Our Welcome Sticky: In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 people

(you know, courtesy of internet neutrality? Anyway...)

Howdy, 'our 15',

and welcome to our new website. This one’s powered by electricity. And dry, dusty humor of the self-deprecating kind.

Benefit show for Sweet Home New Orleans 1/10/08

Howdy citizens of 2008,

Hoping your all your holidays and new year and stuff have been as nifty as our own. I got an actual stocking.

Just a quick little – yet important - news item for this next week. Charles has been invited along with an impressive handful of much cooler musicians (see below) to participate in a 3-day artist retreat and benefit show in New Orleans put together by the Future of Music Coalition and Air Traffic Control.

This retreat, the third since Katrina, is designed to promote social justice activism by musical artists and to encourage and facilitate the engagement and support of national artists with the local New Orleans music community as our community struggles to rebuild.

The retreat culminates in a benefit show for Sweet Home New Orleans (SHNO), an umbrella organization for 14 non-profit agencies serving New Orleans' music community. SHNO provides relocation, housing, and social services to musicians and tradition bearers in need. Thousands of New Orleans musicians have yet to find stable housing in their neighborhoods since the flood of 2005. SHNO's mission is to help these artists return to their communities, where they can revitalize the city and share their unique culture with future generations.

Details for the benefit show:

Indie Artists Perform Benefit for New Orleans Musicians Thursday, January 10 at The Parish @ House of Blues New Orleans 9:00pm

On January 10, at the House of Blues Parish Room,

Jon Langford & Sally Timms of The Mekons,
Patrick Hallahan of My Morning Jacket,
Charles Bissell of the Wrens,
Kimya Dawson (who recently contributed eight songs to the hit movie Juno),
Timothy Bracy of Mendoza Line,
Janet Bean of Freakwater
Craig Klein, Matt Perrine, Eric Bolivar & Bert Cotton of Bonerama
And as of today, Nellie McKay

…come together to play a benefit show for musicians displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Showtime is 9 pm.

Buy Tickets

Find out about Sweet Home New Orleans

And if you’re not in the neighborhood to make the show Thursday, consider donating online through their website.

Thanks as always and when we come back online a little later this month we’ll have some new muzak news for you.

take care,
the wrens

Wrens.com down tonight

Howdy,

Just a little warning that we're updating the software that runs our site so we'll be offline a little later today, Wednesday, 12/5/07. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.
Then hopefully some new (read: actual) news in the next week or two.

Thanks as always,
the wrens

CMJ loner show

Howdy,

In typical 11th-hour style, just letting you all know that Charles is playing a solo show tonight, Wed. 10/17, for the nice folks at Gothamist and WOXY who are holding court at White Rabbit (on Houston), lo this week of the CMJ Fest.

It’s a day-party-type thing so set time’s about 6:45pm.

And very honored to be taking up stage space before Rev. Billly and the Church of Stop Shopping. Great recent article on him here, also courtesy Gothamist.

The Forms, another great band, are also playing tonight and later in the week, the ongoing Gothamist/WOXY party will feature Palomar and Pattern is Movement (two faves) among a bunch of others.

To be forewarned, Chazzie cut a chunk off a fingertip chopping brussel sprouts two nights ago so all guarantees on quality-of-performance are even iffier than usual.

Meadowlands vinyl back in stock

For those of you who prefer your muzak storage mediums flat, round and on the dark side, the double-vinyl version of our Meadowlands album (w/ bonus songs) is back in stock.

Hope summer's been good to you.