http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/10/arts/music/10WREN.html A Long Wait on Fame's Doorstep for the Wrens
By HUGO LINDGREN
Kevin Whelan is 33, and he worked as a temp for so long that he defied the term. But in every temp-filled cubicle there lives a dream â?? about a novel to write, a symphony to compose, a scale model of the Empire State Building to build out of soup cans â?? and Mr. Whelan had one, too. He wanted to be a rock star.
This dream once seemed deliciously close to coming true. In the mid-1990's the Wrens, Mr. Whelan's band, were an underground sensation, on the brink of monster success. They played jagged, arty rock music in which they embedded smart little melodies, and at the time there seemed to be a market for this. So the Wrens quit their temp jobs and toured the country in a van. They put out an album called "Secaucus" that critics adored. And they attracted a benefactor who paid their bills and offered them a contract for $1 million.
Then it all clattered apart. Wary of signing away so much of their future work, the Wrens rejected the million dollars, a decision that also had the effect of severing their lifeline of cash. That left them too broke to stay on tour, so they had to come home to New Jersey. At which point all the record labels that had once followed them around like a swarm of smitten high-school girls suddenly developed other crushes and forgot them.
This happens to almost every band not named the Rolling Stones: they hit the brick wall, they face the abyss, they realize that you cannot make money doing what you love and that, as Mr. Whelan said, "you have to grow up and join the human race."
But the Wrens refused to do that. They did not break up, not even when their drummer, Jerry MacDonald, now 34, got married and moved out of the house they all shared in Secaucus. Mr. Whelan, who plays bass and piano, and his brother Greg, 40, who plays guitar, took low-paying office jobs in Manhattan. Eventually so did Charles Bissell, 39, the other guitar player.
The band continued, but as far as the neighbors or anyone else could tell, they might as well have been holding marathon Tupperware parties. There were no loud guitars blaring into the street, nobody getting sick in the shrubs. Every night, after getting off the commuter bus from Manhattan and trudging home, they would assemble in the living room and quietly go to work on music. "It was like a marriage," Kevin said. "Because we lived together, nobody could bail."
As often as possible, Mr. MacDonald would drive in from southern New Jersey, where he had started a real family with his wife. Without a record company and without much money, the Wrens began work on an album, their third. It was slow and it was painful, and as Mr. Bissell said, "We were all very depressed." They figured it would take about four months.
That was five years ago. The album, called "The Meadowlands," was finished early this year and is to be available in stores Tuesday on the Absolutely Kosher label. It's a meticulously constructed collage of rock tones, some noisy and some sweet, a few highly polished, others straight off the cuff. One track, a raw piano composition called "This Is Not What You Had Planned," was an improvisation, written and recorded, Kevin said, one late night when he stumbled home drunk and decided he was inspired.
Other than that, the story of what happened in these last five years is not very rock 'n' roll. It is all about a steadfast friendship that not only survived but also sustained a shared dream as it moved through many cubicles.
The Wrens' intense loyalty to one another was forged in the boom and bust cycles that would mark their career. The two Whelans, sons of teachers outside Cape May, N.J., started the band when Greg, who is seven years older than Kevin, returned home from law school in Utah. It was 1989, and Greg was disheartened by the prospect of a career in the law.
Kevin was in college and performing at parties, where the band would take requests from the crowd, a live version of karaoke. Kevin and Greg made a demo tape to get real gigs, and the very first one they sent out produced a response: an invitation to open for the Fixx, a British New Wave band that was by that point clinging to a dwindling reputation.
For the Whelans, though, it was as if they had been anointed the Next Big Thing by the gods of rock. "I instantly pictured the garage I would need for all my cars," Kevin said. "Seriously." But their excitement was quickly extinguished when they learned that part of the deal was that they had to buy 175 tickets: their first lesson in how the music business preys on the ambition of clueless young bands.
The Whelans borrowed money from their parents and went about hawking the tickets as best they could. They got Mr. Bissell, an acquaintance from the karaoke circuit, to play guitar and to help them move the tickets. Then the Fixx canceled.
It was a blow, and yet the experience crystallized their us-against-the-world identity as a band. Mr. MacDonald joined shortly thereafter, and they started recording and touring. They spent a summer as the house band for a ferry that ran between Lewes, Del., and Cape May, baffling the mostly elderly passengers with unrehearsed excursions into the Smiths' songbook.
It was low-grade entertainment but good training. The Wrens made their first album, "Silver," which was embraced by indie-rock critics. It also gave them the opportunity, Kevin said, to "drive all over the country, play for a few dozen people who had nothing better to do and then beg them for a floor to crash on."
Their lives improved from there until they turned down the million-dollar deal. (Their benefactor would go on to discover Creed, though he still occasionally sends the Wrens an invoice for the $75,000 he spent on promoting "Secaucus.") When the Wrens returned to New Jersey, they had a great deal of frustration to work through. To keep the band front and center they took temp jobs. "It was especially hard on me," Greg said. "I'd passed the bar, worked as a lawyer, and now I was back answering phones and making photocopies."
It would take years, but gradually their attitude softened from hostility to the idea of being forced to have a job to an understanding that doing well at work didn't necessarily mean betraying their dream. Greg works in the compliance department at Pfizer. Mr. Bissell works in the financial department of an ad agency. Mr. MacDonald is in sales for a company that provides emergency medical and evacuation services for businesses that have employees overseas. Even Kevin has broken from the temp ranks and now works at Pfizer, too.
"We realized it was O.K. not to hate your job," Mr. MacDonald said. "And it kind of went hand in hand with realizing that as a band we didn't have to be U2. We could actually start living our lives and not just keep planning for some future that was always one step away."
And so the Wrens are now a perfect match for the town that three of them still live in together. Where once Secaucus drew immigrants, who got out as soon as they could, looking for a way up in their new country, it is now the home of many second- and third-generation Americans trying to be content with what they have. The Whelans and Mr. Bissell live on the crest of a hill overlooking the Meadowlands, the New Jersey Turnpike and the Manhattan skyline. Their next-door neighbor is the man who starred in the Ty-D-Bol commercials of the 1970's.
The scene is not quite idyllic: a mysteriously strong stench emanates from somewhere in the scrubby backyard, and there are not many who would choose to live within sight of a swamp and the Turnpike. But last Sunday afternoon the Meadowlands looked as verdant as Central Park, the post-Giants-game traffic had a slow-flowing majesty to it, and the skyline of Manhattan glowed deep orange in the setting sun.
With Mr. MacDonald's three small children running about, the Wrens' modest beige house looked like home sweet home. There are, Kevin observed as he twirled 5-year-old Maille MacDonald upside down, "many worse things than being in a rock band that hasn't made it."
Especially when there remains a glimmer of hope that it could still happen.
