Creed Bratton is both an actor and a musician. But rather than the typical path where an actor dabbles in music or a musician takes on acting roles, Bratton’s two career paths have led into each other from the beginning.

Some fans of “The Office” may be confused already. You know “Creed” as a character on the show: a mysterious, surreal and vaguely malevolent figure with an ever-changing backstory who never seems to be doing any work. And you are right, that is Creed Bratton. The real one plays the character, and they’re both musicians and former hippies. In the finale, Office Creed plays “All the Faces,” a song by Real Creed. In a deleted scene, Office Creed is even recognized as a member of the Grass Roots, Real Creed’s band from the late ’60s.

“I wrote my own character—a scenario of what would have happened if I’d have stayed on drugs and ended up in a dumpster in Scranton,” Bratton explained. “Someone found him and gave him a job. He couldn’t work, but he scared everybody, so they let him stay there and left him alone.”

But while some “Office” fans may not have realized he’s (sort of) real, many others looked into his history, listened to his music and became fans of that as well. Since the show ended, that acting role has led to a resurgence of interest in his solo albums.

“A couple seasons in, my agent said, ‘With the popularity of ‘The Office,’ you can actually go out and play rooms again,'” Bratton said. “I’d meet the fans after the shows, and they told me they came because of the character, but after hearing the songs, they wanted to listen to more. So they’re fans now.”

Bratton said the fans are starting to sing along, and that the “Creed cult” is all over the place now, with fans making little shrines complete with his picture and speakers doing his lines on a loop.

The latest solo album for the cult to enjoy is Tao Pop, Bratton’s 10th as a solo artist. It came about after reading Ray Kurtzweil’s “The Singularity Is Near,” about AI becoming sentient.

“The book germinated for a few days,” he explained. “I was meditating one day and I saw the image for the album cover. A couple days later, there was a song, ‘A Chip in my Brain.’ It really came from the AI thing.”

The album also includes songs about the environment, such as a positive one called “Turn the Corner” and “Broken World,” which is the desire to do something about it.

“There’s a lot of introspective yearning, wondering what I can do, we can do,” Bratton said.

But while “The Office” led to interest in his music, before that, interest in his music led to “The Office.”

Bratton had been an actor since the mid-’70s. His first love was music but he’d studied drama at the College of the Sequoias in San Joaquin County and at Sacramento State, so during a lull in his music career, he had some bit parts on TV shows and even a small role in Oscar-winning 1985 film “Mask,” starring Cher.

By the mid-aughts, Bratton was recording solo albums and still taking on small roles, but he supplemented his income working for a catering company. After hurting his back at a job, though, he told his friend Joe Moore that he couldn’t keep doing it. Moore, an assistant director on “The Bernie Mac Show,” got him a small part.

Bernie Mac himself thought Bratton was funny, so he was brought back for five more uncredited roles. For one of them, the director was Ken Kwapis, who was a big fan of the Grass Roots. Kwapis even asked him to sign some of his old albums.

“Ken and I talked quite a bit about what had happened to me on the road,” Bratton said. “People found it impressive that I was still alive, actually.”

Kwapis mentioned that he was directing the pilot of “The Office,” and Bratton was a huge fan of the British version, so he took a chance.

“Ken gave me his number, so I did something I shouldn’t do,” he said. “I circumvented the casting process. I went to him and said, ‘I love the original show. Is there any part I can play?'”

They had already filled the main roles, but Kwapis talked to series creator Greg Daniels, and they decided to cast him as a version of himself built around his public image from the late ’60s, during his first round of fame. By the second season’s Halloween episode, his character broke out and became a series mainstay.

But what made his public image so notable that it lent itself to a sitcom character? For that, we have to step back in time again.

In 1965, Bratton and his friends started a band called The 13th Floor. When their bassist left, he was replaced by Rob Grill of another band called the Grass Roots and, since Grill’s old band was more popular, they adopted that name instead to capitalize on the recognition.

The Grass Roots exploded in popularity almost immediately. Bratton said he recorded their first songs, and within a week he heard one on the radio while driving down the Sunset Strip. He and the band spent the next years recording and touring almost constantly, riding the wave of popularity.

“You’re in your mid-20s, and you’re thinking, ‘Well, this isn’t so hard, right?'” he said. “Everybody could be a rock star. This is easy.”

He was only with the Grass Roots from 1967 to 1969—when he was asked to leave. Despite his relatively short tenure, though, he appeared on three albums, a greatest hits compilation and the band’s most enduring singles, “Let’s Live For Today” and “Midnight Confessions.”

It was the end of his Grass Roots tenure that Kwapis and Daniels were thinking of. As the story goes, a 1969 show at Fillmore West was so disastrous that Bratton was kicked out. Over the years, the actual events of that night have merged with rumors and urban legends, changing based on who’s telling the story and where that person heard it, similar to the wild and inconsistent stories Creed from Dunder Mifflin would tell about his past.

“The rumor is it’s because I dropped acid at the Fillmore and dropped my pants on stage,” Bratton said. “Yes. Yes, it’s true. I did that. But that wasn’t the reason I left the group; that was just a good rock and roll story. Yeah, I irritated Bill Graham. He wasn’t a big fan of mine, and he could have been a little more tactful about it. That’s probably where that started.”

Bratton says that the real issue between him, the label and his management was his dissatisfaction with his involvement in the albums’ production.

“My frustration was with how the tracks were cut,” he said. “I wasn’t allowed to participate anymore. We just came in to sing. I started complaining; they didn’t like that. That’s why I left.”

So Bratton’s breakout stardom in music led to his breakout acting role, which led to a resurgence of interest in his music, new albums and an upcoming European tour. He’s focusing on his music now, but if that leads to another breakout as an actor, it shouldn’t be surprising.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky.