn a few small roles in several of Bridges’s films. Remember the 1985 Peter Bogdanovich film Mask? The asshole ticket taker at the carnival—“You can ride, kid, but I can't take the blame for what happens to the r----d here.”—that’s Creed.

He had other moneymaking schemes. “Very much like Creed the character,” he said. Where his character might sell fake IDs from his car or hawk the office’s electronics, Creed, when short on cash, would call a friend from his Grass Roots days, a producer at American Bandstand, and ask him to include one of his songs in the Rate-A-Record portion of the show. “ Ka-ching ,” Creed said. “Money comes in when it airs. I can live another month.” Another scheme: being a stone fox. “I was kind of a handsome guy back in the day,” he said. (This wasn’t vanity; after hearing so many others wax poetic about young Creed Bratton’s charm and good looks, it now seems more like modesty.) “There were so many women’s couches I was living on and running out in the middle of the night with my guitar and my bag saying, ‘Uh, uh, I can’t stay…’” He wasn’t proud; he was describing survival. “I felt bad at times,” he said. “But I also realized this was my card that I had to play.”

It wasn’t always a romantic dalliance that earned him a bed. Peter White, a friend who produced some of Creed’s early music, once opened his door to find Creed standing with nothing but a guitar and a paper bag. Both remember the occasion, neither have complete confidence Creed had anything more in his car.

Creed held down a catering job for something like eight years in the late ’90s, got his own place, a dilapidated half-garage apartment in Beverly Hills with a leaky roof, a mattress leaning against a wall, and a view. The work, mostly craft services at B, C, and D movies, gave him stability, but it nearly broke him. The physicality was bad enough, dragging tables and chairs from a tiny van, and then cramming them back in, working his ass off just to live, but the pity was worse. “People would see me that knew The Grass Roots and there I was serving food,” he said.

The swagger that carried him into his first audition faded. He grew to hate the way people looked at him. He’d be introduced at parties: “Creed used to be in The Grass Roots,” they’d say, 30 years later. “After a while, that wears real thin,” he said. Too many times, people had good intentions but no tact. “Well, at least you had The Grass Roots.” He grimaces, the memory disgusted him. “You’d hear that,” he said. “‘At least you had that one. More than most people.’ But I never bought into it. I would not accept that it was over.”

His vision sustained him. He saw what others couldn’t. That room. The overwhelming of love.

He never missed acting class. He landed a few small roles, a guard in the film Neon City , a gas station worker in Bridges’s Secret Sins of the Father —encouragement enough to keep going. Clippings from local newspapers show him popping up to play music, brief residencies at L.A. cafes in ’89 and ’95. He recorded enough songs to self-publish three albums in 2001 and 2002. A few bands formed and dissolved. Nothing stuck. More than once, it was suggested that he let go of acting and music, get a straight job. He’d say, “I don’t have a plan B.”

Depression set in again. His ego hurt. His old vices started to take another hold. His body hurt. He drank more. He saw where this was going. He’d been here before. He realized, again, he had to make a choice. He threw his hands in the air and made a plea. To whom? God? The universe? Those powers that be? It’s unclear. He quit his catering job and accepted a friend’s offer for stand-in work on The Bernie Mac Show . He didn’t want the gig, but it was at least closer to the action than the buffet. On set, director Ken Kwapis overheard Creed entertaining another stand-in with tales from the road. “There were little bits of it that were so tantalizing,” Kwapis said. “I remember him saying something like, ‘When we opened for The Doors at The Whiskey….’ And I thought, what the hell is going on here?” He finally turned to the conversation right as Creed started playing air guitar. “This is a lick that Hendrix taught me,” he heard Creed say. Kwapis, a rock and roll fan, knew The Grass Roots, and the two became friends.

When Kwapis was tapped to direct the Office pilot, Creed, a fan of the British version, asked if they needed stand-ins. Instead, Kwapis offered a week’s pay for a non-speaking role sitting at a desk in the background of the pilot. This put Bratton on screen, but it wasn’t an obvious break—this Americanized knockoff was a risk.

NBC made a tentative six-episode order for a first season and, with the show suffering derisive reviews and struggling to find an audience, parceled out small orders for season two. “We were always living on the edge of whether we were going to get cancelled,” said Kent Zbornak, producer and, later, co-executive producer, for the series. Still, Creed stayed on as a weekly background player week after week. He felt certain this production and this cast were a rare opportunity to be part of something special.

A few episodes into filming season two, he approached Zbornak with a sort of audition tape, a six-and-a-half minute confessional-style talking head, like those used in the show, previewing his idea for a character. On another production, Zbornak said, he would have rerouted Creed to the casting director and the standard auditioning process, but the show’s slow and uncertain start, paired with executive producer Greg Daniels’s uniquely collaborative production style, had forged a tight community. Zbornak agreed to watch it and share it with the other producers.

The germ of the character is there, notably his mystery, the deadpan references to exotic drugs and illicit behavior. “It was typical Creed,” Zbornak said. “It was unique, it was quirky, it was insane, it was vulgar, but it was absolutely funny.” Zbornak took the video to the writers’ room and showed Daniels and a group of writers and producers. “They were all, of course, enraptured by it,” he said. “They thought it was funny, and they applauded Creed for going the extra mile to try and pitch himself.”

