As it did just three and half months ago at the Pine Knob Music Theatre, Creed brought the fire to Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena on Wednesday night, Nov. 20.

And it had some brimstone to go with it this time.

The Grammy Award-winning hard rock group has been on the road much of this year, breaking a 12-year hiatus with a sea cruise, an amphitheater tour during the summer and now an arena run to close the year. It’s been wildly successful, reminding fans both new and old of just how major a player Creed was during the late 90s and early 2000s thanks to chart-topping hits such as “Higher,” “With Arms Wide Open” and “My Sacrifice” — all of which weigh in as relevant today as when they were released.

So the group, including Detroit-born guitarist Mark Tremonti, sounded not surprisingly confident before about 13,000 at Little Caesars, accenting its 100-minute, 16-song set with abundant effects — primarily fire, and a pyrotechnic shower during “What’s This Life For?” — and a combination of prepared and live video on a five-panel screen behind the stage.

For frontman Scott Stapp, meanwhile, it was also an opportunity to reclaim a kind of rock ‘n’ roll pulpit during much of the show, and in a more explicit manner than he did during Creed’s July 31 stop at Pine Knob.

The spiritual grounding of Stapp’s lyrics have never been a secret, and his outspoken fervor was partly responsible for Creed’s initial breakup back in 2004. On Wednesday, Stapp — whose black tank top revealed a torso that’s spent many an hour in the weight room — was clearly comfortable stepping back into that role, promising “a journey in music through the human condition” and invoking praise and other religious affirmations during lengthy introductions to songs such as “Say I,” “Unforgiven” and “Don’t Stop Dancing.” Recalling that the former was inspired by the concept of Original Sin, Stapp explained that “you have to know the absence of God to know the presence of God.”

He offered a call for unity before Creed played “One” from its 1997 debut album “My Own Prison,” but in response to crowd chants of “USA!” afterwards Stapp stepped into post-election political terrain by declaring, “We’ve got to rediscover what that means, because we’ve lost our way…And we’re going to.”

That ministry, undeniably sincere but unquestionably didactic, went over well with the crowd, and if Stapp’s bandmates were bothered by them it was not noticeable. The frontman and Tremonti were particularly warm with each other throughout the concert, introducing each other and embracing on a couple of occasions. And Tremonti was a proud homeboy, noting that he was “born 30 minutes from here” and adding that, “if you come from Detroit, you’re proud of Detroit, and I love this city.”

And when it was playing, Creed gave its Little Caesars audience — a cross-generational gathering from old school fans to their younger siblings and children — every reason to love the band again.

Following solid opening sets from Mammoth WVH and 3 Doors Down — whose frontman Brad Arnold offered his own religious commentary and prayer at one point — Creed came out literally smoking with “Bullets,” bolstering its subsequent parade of brawny, arena-sized anthems bolstered by second guitarist Eric Friedman from Tremonti’s solo band. The set list came from the first three of Creed’s four studio albums (nothing from 2009’s “Full Circle”), swapping in three different songs from the Pine Knob show and happily digging into deeper selections such as “Freedom Fighter,” “What If” and “Never Die.” “Don’t Stop Dancing” was added to the set just this week for the first time since 2002, while “Unforgiven,” also from the “My Own Prison” album, made its tour debut on Wednesday night.

The group also brought a young fan named Noah on stage to receive one of Tremonti’s signature guitars as a reward for being the “hardest rocking” member of the crowd.

Whether, and how, Creed continues with its current reunion is up in the air, though Tremonti has said the band plans to play shows during 2025. And after drawing 28.000 to its pair of fairly close-together metro area shows, it’s clear Creed will always find a welcome and receptive crowd in its guitarist’s home town.

To say Maya Petropoulos likes the “Mean Girls” musical, and especially the meanest girl character of Regina George, is an understatement.

“I’ve loved that show for years,” she says. “I’ve been obsessed with it since I was a teenager. I always wanted to play that role — and people always laughed at me when I said that.”

No one’s laughing now.

Petropoulos, 23 — who grew up in Grosse Pointe Park and graduated from Grosse Pointe South High School — is playing George, the meanest of the Plastics, in the current touring cast of “Mean Girls,” which brings her home to Detroit’s Fisher Theatre this week. Coming just 18 months after her graduation from Montclair State University, Petropoulos is expecting “a crazy seven days. I’ll want to sleep after.”

