Creech Holler’s Macon fan base gets bigger every time they come to town and they don’t exploit it by stopping by too much. They let us get so hungry that when they hit the stage we’re begging for it. And they never let us down. If there is such a thing as mountain-punk music they created it. Take the energy of a late 70s punk rock band and the twang only heard in the Appalachian Mountains and you’re getting close to the Creech Holler sound. Their live shows are so energetic that it spills over into the crowd. The person to watch is drummer Christian Brooks who plays the drums and the tambourine as if his life depends on each hit being harder than the last.

The group describes itself as playing the music "of those who have been to dark places, and who left their soul there. of those who deemed it necessary to kill some poor SOB who had it coming to them, and then deemed it necessary to sing a song about it. ... It's the ghosts of America's music reborn in furious electricity."

Sounds ominous, yet this three-piece band, with songs about murders, moonshine and wild-eyed preachers, moves people to drink, dance and jubilate, and claims a great affection for the land of its upbringing.

"We just love Appalachian mountain culture, we love the geographical and social landscapes, and we like the way religious fervor and violence and riotous living all co-exist, the way the sacred and profane meet," said guitarist and singer Jeff Zentner, sounding more like a literary critic than a roadhouse guitar slinger. "It's a uniquely interesting palate from which to create our art. There's that tension between the sacred and profane which runs throughout the South but particularly in Appalachia."

The group, with roots in Tennessee and Western North Carolina, seems to feel this tension in its blood. The Saturday-night-vs.-Sunday-morning ethos does, indeed, provide plenty of fodder for songs.

"It's a tension we enjoy living around," Zentner said. "We've been to places like San Francisco, and we like it, it's a nice place, but you don't get the sense there's a lot of tension there. It's like-minded folks, and there doesn't seem to be that struggle between dark and light."

Creech Holler has played Johnson City before, and comes to The Hideaway, 235 E. Main St., for a Saturday night show with their friend Joe Buck, best known for his standup bass work with Hank Williams III's band. They have musical styles that suit each other.

Creech Holler (the "Creech" is a name from bass player Joseph Campbell's family, hailing from Kingsport) has a loud, garage-band sound that appeals to grunge and punk rockers, but the primitive, rhythmic urgency comes from blues artists like R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough or Robert Johnson. The band merges Mississippi blues with influences of Appalachian/country performers Hobart Smith, Dock Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb.

"We wanted to marry those two forms to create Southern gothic music," Zentner said. "We use that term in the way most people refer to literature. And we draw from the sensibilities of writers like Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy and Harry Crews.

"What underlies it all is a connection to the American South."

The music is not judgmental. Zentner said its dark themes focus on love and death, on the human experience that resonates with everyone. While the band members — Zentner, Campbell and drummer Christian Brooks — haven't lived such troubled lives, they can relate to these themes.

"It's the music we're naturally drawn to. Maybe it's exorcising demons," Zentner said. "We find it exhilarating, and I hope people find it that way. But when we discovered this kind of music and literature, there was an instant resonance, almost like it was programmed inside us and we finally uncovered it."

Buck himself is a story. Mohawked, wild and intense, with country music roots but a foot planted firmly in the punk world, he plays bass for Hank III, but when not on tour (the next III tour begins in July) Buck is a one-man band, playing guitar and percussion simultaneously.

"He's a wild man," Zentner said, "but he's a real nice guy offstage."

Creech Holler and Buck will each do a set, then they'll go onstage together as Creech Holler backs up Buck.

Creech Holler will also play Ireson's Pub in Bristol on June 29. For more information, visit www.myspace.com/creechholler. Joe Buck is also worth investigating online.

By Doug Janz
Press Tempo Writer

Under the Morbid Spell
Creech Holler engage in their own brand of Southern gothic barroom worship on their debut
By Jewly Hight

Gothic images of the South, such as those dreamed up in the novels and short stories of Harry Crews and Flannery O’Connor, have long wooed wide-eyed, ghost-hunting types like moths to a bright light. The members of Creech Holler count themselves among those under the morbid spell. They haven’t come to gawk, though, but to worship at the cobwebbed, mythologized altar.

