Interview with Tommy Creal

Hi, welcome to "Fix My Hog". I'm Dennis Santopietro, founder of "Fix My Hog" and I'm here with Tommy "Clutch" Creal. Finally, a proper introduction to the "Fix My Hog" members. You've been doing live events for us for quite a few months now. We just did a beautiful upgrade to the Milwaukee-Eight. Thank you so much for opening your shop and your town to us. We've had a good couple days. Stressful, but good. We got it done. So, I just wanted to sit down and ask you a little bit some basics. Where are you from? Are you from Illinois, from Minnesota, Midwest? Where'd you grow up? Well first of all, thank you. This has been a fun run with the live shows and definitely on this upgrade. I've been back and forth. So I started here in Illinois, born and raised here in Homewood, and made my way up to Minnesota. up there for about four or five years, and had Chopper College going at the same time. So, moved my way back here and kept along the bikes in the meantime tinkering on those. And working on. Awesome. And you're a younger man than I, not that I'm old, I'm distinguished some might say, some definitely won't say that. But you've been in this game a long... Really kind of a long time for being a younger guy. You mentioned Chopper College. And how did your love, I guess, for motorcycles, get you to do Chopper College, which was an educational classroom for how to build a motorcycle. So, how did you get to Chopper College? It stems all the way back to when I was 10. And I'll tell you this first, it's been an uphill battle and still is with my age. So, sometimes age is on your side when you're distinguished, right? So, I started with 10, I started with a Yamaha RT250 that was burned down, and I got tired of looking at assemble in my dad's garage, so tore it down and fixed it all up. And from there resold it. So, that kind of planted the seed and it just kept blooming. So, I got a love for the metals and how the bikes were actually constructed, with the components going together. And when I was 18, still in high school, I started my first shop and first year was a little rough, but we got over that and, came up with Chopper College's concept three-day bootcamp. We're at a period where I was like, "You know what? "There's a lot out there. "And I feel like there's something that I can offer. "So why don't we build something for, "someone, average working person, nine to fiver. "Where they come in and go through that." So that really grabbed traction and exploded. And from there just kept building. And as you know in this industry you gotta keep learning. You never stop. Man, you gotta stay up on the trends. And I still do that. So I'm trying to use age as my big factor here to stay up and going. And you took Chopper College and then really blew into the whole custom builds. And you've built many motorcycles and we'll probably throw up a bunch of photos of those during this interview. I know they're all, love/hate relationship, I guess. Which ones did you like the best of the ones you did? You know I'd say the top three would be, one for that I did former vice president Joe Biden. That's right. I did his bike which was a lot of hand-making components to it. And then the top one to be a bike I did with E85. So we did biocomposite center. You got the gas tank and thunder, but, as you mentioned, it's a love/hate relationship and I think at the end of the day, we are ready to split ways sometimes, but then you look back at it now and say, "you know what? "That was a great piece of artwork, "that's still rolling down the road to the day." Absolutely. That's cool, I mean, to go through, you came in when the boom of the industry was really happening again. Where '03, 2000, '03, '04. And you made it through the lull. You're always being innovative, you're always changing. You're always moving. You and I have been talking for like years trying to do something together. So I'm glad it's all coming together. I'm glad we were able to do this. So I just wanted to just give a little introduction to the "Fix My Hog" folks on who you are. But before we wrap this up, so it's Tommy "clutch" Creal, right? Of course it is. So what's the deal with the "Clutch"? Well, I found myself in a little predicament in Sturgis early on, and it was nose to nose with the gate doing a burnout in there, and the tire didn't go. The first thing to go was my clutch. So I had a guy yelling down at me, "Hey, Clutch, what are you doing?" And from there, it just kinda grabbed on. So cool. Tommy "Clutch" Creal. That works, I like it. Well, I appreciate everything you've done for us. Thank you Dennis, I appreciate it. It's been a great opportunity and thanks for ripping to this beast with us and moving it forward. And it came out really nice and we'll do a lot more with you and, we'll see you on the next live event very soon. Perfect. Hopefully someone got things out of this. Absolutely. Thanks so much everybody. And we'll catch you soon on fixmyhog.com.