Meanwhile, the writers were in pre-production on a script that would see office manager, Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell, firing a non-speaking background character, either Creed or Devon, played by Devon Abner. Creed had no idea. Daniels took the question to the principle cast members to solicit their opinions. “Greg would go down to [the cast members] and just ask, ‘This is the story line for Halloween, we haven’t decided how it’s going to end. Who do you think Michael would fire?’” Zbornak said.

“We all kind of weighed in on that decision,” Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight Schrute on the show, said. “I remember Greg pulling us aside ‘So, I’m going to fire one of these two actors. What do you think? Who do you think?’ I was like, ‘Oh my god. Don’t foist that responsibility on me.’” Wilson did have a gut feeling, though. “‘I think Creed is someone we’re going to want to have around,’” he remembered telling Daniels.

The writers developed a rough ending that kept Creed on the show. Zbornak printed the script, found Creed sitting at his desk on set, and dropped the pages in front of him. “I said, ‘Here you go, you’ve got a huge role in this episode; start committing it to memory,’” he said. “‘This is your shot.’”

Six-and-a-half pages opposite Steve Carell. Creed marveled at the script: Michael, forced by corporate to downsize and tortured by prospect of making someone dislike him, makes a waffling attempt to fire Creed, who resolutely refuses his fate (“Undo it!”) and, instead, redirects it at Devon. “It was an enormous role of the dice,” Daniels said. And because production was flexible, nothing was guaranteed. “The amount of risk that Creed was running in that scene was very similar to what the character was doing. If he hadn’t done a good job, we would have re-shot it with Devon playing that role. And Creed would have been out of a job.”

Did Creed know that? Did this scene feel like his shot?

Was he scared?

He was prepared. He learned his lines forward and backward. He recorded them and listened to them while he slept. He felt them in his bones. And then he walked onto set and learned the writers had tweaked the scene. They gave him new lines. He found a secluded corner near the green room and panic-prayed to those powers that be. I’ll get out of the way and let you guide me. “And then I went in there and played hardball with one of the best comedic actors in the world,” he said.

“It was like he stepped up to bat and hit the game-winning home run, but he’d never picked up a bat before,” Daniels said. “It was an extraordinary thing that he did. And then everybody loved writing for him.”

Creed was promoted to weekly guest star and, in an outtake a few episodes later, the writers merged his past with his character’s when, on a booze cruise, his character reveals he played in the band The Grass Roots in the ’60s. “As you can imagine, drugs played a part,” he says, matter-of-fact, in a talking head. As the character developed, the writers often mined Creed’s past for inspiration. “The thing that makes him so fun to think about,” Daniels said of Creed’s life, “there’s almost nothing I wouldn’t believe is possible to have happened.”

The writers began to indulge this unfettered plausibility the very next season. “We found his character to be so delightful and so zany, that every time we went to him for just a quick pop,” Zbornak said, “it was so distinctly crazy and funny, we realized we had to make him a series regular.” And they did.

Take what is arguably his most famous bit from the entire series, his only line in the season three premiere, “Gay Witch Hunt.” In the episode, Michael Scott, socially illiterate and over-involved, calls a meeting to publicly invite Oscar, the closeted gay accountant played by Oscar Nuñez, to stand and “officially come out.” Oscar, humiliated, does, and just when you’re cringing so hard you think you’ll turn inside out, the shot cuts to a Creed talking head: “I'm not offended by homosexuality,” he tells the camera. “In the sixties, I made love to many, many women, often outdoors in the mud and the rain, and it’s possible a man slipped in. There would be no way of knowing.”

It’s unclear what happens to Creed on the show. The last we see him, at the end of the series finale, two police officers are leading him out of the office in handcuffs. Nearly nine years later, fans still flood the r/dundermifflin subreddit with pet theories on his past and his whereabouts, and they interact with him, on social media and in person, as if he is the character. Lines from the show are quoted back to him endlessly; he often turns down offers for drugs and invites to college parties. Creed, for his part, has stoked the mystery by selectively re-incorporating some of the character’s traits—his seedy nature, his aloofness—into his own behavior and biography. Life imitating art imitating life. Like his character, who might have killed someone, or stolen an identity, or is maybe living under his desk at the office, he’s shrouded himself in enough uncertainty and intrigue to safeguard the space he’s hollowed out for himself in a generation’s subconscious, a squatter in the zeitgeist.

“I hope it helps somebody,” Creed says about his story. “I hope it helps some young actor or some young musician not give up.” Artists dream and they sometimes suffer for it. Sometimes they search for ways to dull the pain. Even the talented ones have driven home to the wrong house. “I don’t take this as weakness. I just think it’s the feathers you wear as an artist. This is what you go through, come out on the other side. Hopefully. I’m one of the lucky ones that saw the dark stuff and got through it okay.”

What kept him going when others would have given up?

“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe that’s something we can address. Is there an X factor?”

I shrug. That’s what had drawn me to his story. How had he held onto hope for 35 years?

No one could see what he saw, he says. That vision. A room filled with love, a stage, an award in his hand. An award for what? That’s not the point. “You couldn’t talk me out of that,” he explains. “I wasn’t going to fail after that.”

He brought it up again a week later. We’d been talking about meditation and what one might find on the other side of the thin veil that separates us from our subconscious. “You sometimes think you see your destiny,” he says. “You know it and you feel it. This destiny you have is running parallel with your own life. It’s running right alongside. It’s just there. And you feel that if I stepped over, I could be right there in the future with this thing that I’m supposed to be. When you get glimpses of that future, that’s the stuff that keeps you going. I want to tell kids, these young kids, if they see something like that, don’t let anybody talk you out of it.”