Take the cover of the droning garage-blues trio’s debut album, With Signs Following. On the front is a bottle tree—dead, sinewy and adorned with glass bottles—believed from antebellum times to attract and capture evil spirits. On the back is the silhouette of a snake handler, with three of the writhing, venomous creatures raised in each hand. Along with these visual nods to fervent belief, the album title was taken from a small, Southern-dwelling sect of snake-handling, poison-ingesting Pentecostals called The Church of God With Signs Following. For Jeff Zentner, Joey Campbell and Christian Brooks, these aren’t just exotic images on display. They’re an artistic muse, a source of inspiration culled from a long-gone land of feverish religion, deep-seated superstition and white-knuckled attempts at survival.

Several of the album tracks are visceral, hypnotic retranslations of Appalachian murder ballads and Mississippi Delta standards, which the trio tackle with an almost religious zeal. Zentner batters his mountain modal-tuned electric guitar, alternating between bottleneck and clawhammer playing styles, while thick, guttural tones emanate from Campbell’s perpetually overdriven bass. Brooks pounds out raucous boom-thwack-boom beats and military-style marches on the drums, and the vocals often sink into the thick sonic milieu.

This impenetrable wall of sound has one foot firmly planted in the world of beer-soaked hipster rock dives, and the other in a dire Southern past that’s reachable now only through storytelling, song and vivid imagination. The band’s motto seems to be “the darker the story a song tells, the better”—the album opens with the bristly, churning strains of “Pretty Polly,” a traditional folk song and tale of a woman bathed in blood by her new husband. Gory violence continues during the traditional revenge ballad “Little Mathie Grove,” a song also recorded by Ralph Stanley a few years back.

With music like this, authenticity is almost a moot point. Nowadays, a rare few musicians are born into poor, isolated, pristinely preserved Appalachian settings in which they can learn old vernacular music on the front porch or out in the field.

Creech Holler’s devotion to this music and the culture that birthed it—albeit a devotion straddling reality and myth—spills over into original compositions that are as raw, primitive and willfully ignorant of any separation between Saturday night and Sunday morning as the traditions that they emulate. From the keening pulse of murder ballad “Lester Ballard,” to “Plague of Frogs,” a prophetic Old Testament retelling colored by wheezing melodica, foot stomps and tambourine, the trio sound as though they are possessed by fanatical, old, whiskey-swilling spirits.

Men of Constant Sorrow

Creech Holler is known for playing gothic country reminiscent of late night front porch sessions, sitting in creaky rocking chairs, drinking moonshine and singing about the devil and church. From the time you start playing their CD, With Signs Following, you feel catapulted straight into a scene of "Deliverance". There's an eeriness merging with an ethereal quality that is both terrifying and mystifying.

The trio, composed of Jeff Zentner (Bottleneck and Clawhammer Electric Guitar, Vocals), Joseph Campbell (Electric Bass, Vocals), and Christian Brooks on drums and tambourine, have also been involved with or are currently involved with The Katies, Parchman Farm, Porter Hall Tennessee, The Turncoats, and SJ and the Props.

Guitarist Jeff Zentner took some time out to answer these hard-hitting questions:

1. How did Creech Holler come to be? How did you guys decide on each other as members, this type of music, band name, etc.?

"Creech" is the name of our bass player's family, who are from the hills outside of Kingsport, Tennessee. I probably don't need to explain what a "Holler" is like we would if we were doing an interview for some paper in New York City. Christian and Jeff met at a Black Diamond Heavies show (a name Chattanoogans might recognize) that Jeff was opening for as a solo act. We started music and realized we had a lot in common. We brought Joey on board later to fill out the sound. Joey and Christian were already acquainted from the Murfreesboro music scene.

As for how we decided on this type of music, we didn't have much choice. It's what we knew how to play. It's music that's in our blood. We've never really made many formal decisions in that regard. There was never a point where being an experimental free jazz band was an option available to us, even if we were so inclined.

2. How would you describe With Signs Following? What's the inspiration behind it?

Dark. Raw. The inspiration for this album is the South, specifically the Southern Appalachian mountains, and even more specifically, the blood and religion of the Southern Appalachian mountains is the inspiration for With Signs Following. We try to pay tribute to musicians like Dock Boggs and Hobart Smith while carrying the Appalachian musical tradition forward.

