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Final Solo Show 5/6/22 - Knitting Factory (Brooklyn)

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Final Solo Show 5/6/22 - Knitting Factory (Brooklyn)

Howdy,

It’s been a pan-while, officially at least, and I hope you’re doing well. Just writing to say that I’m doing a solo show, a final one of these, this Friday, at the Knitting Factory here in Brooklyn, along with the mightily awesome Empty Country and equally awesome Field Mouse. Pretty sure I'm playing first, or I should be, so hopefully see you there on the early side.

That’s Friday, May 6th, at the Knitting Factory, Brooklyn

Doors are at 7:00pm

Show starts 7:30pm

Tickets: Here

This show was originally set up last summer, then postponed due to COVID to the winter, then postponed again and now, suddenly it's here. And unless I’m forgetting something (likely) this is the first solo show I’ve done in 2 1/2 years (?), since that round of three Wrenses Alien shows w/ Cymbals Eat Guitars at the end of 2019...? All of which means both that I haven't practiced in 2 1/2 years now(…!) and that being that Empty Country is Joe from Cymbals Eat Guitars' new project, just saying that there just might be one last trotting out of a few meadowlands chestnuts in a full-group context...you know, maybe..

As far as it being the last of this type of solo thing...I’ve been doing these, these solo-sets-with-loop pedals, of older wrens songs & songs from this pending wrens record (along w/ a rotation of like the same four cover songs - ha) for the last 15+ years. They’d been a way of doing something slightly different & outside of the band context (while still doing wrens songs and not having to mount a whole solo thing proper); a way to keep some level of activity going wrens-wise while the making-of-the-record ground on from bad to sadness and back again over 10 years etc. And as I think about it, solo shows were also sort of a way to not have to say ‘no’, something I admittedly have some trouble with, to offers for the band to play since about 2010, even if they were sorta a distant-second-place consolation prize.

Now because of how things have played out band-implosion-wise over the last couple of years, and since last fall in particular, these songs & album will now come out as a new project/new name etc. (this is getting close to a whole update thing, but I’ll save that for after this show) and so this is the last ‘charles from the wrens’ solo show. From here on it’ll be, if it happens at all, a new full-band thing, which if two of our three youngsters have their way, would be billed as ‘Telemuffin’ or ‘Bagel Anew’…ha (I’m leaning slightly less carb-heavy).

So up next, after this show, an update on what & when this album/project will be and a putting the wrens years to rest…

And thanks as always,

charles

(show flyer by Zoë Browne)

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show on

Hi.

This wasn’t probably the first post in x months you were looking for but work on the next album…? Begins soon enough, Grasshopper.

In the meantime though, there’s…Charles! Broadway Charles!

Jazz Charles! Freshly washed & waxed from his stint as Okkervil River’s guitar temp, he’s playing a solo set at Knitting Factory (NY) along with good friends, Get Him Eat Him and

The Capstan Shafts .

 

Besides, what else are you gonna do tonight? Stay home & watch tv? Is there even anything on?

I mean it’s not as if centuries of cultural history are culminating in one crystalline moment of staggering importance, reaching a key journey point in an American political roadtrip set in motion in part by Lincoln over 140 years ago - and on the very anniversary of M.L.K.’s earlier milestone, no less - with the official party nomination acceptance speech of a presidential candidate so spectacularly cast by fate and/or nature for the role of leader that his mere presence on a proscenium stage moves regular folk to civic involvement, to feelings of true patriotism, to at least awareness and not uncommonly, to tears .

Wait, is that tonight?

can I come over?

 

Well, you can always TiVo history. In the meantime, we’ll be holed up here:

Thursday August 28th,

Knitting Factory (74 Leonard Street).

Show starts at 8:00pm.

Tickets

are $10 in advance and $12 at the door.

There’s even a Facebook page for this show, which is a kind of giveaway that we weren’t part of planning since it’s at all current, of our time or cool.

See you in September…

the wrens

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a couple of benefit shows

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...

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Tonight, live on the radio via the telephone

“Phoning It In’ is a nifty radio show from WMBR in Boston and WBSR in Providence where they have musicians engage in what they describe as ‘live over-the-phone performances and awkward conversation’.

Earlier last winter we did an unplugged performance on “Phoning It In” with Nadav Carmel on WMBR. It was a hoot and we definitely provided our share of awkward conversation and impossibly-long converstional pauses. And we played a few songs (we’re looking for the link for that one as we type this).

But tonight (Thursday, 5/31/07) at 9:00pm, Charles will do a few songs solo-wren-style for the partner show on WBSR with James Brandt...

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Tour de Foncy Ponts

Howdy,

Maintaining our more-or-less ‘two weekends a month’ touring schedule for about the third year going now, we’ve added a peck o’new tour dates (Ohio, Georgetown, Baltimore, Seattle, Texas).

Relatedly, one-man notefest Charles is hitting the boards solo-style tomorrow night, 2/22/07. He’ll be reprising his crowd-wowing solo turn as Petruchio in ‘Taming of the Shrew’ as part of the Brooklyn Next Festival at Southpaw. Kidding – it is the Brooklyn Next Festival but he’s just playing the same tired wrens songs with loops & stuff.

Mentioning this not because it’s so great, but because it’s one-day notice at this point and the good folks of Southpaw deserve better.

Click on this funny-colored sentence to see the grueling details of our non-consecutive show dates on the ‘tours’ page

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Charles solo residency at Knit continues…

Howdy,

Charles’ solo August residency thing at the Knitting Factory Tap Bar (NY) continues tonight with one of the wrens’ bestest old friends, Koester:

http://www.koesterrock.com/

And next Tuesday, 8/29, with Roman Kuebler (from the Oranges Band) and John Ralston:

http://www.theorangesband.com/

http://www.myspace.com/johnralston

For both shows, it’s $8 to get in the door, those doors open at 7:00, and the show you’re paying for starts at 8:00.

http://www.knittingfactory.com/

These solo thingies of his are definitely not ‘acoustic’ – more like a bunch of loops, pedals and an ill-chosen set-list of older weirder wrens songs (no turntables although there is a microphone).

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