Here, I see a flash of anger I hadn’t yet experienced from him, the anger he later told me terrorized him as a young man. He’s always lacked patience for doubters.

“They go, ‘You know what the odds are? Blah blah blah.’ They used to tell me this stuff, too,” he says. “Fuck you, man. Really. Fuck you. I don’t want to hear your bullshit. I’m going to go this way. Even if it’s mom and dad. I’m sorry, mom and dad. Love you. But I’ve got to do this. And they’ll respect you. If you do who you’re supposed to be, they’ll respect you for it.”

He pauses and breathes.

“God, we’re really into this stuff today,” he says.

He doesn’t like speculating on how he might have done things differently. Like, he hates it. I didn’t even bring it up. He brought it up. The same day he ranted about charisma-corroding regular people soaking up all his beautiful light. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said, calm at first. “It doesn’t really matter. If it’s past, it’s past. People always want to go, ‘Well what if you didn’t do that? What if you didn’t leave? What if you had done this? What if you’d taken that movie?’ Why even talk about it? Why even discuss it? We can’t change it. What good is it to blabber this stuff around? For me it’s just a waste of time. I don’t find it amusing,” he said, still calm. And then he shouted: “I DON’T FIND IT FUCKING AMUSING AT ALL!”

I laughed. He smiled, that’s all he’d wanted.

“Maybe the way it turned out, maybe this was the script,” he said. “It had to be. Because you can’t write songs like ‘Boxer In a Club’ if you haven’t experienced some pain.”

The boxer is the dead drug dealer. He wasn’t joking.

“I want the music to be more than the character,” he said. “But I can’t be a crusader for that. If they get the music, they get the music. I’m not going to stop being funny and giving them that character because I wouldn’t be there with my music if The Office hadn’t slipped me through the door.”

For another bit in his show, Bratton’s tour manager gives him a critic’s review of a previous gig, actually written by Creed, that has just come out: “Tonight, Creed played the hits from his long-forgotten catalog. This almost-adequate show gave phoning it in a new meaning. He set the bar just high enough, with a lot of inside jokes that no one got. Yet, throughout the evening, he always seemed pleased with himself for no apparent reason. Even though it starts out sort of slow, it really bogs down at the end. You’ll leave the show like me—confused and unfulfilled. Which is apparently just what he wants.” “Yeah, well, all right,” Creed says, rolling up the paper and feigning annoyance.

Deprecation aside, it’s an interesting moment of self-awareness. Creed’s banter between songs does, at times, play like an inner monologue. He does seem pleased, sometimes with himself, but mostly with the moment, as if he were made for this, lived through hell for this, fought to maintain belief in this, as if he were destined to be here playing music, telling stories, a room filled with love, a stage, the audience in his hand.

Photos by Andrew Hreha Makeup by Sarah Kuhl

@media(max-width: 73.75rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.4375rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.5625rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}} Music

The Songs of the Summer Have Officially Arrived

The 50 Best Songs of the ’90s

The Best Songs of 2024 (So Far)

Watch a Rufus Wainwright and John Legend Duet

Barry Keoghan Stars in a New Music Video

The Things We Don’t Say About Rap Music

21 Songs to Kick-start Your Pride Playlist

DIIV Brings Shoegaze for the Revolution

Childish Gambino Is Back, Baby

Kings of Leon’s Caleb Followill Is Different Now

Four Hours with the Breakout Band of 2024

Chicago Concert Reviews

We’ve got the windy city covered., creed bratton from “the office” and the grass roots sets one-man show sights on city winery.

Posted by Jim Ryan

While he’s best known today for his role throughout nine seasons and 201 episodes of NBC comedy “The Office,” actor/singer songwriter Creed Bratton also performed in the late 1960s as a member of pop rock group The Grass Roots, appearing on four studio albums and hits like “Midnight Confessions” and “Let’s Live For Today.”

In addition to film work and a book, Bratton is also prepping the release of his tenth studio album, “Tao Pop,” working, as he did in The Grass Roots, alongside members of famed Los Angeles session group The Wrecking Crew.

“The Office” featured Bratton-penned tracks like “Spinnin’ N Reelin’” and “All The Faces,” and his current tour, which arrives at City Winery on Tuesday, January 23, 2024, ties together all of his worlds, featuring music and comedy with a focus on storytelling during a one-man show.

Bratton has fond recollections across the Windy City, performing numerous times on the north side as a member of The Grass Roots at the former Cheetah Club in Uptown (now the Aragon Ballroom), while checking out blues acts like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band as a fan on the south side.

Chicago Concert Reviews spoke with Bratton about Tuesday’s performance at City Winery, many fond local memories, the process of putting together “Tao Pop,” his tenure on “The Office” and much more. Highlights, lightly edited for length and clarity, follow below… 

Well, I know you toured a bit last spring and you’re getting ready to launch this tour. How’s your year looking so far?

How do you approach the process of curating a performance like this that draws from music, your acting roles and your real life?