3. Fried chicken or fried catfish?

Yes. And if you have some cornbread, we'll take some of that too.

4. Where do you see yourselves in a year? Five? Ten, fifty?

Making music. Making music. Making music. Dead.

5. If you could go on tour with one band, who would it be?

We'd probably reach a lot of appreciative fans by touring with Hank III. We seem to attract a lot of 16 Horsepower fans. If they were still around, that'd probably be a good opportunity for us as well.

6. In 30 seconds, name the top 5 albums of all time.

Now see, this isn't a fair question because too many of our favorite artists like Hobart Smith didn't really put out albums in the way that most people think of albums. How about the top 5 musicians of all time? Hobart Smith. Dock Boggs. Hank Williams. Charley Patton. Blind Willie Johnson.

7. Do you use the usual themes in your songs: religion, politics, girls, etc.? Are you geared toward meaning or nonsense?

There are some recurring themes in our music. God. Death. Murder. Life. Hard life. We are very much geared toward meaning, because the influences we draw from used music to make meaning of the world in which they lived. To pass that meaning down from generation to generation. We're not into nonsensical lyrics and songs.

8. Tornadoes. Romantic, or horrific?

Romantic and horrific. The way most good things are.

Creech Holler will be performing at The Local with Bathtub Gin on March 30 at 9:00 p.m.

- Jessica Wallin

With a sound that's part black magic and part reverent Southern evangelista, Murfreesboro-based Creech Holler plays to exorcise its own demons, but also to flaunt them in front of others, those who don't have the same gifts of darkness. The sound is frightening, but also liberating, in the same way that a good scare leaves you exhilarated and wanting more. With only drums, guitar, bass and the occasional tambourine, the trio conjures an entire history, and an entire world buried beneath the everyday mundane. It creates feelings worth exploring, the same you might hope to find in a small church way off the interstate, where things are strange, and full of fire and brimstone and shadowy demons. Also, there might be snake taming. ( Lisa Slade )

--METRO PULSE, Knoxville TN

Describing its style as Southern Gothic, Creech Holler gives an ominous twist to a sound that has existed for generations, though the band says this is less of an innovation than it may seem. The eerie yet historic folk songs that compose around half the group's catalog serve as evidence of the claim. Regardless of origin, the imagery of murder, whiskey-swigging, gun-toting and snake-handling creates a sinister backwoods atmosphere that, at times, boasts the same impression of fright brought on by watching "Deliverance."

"We refer to ourselves as a Southern Gothic band, in the same sense that writers like Flannery O'Connor and Harry Crews are Southern Gothic writers," guitarist/vocalist Jeff Zentner says. "We never set out to make dark music. We set out to make Southern music, and found that it's pretty difficult to avoid dark, Gothic themes when you do that - especially when your main influences are traditional Appalachian music and Delta blues. There's a whole vein of Appalachian music that's as dark and driving as the Delta blues that musicians of the 'amplified music era' totally ignore. We didn't start out thinking of ourselves as a Southern Gothic or 'dark country' band. Those are sort of labels that fans have bestowed upon us. We're proud of them and accept them, because the Southern Gothic tradition is a proud one."

Authenticity is a staple of Creech Holler. The band gathers its material the old-fashioned way, having many of its traditional songs passed down from regional players and obscure recordings. The band supplements this repertoire with simply structured original tracks whose basic arrangements allow for hasty assimilation as the trio struggles to find time for group rehearsal.

"To get inspiration for traditional tunes, we listen to a lot of old recordings of traditional music and we try to associate with a lot of old-time musicians who know a lot of great old traditional tunes," Zentner says. "We write a lot of our own songs. I'm generally the lyricist. I'll work up a solo version of a song, something that I could perform all alone if I needed to. Then I bring it to (bassist/vocalist) Joey (Campbell) and (drummer) Christian (Brooks), and they give me musical ideas. Sometimes they'll come to me with a rhythmic idea that they want a song built around. This process allows us to put songs together very quickly, which is good because they live 4 1/2 hours away from me.

"Our only chance to work on new material is when we have a few hours to kill before a show. Fortunately, our songs are not complicated. We don't do stops. We don't do chord changes. We do drone music."