“I can’t even describe it,” she says. “I grew up going to that theater and being so enthralled to just be in the building.’Could I ever take a bow on that stage?’ was such a crazy thought. I couldn’t even let myself think about it. It seemed so far away.

“And when I got the schedule and I saw it would be coming, it just sucked the air of me. I’m really gonna take a bow on that stage — the stage I have been seeing shows on my whole life. That’s probably the most nervous I’m ever going to be for a show. I don’t think that’s going to set in until it happens.”

Petropoulos’ immersion in theater started early, albeit by accident. “My parents were big on, ‘You need to have something to do!,’ so I tried a lot of things and couldn’t find my niche,” she recalls. “They forced me to do a musical when I was in first grade — and I was really not happy about that.”

By middle school, however, she had friends doing theater, and after appearing in a production of “Annie” she had “a good time” and started doing annual shows in school and joined a show choir, which “sucked me in immediately and became my entire world.”

Traveling to audition for college programs allowed Petropoulos to see “Mean Girls” — a Tony Award-nominated adaptation of the 2004 film written by Tina Fey, who also handled the book for the musical — on Broadway during her senior year of high school, and Montclair was her first choice. While there, she also landed a role in the comedy “Betty,” which ran for two seasons on HBO, and in the Go-Go’s jukebox musical “Head Over Heels,” playing Philoclea. The “Mean Girls” opportunity, meanwhile, was perfectly timed to her graduation.

“During my senior year, news dropped that they’re doing another tour and I just knew that I would blow everyone out of the way to get the chance to do it,” Petropoulos says. “I remember sending in a self-taped (audition) and thinking, ‘Whatever happens I’m gonna try like hell to get this job!’ I ended up getting it a month after graduating and they scooped me up and put me on my way, and this has pretty much been my entire college life.”

The learning curve has been steep, however.

“I knew it would be hard. It’s harder than I thought it would be,” she acknowledges. “Eight shows a week is no joke. It’s not for the weak. ‘How do I keep my voice healthy through all this?’ “How do I come up the other side and still be healthy?’ ‘How do I work through it and still be able to kind of live a life?’

“It’s just a job at the end of the day, but it’s a big job and there’s a lot of pressure and you have to give your best. It’s what I wanted, so no complaints.”

Petropoulos said she hopes there’s more of it to come, too. She’s contracted with “Mean Girls” through May 2025 but is already considering what’s next,. “Wicked” (“the first film I ever saw and first cast recording I listened to”) and “Hadestown” are top of her list. “If I did ‘Wicked,’ my parents would be, ‘OK, you can do anything else now,'” she says, with a laugh. But Petropoulos has her sights set beyond the stage, too.

“I really would love to make my TV/film transition, but I love to sing, so musical theater is always gonna be part of my life and … my home,” she says. “Honestly, I just want to be an artist for as long as I can. This (‘Mean Girls’) opportunity came at a point where I wasn’t sure where things were going. It just happened and I’m grateful I can have it at this point in my life.

“I’m looking forward to following that, really — not having my sights on anything concrete, but being open to what the universe has in store for me.”

“Mean Girls” runs Tuesday, Nov. 19 through Nov. 24 at the Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit. 313-872-100 or broadwayindetroit.com.

Jelly Roll is certainly no stranger to the metro area.

His concert Wednesday night, Nov. 6, at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena was his seventh appearance in these parts in a little over two years. That run includes a pre-NFL Draft show at the Fillmore Detroit in April, as well singing Bob Seger and singing with Eminem during June’s Michigan Central opening concert.

Not surprisingly the country/rap/rock crossover star was full of Motor City love during his hour and 40 minutes on stage in front of more than 15,500 — the largest crowd so far, he said, on his Beautifully Broken Tour supporting his chart-topping new album of the same name. Following opening sets by Allie Coleen, Shaboozey (who shouted out the Detroit Lions and spoke about visiting Ford Field earlier in the day) and Ernest (who sported an Eminem T-shirt), Jelly Roll spoke about his long history of playing in the area, from the Shelter and Saint Andrew’s Hall to “the old historic Harpo’s a thousand times.” Of Little Caesar’s he marveled over “how many times I’ve come here and drove by this arena and never thought I would be big enough to (play) here. It’s a dream come true on so many levels.” The next target, he said, was to play Ford Field.

He also shouted out the Livonia rap/rock duo Twiztid — which made a special one-song appearance on a B-stage at the back of the arena floor between Ernest and Jelly Roll’s set — for being “the first band that ever took me on a nationwide tour.” And he gushed that “the biggest phone call I ever got was when Marshall Mathers (aka Eminem) called me and asked me if I’d be on his new album,” on the track “Somebody Save Me,” which samples Jelly Roll’s hit “Save Me.”

“Now,” he added, “I just need someone here to finalize the dream I have and help me to meet Bob Seger,” who Jelly Roll said was a favorite of his father’s — along with Motown music.

And if that verbiage wasn’t enough, he hammered home his devotion by performing truncated versions of three Seger hits, “Old Time Rock and Roll,” “Turn the Page” and “Against the Wind,” the latter as a duet with Ernest — who this time sported a vintage Detroit Pistons Bad Boys T-shirt. “Somebody tell Bob Seger how much I love him,” Jelly Roll said after the latter.

His affection for the city was certainly reciprocated by the crowd, and the Tennessee native (real name Jason DeFord) gave his Detroit fans plenty to love in turn. He’s definitely on a, well, roll with “Beautifully Broken’s” success and “I Am Not Okay” lodged as his fifth consecutive No. 1 single on the country charts. He opened with that song, in fact, walking through the crowd — accompanied by his wife, podcast star Bunny XO — to the B stage, where he sang under a burning, cabin-shaped structure and promised “a night of healing…a night of therapy…a night of love.” “But most important Detroit,” he added, “I hope it’s the best show you’ve ever seen in your…life.”

Jelly Roll and his 11-member band — including Detroit-born keyboardist Snow Boots, sporting a Red Wings Jersey — did their best to make that the case on Wednesday; it was, surely, more than okay, hampered only by a muddy sound mix. He certainly upped the production value, with a pair of long side ramps, plenty of fire, extensive video production, a large set of rosary beads that hung above the stage during “Need a Favor” (which included a church-style a capella closing with his three backing vocalists) and a giant, lighted skull from the cover of “Beautifully Broken” that was part of a couple of numbers. He pulled out six songs from the new album and threw plenty of past triumphs into the set — including a medley of “Creature,” “Same A**hole” and “Fall in the Fall” and the hip-hop banger “Smoking Section.”

Seger wasn’t the only artist Jelly Roll covered, either, as he rolled through Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay” and Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” which led into John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” His “real music for real people who have gone through real s***” focused on those who have been through recovery, celebrating fans who waved signs declaring their own sobriety. And he shouted out Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson, shaking his hand and praising initiatives that include a recording studio in the county jail.

Jelly Roll finished the night where he started, back on the B stage, singing “Save Me” amidst a shower of faux rain that left him sopping wet but beaming as he waved his soaked baseball cap at the crowd. It was another special show for him in the metro area, and given how things have been going we’ll likely see him back here — maybe even at Ford Field — before too long.

Detroit’s Huntington Place will be, as the Vapors sang, turning Japanese this weekend as the 19th annual Youmacon settles in for a four-day run through Sunday, Nov. 3.

The gathering celebrates Japanese pop culture, including anime, gaming, art and music. The festivities include video and tabletop game competitions, panel discussions, art and memorabilia exhibits, a full marketplace, dance parties and an elaborate costume contest that’s an annual highlight — all for an expected crowd of up to 26,000.

Celebrity guests include Jason Douglas, a voice actor in popular games such as Dragon Ball Super and Borderlands 2 and 3. He’ll be joined by notables such as Suzie Young, John Bentley, Britt Baron, Kirk Thornton, Briana White and others. Voice actor Keith Silverstein will present “The Art of Being Evil” on Sunday, Nov. 3, along with a Behind the Mic: Women in Video Games panel.

A concert at 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 1, will feature SSJ Live, mic jack, Hiro x Noveliss, Crim and DJ Mark Cooper.

Daily admissions and weekend passes are available between $30-$80. More information is available via youmacon.com.