In those rare instances that a band reaches its sixth decade, it’s usually a result of stardom. It’s easy enough to keep things together when each member has a jet and techs on retainer and the world tour rolls around every few years. But that’s not how Max Creek has done it. In 40+ years Max Creek has been small, big, regionally-huge, medium, and any other size one can think of; they’ve never graced the cover of Rolling Stone, but you’d be hard pressed to find a music fan in the Northeast that hadn’t heard of them. Well then, how’d they do it? If you knew Max Creek you’d answer simply, “they just did.”

Creek lacks pretense; there is no hip style or genre-title that can define them. From the beginning they’ve mixed anything they liked—rock, country, reggae, soul, jazz, calypso—in with their own great songs and it’s all just come out sounding like Creek. As such they’ve never been the hot item in the flavor-of-the-year club yet they’ve also never gone out of style. Moreover, Creek exudes confidence but lacks ego; each member is an incredible musician but that’s never been what it was about. But that is all things Creek is not, and what Creek is is far more important.

The band is certainly joyous, and their stage is full of smiles and laughter, both during and between songs. All one has to do is glance into the crowd to see that the feeling is contagious. Creek is also much more engaging than the average band, sculpting lengthy shows on-the-fly from their 200+ song catalog with rockers, ballads, deep jams and crowd sing-alongs all tucked into their perfect places. And Creek is, most definitely, a family. 40-odd years in, the audience is a multi-generational stew; it’s not uncommon to witness old-school Creek Freeks getting down with their teenage (or older!) kids. Creek itself is multigenerational. Though the “front line” of guitarist Scott Murawski, keyboardist Mark Mercier and bassist John Rider has remained intact since the mid-70s, the current drums and percussion team of Bill Carbone and Jamemurrell Stanley weren’t even born when Max Creek was founded.