Whelan, Bissell, and MacDonald took particular enjoyment in pranking the very people in a position to sign them. "This one A&R guy was in the audience, and he watched us burn one and said we were the worst thing in the industry and that we were never going to make it.” “We used to burn them onstage, that was our little gimmick," he says. Whelan collected a fat stack of rejection letters, which, for his own amusement, he liked to use as props during the show. They started to play regularly in New York City in an attempt to draw more industry attention, but the response split the difference between apathy and outright hostility. While their sound had finally begun to coalesce, the band still had no clue how they were going to get a proper record released. "He was going to play drums at Busch Gardens, so we saved him from playing in a costume to a bunch of tourists.” “I called up a girlfriend from eighth grade and asked if her boyfriend wanted to be in a band," recalls Whelan. The most significant thing to happen in this two-year period was the addition of drummer Jerry MacDonald. “Mad World” by Tears for Fears was the hit of the night. He recalls one particularly sad show in May 1990 when they played outdoors in a bandshell in the pouring rain for a handful of soaked concertgoers. Whelan claims that although the band had several original songs in their sets, it was the covers of songs from groups like INXS or the Cure that always drew the most enthusiastic audience response. The Wrens cycled through countless stylistic changes and as many as a dozen band names over the next two years. The Fixx cancelled, elevating the Whelans and Bissell to the top of the bill, and making the empty venue theirs and theirs alone. "Like assholes, we were thinking you play one show opening for the fucking Fixx- who were already on the way down- and that was going to make us famous or something.”Īs it turned out, the band needn’t have worried. "So the week before the show, I was begging people if I could borrow money to pay this bill so I could open for this band," he continues. The fledgling band was expected to not only open for the Fixx, but, according to Whelan, act as the show's de-facto promoters: “They were like, ‘I need you guys to sell 1500 tickets at $15 a pop.’ I think we sold 27 tickets." Whelan quickly drafted in his brother Greg and phoned up a guy by the name of Charles Bissell, who he had met briefly at a house party a year and a half before. Now all he needed was a proper band to perform the songs. It was August of 1989, and one of Kevin Whelan’s homemade demo tapes had impressed the booker for Randolph, New Jersey club Obsessions, who needed an opener for a UK new wave band called the Fixx. The archetypal band begins as a friendship and blossoms into a creative partnership the Wrens were born out of necessity. Theirs is a story of recklessness, perseverance, dumb luck, and mostly, how tight personal ties can keep even the most absurd of boyhood dreams alive- well past what anyone would have thought possible. We began our journey with them in March 2012 and have been talking with them ever since, both on the phone and in person, tracking their new material and revisiting the past. So as we patiently stand by for the group's new album- which the band is currently working on, slowly but surely- we wanted to give them an opportunity to share their bizarre, roller-coaster tale thus far. And yet, here we are, a decade removed from their last album, 2003's The Meadowlands, and people just… keep… waiting. Really, nothing about the Wrens’ 24-year career makes sense on paper. And to cap it all off, the Wrens went on to have their greatest success after refusing the offer, with an album released by a micro-indie that no longer exists, when all the band members were well into their 30s. While they did eventually get offered a big, seven-figure record contract- the one that conventional wisdom says an aspiring band would be crazy not to sign- they walked away from it. Instead, they spent their time recording and stashing away hundreds of demos the world would never hear. They never landed the big opening slot for a platinum act or even spent much time out on the road at all.
The Wrens- now three white-collar corporate guys and one stay-at-home dad from New Jersey- might well be the exception to every rule you thought you knew about carving out a career in music.
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