{"id":984,"date":"2016-04-12T22:55:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T22:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=984"},"modified":"2026-06-27T22:58:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T22:58:53","slug":"the-wrens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=984","title":{"rendered":"The Wrens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

September 2006, Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, Ga.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have great fondness for The Wrens, a group of 40-something musicians from New Jersey who make albums every decade or so (the slogan on their website is \u201ckeeping folks waiting since 1989\u201d). There is news the band will release an album this year, its first since the 2003 masterpiece The Meadowlands<\/em>. I for one can\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n

The moment I listened to Meadowlands<\/em>, which I first read about in Paste Magazine, I was smitten. But the band, made up of guys with regular jobs when not making superior music, doesn\u2019t really tour (which happens when you take a long time between albums). If ever the band was near a place I could see them, I would make every effort too. In 2006 Paste, which was still publishing a magazine, hosted a festival of sorts in Atlanta, with The Wrens as its top headliner.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s rare when a show exceeds high expectations, but this one did. Though only 12 or 13 songs long (they were the final band of a four-bill night), the show consisted of four guys expertly playing music they loved while making sure everyone in the audience was as excited as they were. Charles Bissell (guitar\/vocals), brothers Greg Whelan (guitar) and Kevin Whelan (bass\/vocals), and Jerry MacDonald (drums) played the hell out of the songs.<\/p>\n

At the start of \u201cBoys You Won\u2019t,\u201d Kevin started bringing people on stage, giving them sticks or asking them to bang the floor with their hands. As Kevin coordinated the several new additions to the band and their sustained banging of sticks, Charles started in with the lyrics: Boys you won\u2019t remember\/from the minute\/you walked into the room\/every letter started broken hearted\/and ended way too soon.\u201d At a certain point the song stops building and explodes, and as Charles sang \u201cI\u2019m feeling down, but I stood up\/dead up of the ground, but I stood up\u201d the crowd on stage lifted up, with raised fists in the air.<\/p>\n

Song after song \u2014 \u201cHopeless,\u201d \u201cFaster Gun,\u201d \u201cEveryone Choose Sides,\u201d \u201cHappy\u201d \u2014 there was a sustained enthusiasm hard to deny. I got the sense these were just a bunch of regular guys, with normal jobs, who on occasion get to play rock stars with songs that are really, really great. It was inspiring \u2014 this sense that anyone can do this, though it takes talent to write songs as good as this.<\/p>\n

For \u201cShe Sends Kisses,\u201d the last song of the night, the band had Charles call Kevin\u2019s cell phone, which he raised to the mic as Charles started singing the opening lines. It was clever, matching the cadence of the song perfectly. Charles then came out on stage to finish the song, and set, with the rest of the band.<\/p>\n

In a live setting (much like fellow 40-somethings Hold Steady) The Wrens are one of the best I\u2019ve seen. I just hope I\u2019m able to see them again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 2006, Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, Ga. I have great fondness for The Wrens, a group of 40-something musicians from New Jersey who make albums every decade or so (the slogan on their website is \u201ckeeping folks waiting since 1989\u201d). There is news the band will release an album this year, its first since the 2003 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-the-wrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":986,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions\/986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}