Bratton: Well, it’s always very puzzling. I’m not even sure who I am! People always say, “But you’re playing yourself…” Maybe a little bit. But not entirely, you know? I’m really nothing like the guy from “The Office.” He was a character, even though I wrote that character myself. If I’m on stage performing, like at City Winery, telling my stories to the audience, it could easily be [in front of] a camera instead of the audience. You could be filming it too at the same time. It’s pretty close to the same thing. Music, you’re playing and singing of course – but you’re still telling a story. You’re still emoting and conveying emotion and telling a story to the audience (or the camera).

This is more personal. You’ll hear me tell my stories from the Grass Roots days, my days in Europe traveling before the Grass Roots and, of course, “The Office” and what’s happened since. In between, I do songs from my albums.

Any fond memories that stick out for you over the years in Chicago?

Bratton: Well, The Grass Roots used to play this club called The Cheetah with The Chambers Brothers. We toured with them a lot. We had some great shows back then in Chicago. Of course, it’s a great city. They dig their music. I remember when I first came there – god, it had to be 1967 or ‘68 – but we went down to the south side and we saw the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. I saw Mike Bloomfield play. I went, “Well, I shouldn’t even play guitar.” Because he was just blisteringly hot. Amazing. That was a great band.  Great music comes from Chicago. I love it.

Speaking of the blues, have you ever visited the old Chess Records building? That building is actually still there… 

They did. I know they recorded “2120 South Michigan Avenue” there. The instrumental.

Bratton: It’s got that sound – that one mic in the middle of the room practically. Not a whole lot. Not like they mic them today – where they mic the back of your neck to get a sound.

I’ve read that you’re working on a new album. How is “Tao Pop” shaping up?

Bratton: I’ve been working with the multi-Grammy Award-winning [producer/audio engineer] Dave Way, who’s worked with Sheryl Crow and Pink. So many people. And my friend Dylan O’Brien produced this album. So, this is my tenth studio album and my fifth with Dave and Dylan. After all of these years, I’ve got my pick of the L.A. musicians now that can get up to the studio. Dean Parks and people that are still alive from The Wrecking Crew will come up and play with me. It’s pretty nice. It’s an enviable position for me with the access of people that I have to work with. 

I have what I think are really interesting concepts for my albums. I usually use a different artist, talk with them and see what we can come up with. This one, I’m very, very happy with. You’ll see it. It’s coming out. It’s me reaching out to these two AI robots handing me their baby – and the umbilical cord is still connected to the mother. What this means? Your guess is good as mine! But, it’s what I saw when I was meditating. So, I said, “Well, I’m not gonna second guess it. Let’s do that. That sounds cool.”

You mentioned The Wrecking Crew, who backed The Grass Roots and so many others in the studio. What was it like watching musicians like that, who could play virtually anything, apply their craft?

In syndication and on cable, “The Office” has continually exposed you to a new audience now for almost 20 years. That’s not something most artists get to experience. How gratifying is it to see that play out?

Bratton: It’s astonishing. I’m kind of like a big deal on TikTok – 4.7 million watching my stuff, you know? I have to protect myself in L.A. from the screaming fans. The kids start screaming. It’s kind of nuts! I don’t know why. But that’s not your problem. My fame is not your problem! (Laughing) My songs “Spinnin’ N Reelin’” from the karaoke party [episode] and “All The Faces” from the finale. Those are still downloaded a lot! Those songs actually went viral. It’s remarkable! I wouldn’t be out touring at my age playing for people and doing what I do if it hadn’t been for “The Office” opening that door – again.

Creed Bratton performs at City Winery on Tuesday, January 23. For additional details, visit CreedBratton.com and CityWinery.com/Chicago .

Copyright © 2012-2023 Chicago Concert Reviews. All Rights Reserved.

The enigmatic awesomeness of Creed Bratton from 'The Office,' who's performing in Detroit

Recreational drug expert. Scuba-diving aficionado. Grower of mung bean sprouts in his desk drawer at work. Possible kleptomaniac. Probable fugitive.

The fictional Creed of NBC's "The Office" was many things that the real actor/musician Creed Bratton, who played him, was not. Thank goodness.

Asked when he knew that his character was a hit, he says, "When I'd go through the markets and people pulled their children away from me, grabbed their wallets, then I realized I was doing something right."

Five years after "The Office" ended its run, Bratton continues to draw young fans with the nonconformist gusto he displayed on TV. His concert tour for his new album "While the Young Punks Dance" arrives Tuesday at Detroit's St. Andrew's Hall .

Bratton, a former member of the 1960s band the Grass Roots (whose hits include "Let's Live for Today" and "Midnight Confessions"), spoke to the Free Press about his dual careers, his early movie and TV gigs and the fate of a Yorkie dog he once threatened to consume.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

He appeared with the Grass Roots in the 1968 movie "With Six You Get Eggroll": Did Bratton get to meet the film's star, Doris Day? "Oh yes, and Barbara Hershey and George Carlin – it was his first (movie) and he was hysterical – and Brian Keith, a great actor, but I think this was his first comedy of this stature. He was like a fish out of water." Bratton confirms what children of the '60s long suspected: Doris Day used special camera filters to maintain her timeless beauty. "You'd see all the actors and (then) they'd come to her and all of a sudden there was this diffused Vaseline image," he recalls.

