Anyone invested in New Jersey indie rock greats the Wrens is surely by now familiar with the drama that ended the group last year, essentially halving their long-gestating final album into two separate projects by two separate bands. Kevin Whelan — who had been waiting a good solid decade for bandmate Charles Bissell to finish tinkering with their album, and who clashed with Bissell over money issues — ultimately decided to funnel his songs into a new band called Aeon Station featuring the other two members of the Wrens. That left Bissell to release his own new (old) music under a new name and promote it with a new backing band.

Bissell insists that release is coming this year, though he’s made similar claims before. In the meantime, he is playing a solo show Friday at the Knitting Factory that he’s billing as the final performance of “the Wrens years” before switching over to the new moniker that will ultimately be affixed to his new album. Empty Country and Field Mouse are also on the lineup. Apparently his new bandmates are angling for names like Telemuffin and Bagel Anew but Bissell prefers something “slightly less carb-heavy.” Bissell’s message about the gig also implies that Empty Country might back him for the final full-band run through material from the Wrens’ 2003 classic The Meadowlands — “you know, maybe.”

Here’s his full dispatch:

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

Get to the gig, NYC-adjacent Wrens fans!