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The Wrens add 3rd Maxwell's show, playing Meadowlands start to finish, old songs by request & new songs

The Wrens @ Sasquatch 2009 (more by Chris Graham)
The Wrens

Howdy,

Just dropping to our own electronic ghost town to say that we’ve added a third show for our 20th anniversary / mirthday shindig – an early show for Friday, Dec. 4th at 7:30. In keeping with our theme of…um, having themes, this show will be the Meadowlands record, top-to-bottom. We’d tried setting this up last year to put that baby to bed, but it never really came together. This will be the one time you’ll probably ever hear ’13 months in 6 minutes’ or whatever it is and ‘ex-grille confection’, although I think we tried that one live once. Anyway, thanks to the folks that requested this – very flattering.

Tickets here. More info on the other two shows [below].

And if you come by, maybe we’ll pour some sherry and regale you with the story of the time we walked one end of Hoboken to the other, handing out demo tapes to every bar & club in town – including Maxwell’s – in the hopes of securing one of the many lucrative live concert bookings that seemed just a lucky break away in the big city (that’s Hoboken in this story). And how we were surprised to find most of the bars closed.

It turns out both that it was the evening of January 1st – you know, the day after the busiest tavern day of the year – and that we were jackasses. (It was also New Year’s Day 1990 but that part of the story is more about how old we are, not how dumb we were.) And come to think of it, that pretty much is the story. Gaston, my son, it’s not much of a story, true, but hey…

And forgot to mention that if you’ll be attending the Dec. 3rd show, that also happens to be Kev’s special birthday (starts with a ‘four’, rhymes with ‘sporty’). And hilariously or sadly, depending, he’s the baby of the band. Tempted to say BYOCake but if we get it together we’ll have some there.

As always, thanks,

the wrens

Wrens member Charles Bissell also has a show coming up in Brooklyn.

As it says above, tickets are now on sale for the third Wrens show at Maxwell’s where they’ll be playing “Meadowlands” from start to finish (Feelies style). The new show is an early show happening before one of the two previously announced shows (two shows in one night – Pixies style) which are now both sold out.

If you bought a ticket to one of the other two shows already, be warned that “one show will be all-request old wrens songs, one will be all new songs“. That quote is taken from the letter the Wrens posted to their website last week. The letter also includes instructions on how to send in your your requests. You can read it below…

September 25th letter

Howdy,

As mentioned earlier this summer, 2009 marks our 20th year as a band. And to paraphrase a joke someone made (somewhere online…), even disengaged&distracted us couldn’t pass by a milestone like that with only a website post to point to along the way.

So we’ve set up a couple of ‘We’ve Been a Band For One-Score Years’ shows for December 3rd & 4th. And being all Garden State and all, they’ll be going down at the Pride of Hoboken, Maxwell’s.

Tickets [sold out].

One show will be all-request old wrens songs, one will be all new songs, details below. But first, a quick look back at how far we’ve crawled (c. 1991):

Now, we don’t usually condone the zestier language here, but just look at this fucking mess. There are airline disasters less grisly.

Charles has given new meaning to the old sexist phrase ‘nice knobs’. It now means ‘knees’. He’s also going a little heavy on the “She Blinded Me with Rest-stop Sunglasses and Short-Pants” and looks, not so much further back in the photo, as he does much, much smaller than everyone else.
As if Kevin’s imagining him.

Kev has shed the top half of his exoskeleton to reveal the world’s tightest wristwatch and a surprising commitment to ‘Lite’ beer. But that’s all to distract us from a more sinister truth – Kevin Whelan…is a Centaur and the folded jumpsuit hides his bottom horsey half.

Jerry is mulling over an especially tough call on the last corner kick while moonlighting as the most intensely motivated salesperson at Foot Locker.

He in turn, is wearing the Pope Gregory hat – a stunning 28″ likeness of Greg rendered in felt and beaver fur.
Water-repellent. Reversible. Sleeveless.
Beautiful.

Good thing there was a camera there at the exact moment the four of us beamed in to lay claim to Least Cool Band in the Universe.

Vote Early Vote Often

Sorry….anyhow, for both of you still reading, here are the themes to our pretty parties:

For the Thursday, 12/3 show, you make the play, armchair Quarterflash. You write the set list. Yep, whatever obscure ditty from our vast catalog of 3.5 albums in 20.5 years that we normally wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot Kevin, you vote ’em in, and we’ll…probably make you regret it.

Nope, you don’t have to be going to the show. How would we even know? And yes, you can vote more than once. Why would we care? The New Math that will be used to calculate your vote and compute our oldies set, exists where the plane of imaginary numbers is bisected by the tangent of nano-technology and will weed out your shabby attempts at rigging the system.

So tell us what songs to play and whichever get the most votes, go in the set.
To do that, go to our Contact / email the band page , drop us a message with a tune or two or even a whole set that, given an infinite space-time and a merciful god, you’d wanna hear us try to play. Maybe put ‘Play Drunk’ in the subject line since we’ll probably have to that night.

Voting will end…let’s say, a little over a week from now, October 3rd. Gives us two months to get it together.

As for Friday, 12/4, come dressed as your favorite wren. Balding, middle-aged Paunch Men are automatically disqualified per competition guidelines. Bird costumes, encouraged. Kidding. For that show, we’re doing all new songs. Or as many as we can muster.

Oh yeah, we’ll have some as-yet-to-be confirmed friends’ bands from the days of yore playing both shows as well.

As always, one-score-and-seven-months-worth of thanks,
the wrens