Listen in this week at 3:40 pm daily as Jay features Wallaceburg’s CREEKSTREET on the Local Spotlight!
See CreekStreet LIVE this Friday night at Syd Rivers in Wallaceburg and Sunday at Crabby Joe’s in Wallaceburg during the St. Patrick’s Day celebration! Also catch them live at Jack Doyle’s in Sarnia next Friday, March 22.
Article courtesy of CKDP.ca and Aaron Hall
Hopes and dreams come and go.
High school bands break-up, as often as the relationships those musicians are in.
Some musicians listen to the ‘naysayers’ and never take it seriously. Others talk about their musical careers as ‘the good ol’ days’, while having some beers with their old high school pals years later.
Other musicians leave town with the shirt on their back, the instruments in the hands, and the passion in their heart, and give it a go.
That’s exactly what four young musicians from Wallaceburg, Ontario are doing.
“As a Canadian musician, we all know how hard it is, but it happens,” said Craig James Laur, front man for CreekStreet, about “making it” in the music industry.
Craig, 22, (vocals/lead guitar) along with his brother Travis, 19 (bass guitar), Kurt Dickson, 24 (drums) and Adam Routley, 19 (piano) have moved from their parents basements in the town of 10,500 in Chatham-Kent, to the metropolis of Toronto, Ontario, where the music scene is buzzing with talent.
Craig said the band is hoping to stand out in that crowd and leave their own “footprint” in the music industry.
“If you bring something to the table that someone hears and starves for, it can happen.”
Playing gigs and recording tracks
After being in Toronto for a few months, CreekStreet is busy playing as many shows as possible and writing music like a fourth meal.
They still come home, and have been spending time at Starlight Studio on Walpole Island First Nation, just outside of Wallaceburg. While in the studio, they have their eyes set on one of their first goals.
“Play music for as many people as possible, and to have that full album in our hands and say this is us, this is what we’ve worked hard on, you are going to get to know us hearing this music,” Craig said. “You are going to get to know who we are not only as a band, but as people.”
Craig added the guys in the band and himself are willing to do what it takes.
“I have no problem eating Kraft Dinner and white rice 5, 6 days a week… as long as I’m making music and I got a roof over my head,” he said. “I wake up and I do what I love to do. People can say that, but not many of them. That’s the goal is to be successful enough to have the album, to play music regularly for as many people as we can, and to make a living off of it.”
It’s a family affair
Not only are Craig and Travis, actual blood brothers, the band feels like they are all family.
“We live together,” Craig said. “We eat, breathe, sleep… like that’s what we do. When we wake up and there is time in between we play music, we write. It has to be this way, it’s not that we’re forcing… this is just the way it has to be.”
Craig added “As a band I don’t even look at us as best friends any more. We’re family. Even if we didn’t want to be family. Everyone brings their own assets to the table and it’s catastrophic. We click so well.. the charisma is just as important as the skill level. The charisma as a musician, you have to know what you want, where you’re going. And we’re finally grasping that concept, and it’s bringing us tighter together to the point where… we’re inoperable without one another.”
Craig says the band maintains a vision, and are all striving towards the same goals.
“We’re joined at the hip whether we like it or not,” he said. “There is no other way… I don’t see it, I don’t think these guys see it. We have our ups and downs… somedays we hate each, somedays we love each other. Some days we make music, some days we don’t and we just hang out. That’s what’s going to make us successful, that underlying love, hate relationship. As long as everyone stays happy, and everyone realizes we’re in it for the same reasons, for better or worse.”
Blues, rock and sappy love songs
Craig says he bases his music off his words
“I don’t write until I have that first line that captivates me,” he says.
He said from there different songs take on different directions, different meanings or different sounds depending on the feel or emotion of the tune.
“A lot of people say ‘ well it’s all been done before, you got to do it again… No, no, you start it over and you do it different, and you try to do it, not better, but try to serve what has already been done justice,” he said.
Craig added, he has trouble putting a musical label or genre on CreekStreet.
“If you ask me… the only thing I think call it is Adult Contemporary,” he said. “I won’t put blues on that, because a 75-year-old blues artist is going to come up to me and say ‘you’re off your rocker, that’s not blues’ and I know. Or we put a little sappy love song into it… and someone will say ‘well you’re screaming there or you’re border line yelling into the mic’, that’s not sappy love music.”
CreekStreet is looking for its own feel.
“I want to put a such a fine mesh of every single one, so that you come to the conclusion that… I’ve never heard anything like this before. It’s intriguing me.. I have to know what they’re all about and what they’re doing and it’s happening right before our eyes.”
Leaving their mark
Some people enjoy playing covers in bars, while others like putting on black and white make-up and pretending they’re Gene Simmons.
The guys in CreekStreet want to have their own identity.
“You get some bumpin’ hip-hop going in the club, you want to dance,” Craig said. “You go and sit and watch the blues, you’re watching it because you love it and you appreciate it and you play it. You appreciate sappy love songs because they hit you where the heart is, because everybody needs love, that’s never gonna go away. You listen to death metal… that does something for people, it lets them get their aggression out.”
Craig says he wants to “do all that for people” and have CreekStreet leave their “own footprint” on the music industry.
Where you can find CreekStreet
Sonicbids Electronic Press Kit: www.sonicbids.com/creekstreet
YouTube: www.youtube.com/creekstreetmusic
Twitter: www.twitter.com/CkStmusic
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/creekstreetmusic
Reverbnation: www.reverbnation.com/creekstreet
