Creepin’: The Story Behind The Eric Church Classic With Songwriter Marv Green

Marv shares the story on Tom’s latest podcast

By kncitom on February 4, 2020

Songwriter Marv Green is this month’s guest on my Write You a Song podcast. Originally from Santa Barbara county, Marv moved to Nashville in the mid-1990s, and scored his first #1 in 1998 when George Strait recorded “True”. After that he had, as he put it, “a nice little run” which included the BMI Country Song of The Year for 1999 with Lonestar’s “Amazed”. 

songwriter Marv Green

In the podcast, Marv says he likes to, if he can, make his songs different. And he loves one-word song titles. And both of those things came together perfectly on a song he wrote with Eric Church that made it onto Eric’s vaunted 2011 album, “Chief”. 

The song is “Creepin” and Marv said what the song started off as, and what it became, were totally different. “It was Eric’s idea” he says on the podcast. “We sat there in the room and just played it on two acoustic guitars“.

When they were done, Marv says “I thought we had this kind of acoustic-y, appalachian-y, kinda spooky song and I thought it was cool but that’s all I knew of that song; a couple guys on acoustic guitars.”

One key part of the song was, however, a part of the original, and a tribute of sorts to a couple 70s rock icons. “We did that ‘bow, bow, bow’-we did that together…a little tribute to David Bowie if you will. Or David Essex even.”

But, beyond that, Marv says he didn’t hear anything else about the song until one day when Eric’s wife Kathryn called. “She said, ‘ah they’re in the studio right now with Creepin’, wait’ll you hear this!’” 

Marv said he knew that creatively, Church and his producer Jay Joyce were capable of some amazing things together but he said the final product wasn’t anything like he expected. “When I heard that thing, I was just blown away” he says, with palpable awe in his voice. “It was such a great record and such a greatly produced thing!”

Hear Marv talk about that and his other hits-which include a monster hit for Carrie Underwood that also goes by a one word title, on the latest edition of Write You a Song. Just click here