A distinctive facet of Creech Holler's persona lies in spirits, specifically whiskey. Venues throughout the South that host the band often incorporate whiskey discounts on the night of a show.

"People seem to identify with various aspects of this band, but whiskey is certainly one of the more common threads," says drummer Christian Brooks.

"Much of the music we are playing is tied directly to the history of Southern culture and legacy, and whiskey of course is a significant part if this heritage. In order to escape federal taxes imposed upon their homemade whiskey, Scots-Irish immigrants pushed deep into the mountains back in the late 18th century in what was called the 'Whiskey Rebellion.' In addition to taking their whiskey deeper into the hills, they also carried with them their songs. Some of these ancient songs still survive and have been handed down - in fact we'll be playing some of them (tonight), appropriately enough, at Preservation Pub," Brooks says.

Tonight Creech Holler plays Preservation Pub, with Murfreesboro act Those Darlins opening the show. The pub will offer whiskey specials in honor of the performance, which starts at 9.

--Jer Cole

With Signs Following - Creech Holler (self-release)

From the first distorted strains of the opener "Pretty Polly," you're put on notice that Creech Holler is a different kind of trip.  The sound on their debut release is a grungy drama that revels in the gothic mystery of the south.  The Murfreesboro trio's mix of originals and folk traditionals, combined with a sound both ethereal and raw, have the edge and danger of snake handlers in church or Civil War re-enacters using real bullets and firing on the spectators.  Songs like "Lester Ballard" and "Wild Bill Jones" have that ominous edge to them.  The galloping "Country Blues" has an eerie irresistibility, while the dark "The Gospel of Judas" could be at home on a western soundtrack if it were made by Quentin Tarantino.  "Black Mountain" makes literal what the rest of the music here implies – there's blood in them there hills.  Creech Holler's music is definitely worth experiencing, and they're playing Tidballs on March 31.  Visit www.myspace.com/creechholler to obtain one of 2007's most noteworthy independent releases.

Kentucky Amplifier, Bowling Green KY

There's a long tradition of white rockers who claim to be "influenced" by the rural, black bluesmen of the pre-World War II era. In shorter supply are rockers who pay homage to the period's white bluesmen.

Creech Holler looks to change that. The trio — Jeff Zentner (vocals, clawhammer banjo, bottleneck guitar), Christian Brooks (drums, tambourine, foot stomps, vocals) and Kingsport native Joseph Campbell (bass, melodica, vocals) — sees white hillbilly musicians such as Southwest Virginia's Dock Boggs as being on equal blues footing with Robert Johnson and his black contemporaries. Their debut album merges the string-band tradition with electric blues-rock, thus sounding like the missing link between Southern Appalachia and classic rock radio.

In Creech Holler's hands, "Pretty Polly" is rescued from the clutches of bluegrass and given the kind of eerie treatment normally reserved for "Crossroads." Ditto Boggs' spooky "Country Blues," transformed here into a frenetic juke blues. String-band staples like "Little Mattie Grove" and "Wild Bill Jones" have a sinister vibe, as do hypnotic Creech Holler originals like "The Gospel of Judas" and "Black Mountain."

This is fierce, dark, passionate music that should be investigated by fans of the contemporary garage-band movement.

Creech Holler will appear at Ireson's Pub in Bristol on Saturday, March 3. Also on the bill are The Fury, Heat and Dirty Works. Creech Holler will also be at the Down Home on March 17.

Kingsport Times, Kingsport TN

One of our favorite finds of the last few months is a group of Tennessee and North Carolina boys that go by the name of "Creech Holler". These guys make some bad-ass, hard-bit Appalachian tinged roots rock that touches right on down into the instinctive animal part of your brain. There's something just plain spooky about their stuff - when you hear it you you just know that you've stumbled into something special. The music of Creech Holler is earthy, dark and riddled with secrets - just like the mountains that birthed it.

These guys are the real deal. Tracks like "Pretty Polly" and "Plague of Frogs" establish their bona fides in the canon of American traditional music while still showcasing the boys' ability to wail and truly rock. This is the music of sweat and dirt and hard living. This is Southern Gothic set to Stun.

Check them out at www.MySpace.com/creechholler, and for God's sake, buy one of their albums. I'll see you at the crossroads at midnight. You bring the shotgun, I'll bring the moonshine.