Wrens balance musical success, day jobs

Charles Bissell is a natural born rock singer. His chords
don’t have an effortless cool like Lou Reed’s, but
instead a kind of natural brashness, an every-word-counts urgency
that can turn even the most pedestrian lines into a keening
credo.

But he’s hardly a natural-born rock star. At the finance
department of a New York-based ad agency, 39-year-old Bissell is
whispering into the phone, trying to avoid his boss and wishing his
little cubicle would offer a bit more privacy. To make things
worse, he’s fighting off a nasty cold. “You see, as we
reach our middle years, healing becomes an issue,” he quips
in a mock tone, as if to acknowledge the issue of age first.

His band, the Wrens, has been together for 15 years, but last
year’s “The Meadowlands” is only its third
record, and its first in seven years. Each member works a desk job
in the city, where interview days aren’t license to get off
work, not when sick days and vacation times are precious
commodities reserved for tours that venture out of the tri-state
area. The Wrens have already tried to live the rock star lifestyle
they once coveted, yet circumstance seems to have told the band
that it’s not for them. But with the runaway success of
“The Meadowlands,” fate finally seems to be turning
their way.

Anyone familiar with the Wrens is by now familiar with
“Secaucus,” the album they quietly released on Grass
Records in 1996. The 23-track melange of nervy energy, angular
guitars and sweet melodies sounded loud and clear amid a stale
landscape of post-grunge and adult alternative.

But the band’s safe haven changed when Grass Records was
bought out by millionaire Alan Melzter that year. Before he went on
to discover Creed and Evanescence, Melzter offered the four friends
from South Jersey a million-dollar contract. The band balked, and
soon enough Melzter pulled all support for the band’s
European tour, forcing the group to return home and rethink their
trajectory.

The Wrens didn’t want the binding contract, but they
wanted to record, and a Drive-Thru Records compilation in 1999
seemed to signal a new future. Sandwiched between a pack of pop
punk and third wave ska acts like New Found Glory, Fenix TX and
Allister, it seemed the Wrens had found a new home.

But the single “Miss Me” conjured none of the
youthful energy that propelled “Secaucus” three years
prior, and it had none of its offhand vocal interplay, at least
none that could be parsed from the song’s unforgiving wall of
distortion and power chords. Standing in awkward compromise between
arena rock and pop-punk, it was jarring and repetitive and frankly
wasn’t any good. Drive-Thru entered into a deal with MCA, and
the Wrens jumped that ship, too.

Then, all of a sudden, things changed.

“One day we all just looked at each other and went, what
the hell have we been doing?” said guitarist Greg Whelan.
“This is ridiculous, trying to write hit songs for major
labels. We just started not to even care about that anymore. And
that’s when the record started coming together and we were
able to finish it.”

“Miss Me” actually takes the form of “Boys,
You Won’t” off last year’s record. After about
four years of erasing and rewriting, the once stagnant track now
builds and preens. It’s cleaner but more wounded, and the
lyrics that once dealt with a lost girl now tell the story of the
band. The rest of the album similarly coalesced in time.

Drummer Jerry MacDonald, 37, now has a wife, a mortgage and
three kids. The rest of the band still lives together in New
Jersey, where they continue to hold onto their day jobs and mull
the possibility of making the band a fuller commitment.

“When we got done, (we) were so enthused about it, like
we’re at the top of our game, in a way that we haven’t
felt in 10 years or more,” says Bissell. “It’s
just really “¦ cool.”

The Wrens perform Friday at noon at Westwood Plaza.