His first TV credit was as "Man Entering Lab" on the influential 1974 drama "Kolchak: The Night Stalker":  Bratton explains that he did a lot of television back then on shows like "Eight is Enough" and "Quincy M.E." with Jack Klugman. "People ask all the time, 'What happened to you between the Grass Roots and 'The Office'? It's like I was living in a tent in the jungle or something. No, I was working and playing in bands and staying in acting class. I just didn't have any huge success. People didn't know about me, but I was still out there doing stuff."

Many fans assume he was cast as Creed because he's exactly like the character in real life:  Sorry to burst your bubble, but Bratton is a veteran performer who's done all sorts of acting, including playing Hollywood executive Darryl Zanuck in the Lindsay Lohan TV movie "Liz & Dick" about Elizabeth Taylor. He won the role in "The Office" through a very calculated effort. "I wrote the character, so I already knew how I was going to play the guy. ... I shot about an hour's worth of stuff that I had written, then I ad-libbed a bunch of stuff. I gave it to them and didn't tell anybody. They gave me a shot with the Halloween episode and boom!"

He connects with younger fans and younger actors because ... :  "I think I"m young at heart," says Bratton, whose concerts attract both newer fans and older ones who remember the Grass Roots. His newer fans leave appreciating his introspective songwriting skills. "They say, 'We came to see Creed from 'The Office,' but we left really appreciating your music and being moved by it.' That to me is very rewarding."

He knows some pretty cool actors besides his "The Office" co-stars:  Bratton befriended John C. Reilly during the making of 2011's "Terri," an indie film nominated for a Sundance grand jury prize.  "We hung out a couple days and played guitar together," he says. Bratton also appears in the upcoming film "The Sisters Brothers," which stars Joaquin Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal in what he describes as a noir Western. "Joaquin and I ad-libbed a bunch of stuff," says Bratton. Does he see a bit of himself in the idiosyncratic Oscar-nominated actor? "I don't think I was as intense as he is at that age," he admits.

His stage show mixes comedy with music. Will Creed, the character, be making a guest appearance at Bratton's St. Andrew's stop? "Don't worry, don't worry, Detroit," he says. "During the show, I go, 'Alright I know what you're here for.' And I get that look on my face, like I'm a fibrillating, broken-tuning-fork individual ready to crack. And they just love it. And then it's, 'OK, back to the plangent lyrics.' "

He once made a promotional video where he jokingly threatened to cook and eat an adorable dog if people didn't buy tickets for his tour:  Bratton laughs when he recalls a ruined take where Tiger, a tiny Yorkie, yelped immediately after he talked about eating him. "He does this Scooby Doo turn of the head and he looks right at me. The camera started shaking and everyone was laughing." The good news? Tiger, whom he babysits for his son and daughter-in-law, is doing just fine. "Tiger is a little singed," he teases. "He jumped off the barbecue"

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds: 313-222-6427 or [email protected].

Creed Bratton

8:30 p.m. Tue.

St. Andrew's Hall, Detroit

$20, available through LiveNation.com

Your cart -

• 0"> −

Taxes and shipping calculated at checkout

Creed Bratton's story has always been a music story, but a relentless drive for success and a stroke of luck led him down an entirely different path in Scranton, PA. Now, as he prepares to release his 10th studio album, Tao Pop , on September 27, Bratton cements his place in music history as he blissfully explores his many interpretations of pop music.

Tao Pop marks Creed’s fifth time working with multiple Grammy Award-winning producers Dave Way (Michael Jackson, Fiona Apple) and Dillon O’Brian (Keith Urban, Brian Wilson, Ringo Starr). To collaborate on four individual tracks, he brought in longtime friends Billy Harvey, Geoff Pearlman, Vance DeGeneres, and Dillon O’Brian.

There's a natural sense of humor across the record, as seen on tracks like first single "Turn The Corner Of The Universe," an infectious anthem that imagines a future where climate change is in our rearview mirror. There’s also Tao Pop 's cover art, a futuristic depiction of Creed adorned with a USB outlet in his skull, inexplicably receiving an AI-baby from its AI-parents. Obviously, this is because Creed’s a funny guy––what started as a non-speaking role quickly turned him into a global star for his work as Creed Bratton on the American version of The Office, which is now one of the most streamed television shows of all time.

But many might not realize his life in the spotlight first began with music, and Tao Pop feels like a culmination of his many eclectic experiences. Raised in a small mining town between Fresno and Yosemite, Creed saw his mother and grandparents all playing music from a very young age. Later, he’d impress with his acting skills in school plays before eventually dropping out of his drama major in college to travel across the world in search of himself. He’s told this story before––busking across Africa, Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and later becoming a member of the folk-pop group the Grass Roots, Creed experienced more in his early musical lifetime than most could say they’d ever aspire to, but he always felt there was more. Bratton’s solo career technically began the moment he left the Grass Roots in 1969 but he kicked it off with his debut album in 2003, Chasin’ The Ball . Eight more full-lengths followed, each one unraveling more layers of Bratton’s extensive musical universe.

Today, in his everyday life, Bratton embraces a sense of acceptance for whatever is meant to happen next. In the same sense, Creed’s autodidactic nature shines through in his music-making process. He lets the songs come to him, allowing his subconscious to guide the way. This approach mirrors his broader philosophy: the world is here to help us, but we often get in our own way. By allowing the Tao to cruise through his life, Creed processes trauma and expresses spiritual yearning through his music.

