the wrens - Keeping folks waiting...since 1989

works progress admin

Admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:32:55 +0000

Last night...

...our second four-wren get-together in 10 days with new songs of Kevin’s & Greg’s gone over.

Back at home, Charles continues to be on veritable fire writing & recording (5 songs in the last week and a half).

Really, all around a red-letter week or so for the veterans and our most productive 10 days since our seminal work on quantum theory in the ‘20s.

titularly

Admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 02:55:07 +0000

Oh yeah, oh yeah

..forgot to mention, the working title of the next record is "funeral".

Actually not kidding.

Follow-up...

Admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:33:45 +0000

…to the “making the record and the making of the making of the record” post

Ok, my gaze into the crystal ball of productivity may have been a little rosey, but not by too much. Our muzakal work-weekend started Thursday night greeting Peter, the fellow coming in from Texas to document our musical ‘leavings’, and set up for Friday. That’s standard beginner band checklist stuff by now: buy guitar, write songs, engage services of band in-house cinematographer, play first show…

Friday opened with classic Charlesian luck - driving to NJ, the front right tie rod of the van broke off coming into the toll plaza of the Triborough. Note to drivers: if you’re gonna lose a tie rod, the thing that connects the otherwise free-floating front wheels to the whole steering apparatus, better to do it at around 10mph than say, a life-ending 70.
The whole story is too mundane to type here, and we’ve all been down that Gilligan road before – this one ends w/ the Professor rescued off a highway island and is all on tape now anyhow. With this early-round knockout, the champ retained the title we’ve all battled over since our first German tour of the early ‘90s, Scheißebruder.

So a late start Friday, Jerry swung in from Philadelphia, we spent a few hours addressing last-minute equipment/technical needs, then ran through some songs and tracked a couple different takes each of five new ones. Or was it only four? Well to tell you the truth, in all the excitement, I kind of lost track myself. But being that these are 44-year-olds, the most powerful musicians in the world, and will blow your head…clean off…with their next rockin’ jamz, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?”. Well, do ya, punk rockers?

Really, the whole weekend was so great, so productive for us and kinda felt like the old days, that everyone left feeling 75 years younger. It seems that maybe some metaphoric lever has finally been thrown and the production line is now running at full cap. – e.g Charles went home and with the family away until Sunday, wrote & recorded two more songs and fully demo’d a third. That puts him only about 122 opuses behind Kevin.

A wren may rock on the moon yet.

Making the record and the making of the making of the record

Admin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:34:37 +0000

I know, I know

…it's never clear - are they recording, are they not recording, they’re calling these two shows a tour but they’re always playing two shows, are two of them brothers or were they married or what…

Ok, so, in brief, we often post (often on Facebook ) about Kevin & Greg arranging new songs into a two-man dirge wrecking crew, Jerry meeting with Kevin in the beat lab, Charles logging in some quantity time Googling mic capsules & guitar pedals, but due mostly to adulty schedules, the four of us have only gotten together twice since we kicked it off for like the third time last January – once to get drum sounds, the second time we tracked two songs’ basics.

Well, tomorrow you can bump the counter up to three, and a big three at that.

Work Personal days have been arranged, babies have been banished to in-laws, pedalboards of ridiculous complexity have been hammered together from Ikea shelving, an hilariously talented filmmaker/cinematographer has been flown in from Texas to roll film and wire the home studios with tiny cameras (the better to record our own shenanigans after his departure (see above)).

We are shit serious this time.

The work whistle sounds at 10:00am and we go until night and then another manful 6 hours on Saturday. If we don’t come out of this with at least 10 new songs basic-tracked (most of them Kevin’s, one of them good), I’ll eat the same fictional hat I trot every time I make these proclamations.

But this time I mean it, baby…

Two-City Tour shirt remainders

Admin — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:25:02 +0000

Two-City Tour shirt remainders

You know how it is, life takes you where it does, and some of us just aren’t lucky enough to have it drop our boat on the shores of either Lake Philadelphia or the Baltimore Sea (unusually for me, that’s not sarcasm. I’m originally Philadelphian (more or less) and we’ve got a soft spot in our shared Jarvik 7 of a band heart for Baltimore, having played over 35,000 shows there, going back to Jerry’s college years at nearby State U.).

So even if you couldn’t attend our bi-state-area tour last month, you can now shop as if you did, lucky consumers. We’ve got a few leftover shirts from the shows, in a few different colors, and while supplies last, they’re for sale here in our store.

The camera phone is iffy, but the design is basically the same as the front page of our website, sans Darko-cum-Harvey rabbit. It’s a photo taken on Rt. 17 in New Jersey, showing tilted phone poles & power lines, the aftermath of the same storm that clobbered Kev’s house with a 90-year-old oak tree.

Design by a wren, hand-silkscreening by a wren, crappy photos by a wren.

the wrens
Biting off more than they can chew…Since 1989.

