Purveyors of: Barebone post-hardcore, spit in your face family fun.File Next To: White Ribs, heavy Nirvana, Frog Eyes
Playing: January 24 @ Junction City Music Hall
Bark, bellow, bluster, clamour, holler, howl, roar, scream, screech, shout, shriek, squall, vociferate, yowl. All of these verbs and more can be found in the (insert aggressive adjective here) music of Creep Highway. They rule. Wavelength’s Adam Bradley got in touch to ask them why they rule so much.
What’s craziest show you’ve played?
We were on a joint book tour in September and played a bunch of shows along the way with borrowed gear. We played two shows within a few hours in Oakland right after we had gotten off bus from Los Angeles. The first was in a tiny gallery space where everyone had to watch us through a window. We played maybe three or four songs and received a noise complaint so we had to stop. Then we piled the gear and ourselves in the back of a windowless van and drove to this bluesy dive bar call Eli’s Mile High Club where we played another short set for a handful of people. There’s a clip of it on YouTube. We both seem really tense.
No bass in this band. What’s behind that choice?
I think it’s just easier this way.
It’s awesome that your tape was produced by Dan Lee from Hooded Fang. What was that whole process like?
Great. I know Dan through doing artwork for Hooded Fang. We did it all very quickly in the basement of Paul’s Boutique. Most of the tracks are just the first take, then Dan did some minimal mixing on it. We wanted it to sound pretty raw.
Both of you are graphic designers/visual artists of a pretty sweet pedigree. What are you both working on now?
Michael and I are both focused on making comics primarily. The book tour I mentioned was for the newest issue of his series Lose and my book Distance Mover that both came out in September on Koyama Press. Michael has started distributing a monthly comic through Patreon and just released another book called First Year Healthy on Drawn and Quarterly. I’m working on a weekly column for Vice and piecing stuff together for the next issue of my self-published series New Comics.
You both have really intensely precise drawing styles, but the cover of your cassette is really simple. Did you make it that way to reflect the stripped down nature of the music?
The cover came about through doodling and throwing drawings together. I don’t think we thought much about it. We’re both sort of known for busy drawing but it’s fun to make things a little more reductive sometimes.
— Interview by Adam Bradley