Co-written with Vance DeGeneres, “Turn The Corner Of the Universe” stands out as a particularly uptempo moment on Tao Pop . Inspired by an article Creed thinks he read in Popular Mechanics––”something about the healing ozone hole in the Arctic Circle,” he says––the song imagines a future when humans finally get their act together and stop polluting the planet; a utopia with clean oceans and no more plastic waste. When asked further about the song’s inspiration, Bratton gleefully defended himself: "people have been blaming me for climate change and I’m just sick of this. It’s not my problem!”

The album’s artwork was inspired by Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near ; after reading it, Creed envisioned the image while meditating, imagining a world where AI-bots and humans coexist seamlessly. In this dream, Creed is the last human standing, thriving in a world dominated by robots and AI—a poignant metaphor for his enduring presence in the music world.

• Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
• Press the space key then arrow keys to make a selection.

What Happened To Creed From 'The Office'? Here's What He's Up To Today

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Creed Bratton is well-known for his portrayal of the character Creed, the quality assurance director at Dundee Muffin on NBC’s The Office for eight years. With Bratton’s eccentric character, every episode got its own shot of absurdity for all nine seasons.

Bratton, now 78, has been able to make his mark in the film industry with a successful career well beyond his role as an absurd employee with a shady past. Prior to the time Creed, the fictional character, was taken away in handcuffs in the final season of The Office , he was a musician turned actor. Here are the details of Bratton’s peculiar career in the arts, with the inclusion of what he’s currently up to.

6 His Musical Career

Even though Bratton always had a fondness for hitchhiking and other kinds of adventures, the star is also well-read and earned a degree in theater from the Sequoias and Sacramento State College before later teaming up with The Grass Roots rock band as their lead guitar player. Shortly after, the band was shot into the spotlight with hit songs such as ‘Midnight Confessions’ and ‘Let’s Live For Today’.

During the Summer of Love in 1967, Bratton went on tour with the band and later went on to sell millions of records within the same period. Two years later in 1969, the eccentric musician left the band in pursuit of other creative avenues which led him to a career in acting.

RELATED: Jennifer Aniston Secretly Crushed On This 'The Office' Star

5 Bratton Always Knew He Wanted A Career In Acting

Regardless of Bratton’s career in the arts starting with music, the star was well aware that he wanted to build a career as an actor. In his words, “I was always planning to be an actor.” In an interview with the Submerge Magazine , the star stated, “ Music was just something I did. I didn’t know until I went to school that everyone didn’t know how to play music. I just thought ‘everybody does this,’ you know?”

Apart from Bratton’s character in The Office , the star has also landed several other roles in television shows including The Bernie Mac Show on Fox, Grace and Frankie, and Hulu’s Into the Dark, among several others.

His cinematic bodies of work include a 2011 selection for the United States dramatic competition by David Guy Levy called Terri at the Sundance film festival. Also included is a historical drama based on the time of the Civil War called Saving Lincoln which came out in 2013. He was also cast with Lindsay Lohan to star in the Elizabeth Taylor biography called Liz & Dick . Later, he played a small role in the 1985 Hit movie, Mask .

4 He Started Out On 'The Office' As A Background Character

Bratton kicked off his professional acting career in the '70s, however, the star’s big break came much later when he portrayed the role of Creed, an absurd character on The Office . Initially, Bratton was hired on the show as an extra, but he was able to climb out of the background into becoming a regular cast member on the show after a little improv.

Bratt0n spoke about his audition tape to Submerge , a take that essentially consisted of him ad-libbing some stuff. In his words, “The second season came in, and in the first or second week, they threw a script on my desk and said, well, everyone thinks you’re really funny, so here you go. It was a 6-and-a-half-page scene with Steve Carrell, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is it!’”

RELATED: Creed Bratton Wasn't Even Supposed To Be A Character On The Office

3 He Landed a Voice-Over Role in ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’

In 2020, apart from his musical endeavors, Bratton was also featured in an episode of the sci-fi series Upload from Amazon Prime Video.

He landed a voice acting gig in a popular first-person shooter game known as Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War . Shortly after the release of the new Call of Duty game on November 13, reports reached Republic World of fans claiming to have heard Bratton’s clear-cut voice in the game. He voiced the character of Jason Hudson’s CIA-affiliated supervisor, Emerson Black.

2 Creed Bratton Has 9 Solo Albums In His Discography

In addition to acting, Bratton has stayed true to his music career over the years. While he was a member of The Grass Roots, he was a major advocate for the band members having more creative control over the group by writing their own songs. Duly, the star has gone on to write several songs over the years and in fact, Bratton has a total of nine solo albums to his name.

Because of Bratton’s extensive financial success from starring on The Office, the star was able to fully pursue his dream type of music and unleash the full potential of songwriting skills. In an interview with AMNY , the star state: “All through the years I wrote and wrote, but a lot didn’t come together then. I had so many songs and albums written . I recorded a few albums, but some things fell through. I don’t think I had the confidence then. It was really when The Office came on that I had the money to start to compile my work.”

RELATED: What Steve Carell's Life Was Like Before 'The Office'

1 He Has Been On Tour Since Last Year

Ever since Bratton’s latest album, ‘Slightly Altered’ was released in 2020, he has been going on tour to different countries with fans asking for an encore. In an interview after a few concerts, he stated “I went to England and Scandinavia and the shows went really well. They want me to come back for ten days. This time, I’ll go to Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, and a few more places.”