As always, thanks, here’s hoping you’re well, and hopefully see you at the next one,

the wrens

The Wrens National Two-City Tour

Admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:01:06 +0000

Maybe “national” is a stretch. Ok, even “tour” is a stretch. But with two consecutive nights’ shows booked for the first time in at least one SXSW ago, (Philadelphia, May 21st at the First Unitarian Church and Baltimore, May 22nd at Sonar), this, for us, constitutes a tour.

Even as I type this, bags are being packed, family farewells are in the offing, estate planning is under way, personal papers are being put in order, a tour bus has been arranged (SEPTA via NJ Transit), smoke-machine-repairpersons have been hired, vast amounts of road drugs have been grown, refined & processed…

[Clarifier: road drugs in our case being pretty much packaged snack foods (think: donuts) turning the dream cliché of “sex, drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll” into more like “conceiving legitimate children within the bonds of marriage, donuts & enthusiastically-performed song-craft in the rapidly-aging rock‘n’roll style”.
Again, for us at least.]

But what better way to ease back into touring than a wren-breaking two-day itinerary spanning as many cities, in neighboring states, over 90 miles apart?

We sincerely hope to see you there….

First Unitarian Church

Admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:39:33 +0000

More info here, but our sweeping bi-state May tour commences in Philadelphia...

Sonar

Admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:25:45 +0000

....and comes to an end over 90 miles away, in Maryland. How much younger we were back at the start of all this, in Philadelphia.

More info on both shows here.

Haiti Benefit show, January 27th, at the Bell House (Brooklyn)

Admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:02:53 +0000

Haiti Benefit show, January 27th at the Bell House (Brooklyn)

As mentioned last week, we’re playing as part of a larger benefit show for Haiti, and details (as well as tickets) are available today.

The show is Wednesday, January 27th, at the Bell House in Brooklyn, doors open at 6:00, and 100% of the proceeds will be split between Save the Children and Partners in Health.

All sets are short, stripped-down affairs and we should be on about 9:15 or so. Although with a line-up like this, it’s worth making a full evening of it:

NY State Senator Diane Savino

The Wahoo Skiffle Crazies

Pat Kiernan (of NY 1)

Here We Go Magic

Eugene Mirman

Matthew Caws & ? (TBA)

Eugene Mirman

Sondre Lerche

Todd Barry

The Wrens

AC Newman + Rhett Miller + Nicole Atkins + Charles Bissell as The Seekers

Ted Leo

Jimmy Fallon

Cold War Kids

…with others still to be confirmed (and note Charles’ ’60s Australian folkie turn as part of the Seekers cover set w/ A.C. Newman, Rhett Miller & Nicole Atkins). If you’re there between 6:30 – 7:30, enjoy free food courtesy of Great Jones Café, Dub Pies, and more. And there’s a special two hour edition of keyboard karaoke hosted by Sara Schaefer and fellow South Jerseyan, Joe McGinty, in the front lounge from 11pm-1am.

Again, tickets are on sale as of noon today (here). And if you’re not in the NYC-area but still looking for a way to donate the much-needed money for immediate help and long-term rebuilding, see our list of organizations already in Haiti, doing great and difficult work there (one post down the page), courtesy of our friends at Air Traffic Control.

And for whatever you can do, thanks very much,

the wrens

Haiti Earthquake Relief

Admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:17:40 +0000

By now, most of us have seen the heartbreaking scenes of destruction, suffering and death coming from Haiti, following the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck there at 4:53pm local time, January 12th, approximately 10 miles from Port-au-Prince. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people are feared dead, as the capital city has been devastated.

To do our small part in helping to raise money for this cause, we’ll be performing at a benefit show here in New York City, along with a handful of other musicians, and we’ll post details on that as they’re finalized in the next day or two.

When disasters of this magnitude occur, sometimes amidst the media coverage and discussion, it can be less clear to know where to go to help or to donate the much-needed money for relief and eventual recovery. So with thanks to our friends at Air Traffic Control for putting this together, here is a concise shortlist of organizations that are already in place to help, and that you can help, by donating whatever you can….

IMMEDIATE SUPPORT
Established disaster recovery organizations and national governments have been mobilized. Click on the names of any of the following organizations which are also raising funds for relief efforts:  

Oxfam
Doctors Without Borders
Wyclef Jean’s Yele Foundation:

LONG-TERM SUPPORT
Crucial recovery and rebuilding efforts are always under-funded in comparison to immediate relief efforts. Here are three organizations that have distributed staff in the country now and more importantly, have a long-standing, grassroots presence in Haiti and are well positioned to aid in the long-term recovery effort:  

Partners in Health  
Fonkoze
The Lambi Fund of Haiti

DONATE BY TEXT-MESSAGE
Making things even easier, you can also make a set-amount donation via text-message (U.S. Only). The amount of the donation will be added to your cell phone bill:

Text the word “YELE” to 501501 to donate $5 to Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund

Or, text the word “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross.

LASTLY…
A good wrap-up of the relief efforts currently under way, here.

Thank you,
the wrens