Speaking of the Wrens and collaboration...

Charles Bissel of the aforementioned Wrens (and a one time >play panelist target) has joined Okkervil River (subject of what I affectionately like to call "the lamest ever post in the history of IRR blogging") to form...well, they're still Okkervil River. But did I mention that Charles B. will be playing with them all summer??

The move isn't permanent (i.e. Charles won't play on the next OR album) but it's still pretty rad. And nope, I don't know how this will impact the Wrens agonizingly slow progress towards album #4...

Collaboration

I sang on stage w/ the Wrens once. It was in San Francisco in December, 2005, and I was there at the show with tickets my then girlfriend Mrs. Exnicios had bought be for my 26th birthday (back when I was young and innocent).

The Wrens are fans of the crowd participation. They have this link posted on their website. It's a piano part to one of their songs--a part that's on the album, but that they could not manage to play live because everyone is occupied playing other instruments. The idea is to find someone in each city who, for this song, will hop up on stage and play along at the appropriate time.

I got to play a shaky thing that made some sort of noise--the kind of thing that you mess with in 3rd grade music class if you get designated as a percussionist in the recorder band. I think it's really cool that the Wrens have expanded this shebang.