Currently, he is on tour and his concert kicking off in Australia on the 14th of October 2021 before hitting the U.K. and Ireland later In February 2022.

Bratton was married twice in the past, first to Claudia Anderson from 1976-1983 and then later to Josephine Fitzpatrick from 1967-1974. He has a daughter named Annie Bratton and is always talking about his beloved granddaughter during his interviews. Outside his ride through the entertainment industry, Bratton is an adored father and grandfather who now lives happily in Los Angeles.

NEXT: Everything 'The Office' Star Brian Baumgartner Has Been Up To Recently

Music + Concerts | ‘The Office’ star Creed Bratton…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Food & Drink
• Amusement Parks
• Daily News Store

Things To Do

Music + concerts, music + concerts | ‘the office’ star creed bratton talks grass roots rock fame, ‘slightly altered’ new album.

As lead guitarist for the Grass Roots in the late ’60s, Bratton was part of the psychedelic pop/rock band’s peak period when singles such as “Midnight Confessions” and “Let’s Live For Today” cracked the Top 10.

As a character actor, decades of scuffling around Hollywood ended in 2005 when Bratton, who’d been hired as a background player on the new sitcom “The Office,” pitched a loosely fictionalized character based on his own life and ended up a fan favorite playing the hilariously strange quality assurance manager “Creed Bratton” for nine seasons.

“Slightly Altered” is the ninth solo album by Creed Bratton, whose credits including acting in all nine seasons of “The Office” and a stint in the late ’60s with the classic lineup of the rock group the Grass Roots. (Album cover art courtesy of the artist)

Creed Bratton from the TV show “The Office” is seen here playing guitar with Bob Thiele and The Scrantonians during a fan convention for the sitcom at the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania on Oct. 27, 2007. (AP Photo/Steve Klaver)

The cast of “The Office” television series in 2013 included, left to right, Creed Bratton as Creed Bratton, Angela Kinsey as Angela Martin, Phyllis Smith as Phyllis Vance, Ed Helms as Andy Bernard, Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesly Halpert, Brian Baumgartner as Kevin Malone, Oscar Nunez as Oscar Martinez, Catherine Tate as Nellie Bertram, Ellie Kemper as Erin Hannon, Leslie David Baker as Stanley Hudson, Kate Flannery as Meredith Palmer, and Paul Lieberstein as Toby Flenderson. (Photo by Tyler Golden/NBC)

Singer-songwriter and actor Creed Bratton released his ninth solo album, “Slightly Altered,” on July 17, 2020. (Photo by Andrew Hreha)

“It’s unprecedented, right?” Bratton says by phone from his Studio City home recently. “To get to be in a hit band and on a hit show?

“I don’t know what I did right but I obviously did something right for that to happen,” he says. “I never imagined I’d get up in the position I’m in now because you have to understand for 30 years I was hand-to-mouth, really struggling, struggling, struggling.

“And when this hit, you think, ‘OK, well, how long will it last? It won’t last very long.’ And it just keeps going.”

‘Slightly Altered’

Bratton focused on acting after leaving the Grass Roots in 1969, frustrated by their management’s reluctance to let the band write and record more of their own material. “The Office” gave a boost to a solo career, though, with three albums released while it was on the air and now two since it wrapped in 2013.

For “Slightly Altered,” Bratton reunited with producer Dave Way,  whose resume includes albums by Fiona Apple, John Doe, and recently Louise Goffin , with whom he invited three talented bands to back him in the studio.

Bratton met and befriended the Mojo Monkeys after catching a show at Ireland’s 32 in Van Nuys, later sitting in a few times with the rootsy trio who’ve backed artists such as Tower Of Power, Lucinda Williams, Richard Thompson and Mike Ness.

Way, who produced the soundtrack to the Laurel Canyon music documentary “Echo In The Canyon ,” introduced him to its house band at the premiere, and they and a third group — who has a name we can’t print but includes the rhythm section from Elvis Costello’s Imposters — also joined the sessions.

His 2018 album, “While the Young Punks Dance,” was an introspective, gentle set of songs. For the new one, Bratton says he wanted to move people in a different way.

“This is more like, ‘Get up and boogie,’” he says. “I wanted to get up and dance. I didn’t want to another of the contemplative ones.”

The lead single, “Chan Chu Toad,” arrived after Bratton got curious about the ornamental toad that had occupied his house for years.

“One day I was looking at the thing and I decided to look it up, what it was, and I started reading the story,” he says of the Chinese legend about a wife who steals an elixir of immortality from her husband and is turned into a toad.

“I didn’t sit down specifically to write it — I never do that,” Bratton says. “They just come to me, and all of a sudden that information was in my head.

“And it’s so ‘Creed’ — the character Creed from ‘The Office,’” he says of the topic of the tune. “It’s weird, a very odd song. It’s like Steely Dan meets I don’t know what.”

The opening track on the album, “Mose Was a Runner,” is also a nod to “The Office,” inspired partly by the departure of writer-producer Mike Schur — who played the often-running, always weird character Mose Schrute — to launch “Parks & Recreation.”

His Grass Roots past also surfaces, though not in a predictable way. He covers “Temptation Eyes,” a single the band released after Bratton left the band. Bratton does a slowed-down arrangement that he first came up with before sitting in with other members of the Grass Roots for the Whisky A Go Go’s 35th-anniversary show in 1999.

