Looking at it one way, the fact that Creigh’s been able to establish himself as an accomplished singer and songwriter was pretty much on the cards, given that he’s worked hard at it consistently since he was a kid. Now in his mid-20s, Creigh’s been playing music since he was 12 and writing his own tunes since he was 15. In fact, Undone – one of the tunes from his EP – was the first song he ever wrote, and in a remarkable demonstration of songwriting maturity, the song – subject to a bit of tweaking – has withstood the test of time.
Couple that with the fact that Creigh comes from a musical family – Creigh’s folks met because his dad played in a band with his mum’s brother, and Creigh jokes that he was introduced to Led Zeppelin in the womb – and Creigh’s talent starts looking less prodigious and more like the combination of hard work and good musical influences.
In terms of Creigh’s musical evolution, first it was drums, and later his dad’s old guitar. “He’d had it in his bedroom for a long time,” Creigh says. “My inspiration for picking it up was simply because it was hard to write music for myself when I was playing drums, because it’s a rhythmic instrument. I had this desire to write songs, so I needed to learn some sort of melodic instrument and there was Dad’s guitar and I knew some basic chords from school.”
Although rock and metal have always featured largely in Creigh’s life, All we Leave are Memories is a stripped-back, acoustic, indie-pop gem, more in the vein of Matt Corby than Robert Plant. In discussing the genre jump, Creigh clarifies that fundamentally he’s just a fan of music full stop. “I don’t think about genre too much and I draw inspiration from so many pools,” Creigh says. “It’s funny though, the main thing that made me think I could be a songwriter of this kind of music was listening to Dallas Green, who records under the name City and Colour.
“He used to be in a hard rock band called Alexisonfire and they used to be one of my favourite bands. He has this beautiful voice and he started this side project and did an acoustic album. It was hearing that that made me go, ‘Oh my gosh, I can do that too.’ Everything leading to now for me has kind of been a side thing and where I am now musically is where I’m meant to be.”
That said, Creigh’s quick to clarify that he’s hardly abandoned his roots. Indeed, he continues to play in a prog-rock band on the side, which is also due to release its debut EP in the not too distant future.
These days, Creigh maintains a pretty regular schedule of gigging widely around town, but before that he busked his arse off. Double kudos to Creigh because the lead-up to that point saw him ditching the security of a day job in favour of pinning down his true passion.
“When I first left high school I had a job in a media company, but I’d always had this idea when I was studying that I was going to pursue music. Then high school ended and the social norm was to go out and get a job, so I did that. I worked at this company for about a year or two doing well but I woke up one day and thought, ‘I get home and I go to bed, I wake up and I go to work, but what’s happened to my music?’ I decided that that wasn’t who I was. It wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
“I quit my job and got my busking licence. I started out by playing along King Street from 11pm to 5am pretty much every Friday and Saturday and I made the money last for the week. I’d never been more broke, but I was happy.”
