the wrens

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

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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.

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Related to the story below regarding Bottom of the Hudson’s tragic accident, we’re doing a couple of benefit shows in September (details of both the accident and updates on news can be found on our label’s site,
Absolutely Kosher).

First, Charles is doing a solo show at Monkey Town in Williamsburg, Brooklyn this Wednesday, Sept. 5th.
This is the usual solo Charles thing with out-of-the-norm wrens songs into looping pedals but unusually this time, in collaboration with video artists Elizabeth Maertens and Phillip Kim who will be pushing Monkey Town’s four built-in video screens to their limits.
Also on this bill is Tris McCall (another of NJ’s own and a wonderful songwriter) and the really, really good Overlord.

Monkey Town is a very nifty venue and a very small one - reservations are required and seating is very limited.
But note that they’re currently having server problems with the online reservation form so best bets are to email reservation requests directly to:

monkeytownhq@aol.com

Whatever proceeds Charles drums up from this show will also be going to Trevor’s family and to help offset medical expenses for Bottom of the Hudson’s Greg Lytle, who was also seriously injured in the crash.

Secondly, the full Wren-ish band is doing a benefit show in Philadelphia with Man Man (amazingly good, if you haven’t seen them) and the A-Sides (about whom we’ve heard good things).
The show is at the First Unitarian Church on Thursday, September 20th and all proceeds will be donated to the family of Trevor Butler, Bottom of the Hudson’s bassist, who was killed in the accident.

Details for both shows can be found on our ’Tours’ page.

Also, even if you’re not able to make either of the shows, donations to Trevor’s family can still be made via PayPal to
both@absolutelykosher.com.

We hope you’ve been having a wonderful summer and we hope to be back soon with happier news.

Thanks as always,
the wrens

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After four years, some 160+ shows, roughly 10 countries, and a sultan’s variety of late-night snack foods, our four-year weekends-only tour for the Meadowlands wheezes to a halt with this weekend’s shows in Texas.

For details, click on the tours page right over there on the right...

We will have commemorative tour t-shirts coming to the site in the next couple of weeks (no, seriously) along with some other more forward-looking news and stuff.

For anyone that’s made the trek in the last few years to bear witness to our being our own cover band, sincere thanks. We hope we were good that night. But I do know we almost certainly had a wonderful time trying to be.

Sincerely,
four active seniors

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June 15th: Brooklyn, NY

Charles solo, reworking the same older weirder wrens songs with the usual loops, pedals and crossed fingers.
(wth Cinema, Cinema; Peel; the Antlers)
At a nifty show put together by the good blogging folks of the Battering Room at Matchless in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

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