“One day I’m just kind of learning the song, and I come up with this finger-picking part to it,” Bratton says. “It totally changes it, because it’s a driving song. So then I incorporate it into my set because I think the only (Grass Roots) song I would play when I was touring was ‘Where Were You?’ and ‘Live For Today.’

“I think anybody that’s a Grass Roots fan and knows that song is going to be very intrigued by that.”

Becoming Creed

Now 77, Bratton was born William Charles Schneider. When his father was killed during World War II, his mother remarried and now he was Chuck Ertmoed, which wasn’t an easy name for an elementary school boy to carry.

“Young boys who weren’t so cool would come up to go, ‘Hey Urrrrrp-moed!’ and put their finger down their throat so that they’re throwing up,” Bratton says.

Still, it was his name when he headed overseas with the folk band the Young Californians, a trek that led to Israel where he met future Grass Roots’ bandmate Warren Entner at a festival and exchanged phone numbers.

After working in Israel on the Kirk Douglas picture “Cast A Giant Shadow,” Bratton left the Middle East to hitchhike to Berlin and London, stopping for a few days in Athens. While there, he spent a day hanging out with a couple of fellow travelers from Oregon.

“I told them that I had this vision, I saw myself up on stage playing guitar, and I said I see myself being very successful doing this,” Bratton says. “They said, ‘What’s your name?’”

After telling them, they suggested that Chuck Ertmoed definitely was not a rock star name.

“I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ and they said why don’t you make up a new one,” Bratton says. “We’d started drinking ouzo by then, no, retsina, godawful stuff.

“The next morning I wake up in a horrible hangover,” he says. “My liver is there, you know, drinking a cup of coffee, like, ‘Can I get back in your body now?’ And there on the table, I see a tablecloth.

“We had taken the tablecloth and all these names were on there, crossed out, except for one that was circled with stars around the edge. So I took my knife out and I cut that piece out and put it in the bottom of my rucksack.”

And then he forgot all about it until a year later when he was about to sign a contract with Dunhill Records as part of the Grass Roots.

“I signed, ‘Creed Bratton,’” he says. “Everyone looked like, ‘What the hell?’ I said, ‘This is my new name.’ At that moment, the ‘odd Creed’ reputation started happening.”

Becoming ‘Creed’

“So I wrote the character. I spent like a week writing little bits, once I was there on camera in the background,” he says. “Even though my computer didn’t work, I’m down below making notes, and then I shot it.

“The original premise was that Creed from the Grass Roots stayed wild and crazy,” Bratton says. “He had a blackout period, he ended up on a Greyhound bus, next thing he knew he’s passed out in a dumpster in Scranton.”

Found by Ed Truck, the Dunder Mifflin branch manager before Steve Carell’s Michael Scott , Creed was given a job and despite being horrible at it and so weird and intimidating that everyone decides to ignore him.

“That was my premise,” Bratton says. “Then I ad-libbed a bunch of stuff, sang a song a cappella about the Incredible Hulk.

“They told me it was very funny, and then the writers just took it and ran with it.”

• Newsroom Guidelines
• Report an Error

More in Music + Concerts

Music + Concerts | Additional tickets for Foo Fighters concerts at BMO Stadium have been released

Music + Concerts | Inglewood’s Intuit Dome is poised to be the future of SoCal’s live entertainment

SUBSCRIBER ONLY

Music + concerts | orange county’s new post-hardcore band sorry baby is amped for their big debut.

Local News | Things to do in the San Fernando Valley, LA area, Aug. 8-15

Creed Bratton

Concerts and tour dates, fan reviews.

Fans Also Follow

About creed bratton.

Beyond The Joke

The Lowdown on Comedy, Theatre, TV, Food, Travel & Sam Campbell

Search form

Uk dates for us office star creed bratton.

Creed Bratton, the American actor and musician best known for appearing in ‘The Office (US)’, has announced a UK tour this October, with a show featuring a mix of live music and comedy.

The tour will begin in Nottingham on 5th October before heading to The Garage in London, as well as Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow, and Belfast.

Bratton starred in nine seasons of the award winning, critically acclaimed ‘The Office (US)’. For nearly eight years fans worldwide grew to love him as Dunder Mifflin’s enigmatic quality assurance director who unapologetically forgets the names of his own co-workers. 

While Creed may be best known for his on-screen antics, he is also an established musician with a career in music that spans nearly five decades.

Creed began playing guitar professionally as a teenager, making pocket change performing while attending Sacramento State College and College of the Sequoias where he studied theater. He went on to become member of the legendary American rock group The Grass Roots, playing lead guitar with the group on their first four albums – three of which charted and sold millions of records across the globe. Creed parted ways with the band in 1970, but continued his passion for music and acting, playing music all over Los Angeles.​

Creed has released a handful of solo albums over the years, including: “Chasin the Ball,” “The 80’s,” “Coarsegold,” “Creed Bratton,” “Tell Me About It,” and “Bounce Back.”​​

This special live show will take in both strands of his diverse career, featuring a mix of music, comedy, and stories from his life.

Tickets available via  Ticketmaster

Tags: 

Articles on beyond the joke contain affiliate ticket links that earn us revenue. BTJ needs your continued support to continue - if you would like to help to keep the site going, please consider donating .

Sign up for mailing list

• Privacy Policy

• News & Reviews
• Tours & Tickets