Brad Creel & The Reel Deel

Lava Lamp Country is a place where Gram Parsons and John Prine are constantly spinning on the turntable, Cher frolics with Bigfoot in the backyard, the lights are low, and the lava lamps flow.

Lava Lamp Country is also the new album by BRAD CREEL & THE REEL DEEL, their fourth, as well as the musical genre that they practice. The style is as nebulous as the melting wax in a lava lamp: constantly shifting and pulling into separate forms, but ultimately sticking back together into a unified whole.

The hot wax flows from the harmonious depths of “Five Rivers,” to the whimsy of “She’s Got What it Takes,” and then even further to the sentimental Southern rock of “When the Rain Comes” (with Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee on keys) — and what would a Portland band be if they didn’t have a song about the rain?

The arrangements of the songs display a similar tasteful eclecticism, with the almost Dixieland-style horn accompaniment of “Fishing for a Song” giving way to the raucous fiddle playing on “Raise Your Glass.” But it all holds together as one ball of hot wax within the genre of Lava Lamp Country, a mixture of rock, bluegrass, jazz, and country.

You might call Brad Creel the mayor of Lava Lamp Country. As a Jungian therapist by day and a musician by night he’s been known to say, “A band is just a therapy group where everyone happens to play an instrument.”

Brad came to music later in life. He didn’t begin writing songs until his 30s and has lived a life as eclectic as the musical style he’s defined. In the 90’s, Brad was a comic artist who wrote and illustrated multiple-page panel cartoons for outdoor publications and travel magazines. He then became a carpenter, remodeling houses and making stuff out of wood. While in grad school for counseling, he wrote his thesis on the inspiration and the origin of song, using the single from his new album, All the Friends that I have Found, as the major example.

If Brad is the mayor of Lava Lamp Country, the Reel Deel is his duly-appointed cabinet. There’s the inventive but never obtrusive bass playing of Ben Grosscup, who met Brad while kayaking on the Deschutes river. There’s multi-instrumentalist Michael Moore, of the country swing band Shorty and the Mustangs, on guitar. And there’s the friendly vocals, acoustic guitar, and assured drumming of Robert Hawkins, a veteran of the Portland, Oregon music scene who found a home with The Reel Deel in late 2010.

The new album was recorded by Steve Drizos at Panther Studio in Portland, over the course of a year and a half during the covid lockdown. Since the band could no longer practice in each other’s basements, they reached out to a church across the street from Brad’s home. This old stone church became the birthplace of Lava Lamp Country. The church was vacant and cold, but the band was able to stand at least 20’ apart and write the songs, which every member of the band were instrumental in arranging and producing.

This new album, Lava Lamp Country, was released in 2023 and can be heard on most streaming platforms. So sit back and warm up to Lava Lamp Country!

Local Portland publications have this to say about Brad Creel & the Reel Deel:

“Brad Creel specializes in droll observations and barbed sentiments served up with deft honky-tonk touches.”
– The Oregonian

“Creel’s silly, frequently self-deprecating lyrics keep one listening and laughing.”
– Willamette Week

“Gifted with the pen, punchline, and guitar”
– Portland Mercury