Kevin Whelan: You put it perfectly. It really was kind of sad and hard to go through it. I remember, we had to move because we got kicked out of our house. We made most of the record in this one house. But we got kicked out of it at the very end, the last year or so. We moved into this new house and we were all really depressed, and like, oh, god, this is never going to end. I tell you, we were really sad, but then when we heard the record, we were really happy with it. Before anyone else heard it or it went out anywhere, we were really happy with it and happy with what it was. So in a way, I think that triumph and feeling came through. I don't know. I think it's only come through being real...not faking it.

Splendid: Let's talk about your background a little. You guys have been together as a band for about 15 years now?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, we first started in 1988. But that was just in college. We could barely play our songs and just had weird gigs here and there. And then as we started to get better, we started to play more cover gigs. We played colleges. We were trying to make money in order to buy equipment and make a record. We didn't really know how to go about it. We were so retarded when it came to the music industry. We weren't in a scene. We weren't in Seattle or all those things you read about where you had scenes. We had no kids that liked music. We had no clubs to play. We had nothing. We were just doing what we could do.

So then we decided to move into a house together and just become an original band and just work at writing songs. And that's all we did for two years.

Splendid: And then, the first time you ever sent out a demo, you got an invitation to open for The Fixx. The "Saved by Zero" Fixx?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, The "Saved by Zero" Fixx, who I guess were having a comeback or something. My brother and I got the call at the house asking if we wanted to open for The Fixx. And of course, we were like "Wow, we're going to be famous. Things are going to open up for us." This is how out of it we were. So we said, yeah, sure, of course we'd do it. So we had to sell 1,000 tickets. The tickets were $15 a piece.

Splendid: Where were they playing?

Kevin Whelan: They were playing at this place called Obsessions in Randolph, New Jersey. This terrible, crazy club.

Splendid: That can't be a very big club, though. How big is it?

Kevin Whelan: No, it's not a very big club. They could, at least, get like 700 to 800 people in there. If not more. I don't know why they were asking us to sell so many tickets.

Splendid: I guess they knew that nobody wanted to see The Fixx at that point.

Kevin Whelan: Especially not in Randolph, New Jersey.

Splendid: That's the first of a series of weird pairings, where your band has been linked with other bands that it's hard to imagine even in the same paragraph. Your original band name was Low?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah. What happened was that we, after a series of cover dates, decided to become an original band. We decided to make a seven-inch. Because some of the best advice we ever got was at one of those music conferences, where the guy was like, if you want to make records, go out and make a record today. Don't wait for a record contract. So we went out and made a seven-inch and decided to call ourselves Low. And as soon as we put out the seven-inch, we realized that there was another band called Low. And then we had to quickly turn into The Wrens. That was after we had printed a thousand copies. It's been a comedy of errors.

Splendid: The other story I love is the one about you getting fired from your job on the Cape May Ferry for playing "Debaser"?

Kevin Whelan: Actually, no -- we got fired for playing "Debaser" from a New Jersey club that near Sea Isle, New Jersey. But the ferry, there we got fired for playing almost everything else.

Splendid: Like what?

Kevin Whelan: Pixies and The Cure and The Violent Femmes. And we tried to play some of our songs, which were worse than you can imagine. We were really awful. The guy who gave us the job was a really nice guy. He was thinking that the people who came out for a ride would have a good time.

Splendid: What were you supposed to be playing?

Kevin Whelan: He let us play anything we wanted. But we were supposed to be good so that people would enjoy it, and we weren't very good.

Splendid: I was hearing a little bit of "Debaser" in the guitars at the end of "Happy."

Kevin Whelan: Oh, that's funny. Yeah, I would say that we definitely are Pixies-influenced. We have lots of bands influence, but The Pixies, I would say, you could hear their stuff for sure.

Splendid: And then you released your first full-length, Silver, and that got you some pretty big-time attention. Then you started working on Secaucus and that's when, I guess, the hammer came down.

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, Secaucus started to do well. People liked the record. Writers liked the record. It could never have been a top-ten record. Never, ever, ever. We made it in our basement again. But the record company came in and tried to turn it into Third Eye Blind or something like that. There was just nothing there. We knew that we wanted to have a career that was mostly based on making good records -- not becoming Britney Spears or those kinds of bands. Not on being famous. So we said, look, if you want to sign us, let's do well with Secaucus and see how it goes. But they wanted to strong-arm us. They said, look, you've got to sign this big deal for all these records, or we're not even going to push this record. So it was a conflict of thinking. They wanted us to be something different from what we are. So we decided yet again to choose the other way. We are just so committed to each other and we have to believe in what we do. And you kind of can't kid yourself about what you do? You know what I mean? We're not Aerosmith. There's no way we ever will be.

Splendid: And that whole period, that's essentially what "This Boy is Exhausted" is about.

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, well, what happened was that all the major labels were coming out of the woodwork and they wanted to sign us. They were making us record for them, and saying, "We're going to sign you." And then they just never would do anything. And "This Boy Is Exhausted" that was really written at a time when Interscope was going to sign us. A guy kept coming back to the house. I think we wrote 30 songs for him. And there was just no single. And finally, with that song, Charles the guitar player wrote that song, essentially about that guy.

Splendid: It's a great song. I guess it goes into that limited genre of songs that make fun of record company executives. I think Spoon has one, too.

Kevin Whelan: Definitely. There's something about that one. We actually got to make fun of that record executive and then play it for him, the guy who was deciding on our career.

Splendid: And he didn't get it, did he?

Kevin Whelan: I was actually at the office and the assistant said to me, "Are you guys crazy?" Needless to say, we didn't get signed.

Splendid: Is that the guy who went on to launch Creed?

Kevin Whelan: No, this was the guy who signed The Strokes.

Splendid: Well, that makes sense. I can imagine the same person liking you and The Strokes. But this thing with Creed, it just makes no sense. I can't imagine how the same person would want to deal with both bands.

Kevin Whelan: Well, that was the guy who was trying to make Secaucus like Third Eye Blind. That was the guy who was really looking for a hit. He wanted to have a successful record label, which is fine.

Splendid: But it was all about the money.

Kevin Whelan: It was about the money and about the idea that the only way to make money was to have something very mass marketable, and we're not like that. I've always liked to compare us to a nice breakfast place. It's not Denny's, where you get everything fast and quick. It's just a nice place that only locals know. But the people who go there love it.

Splendid: Even during the period after Secaucus and before Meadowlands, you had, apparently, a lot of underground fans. Wasn't your music used in a couple of films?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, they used our music in a couple of films. We were in a movie called Sunburn which had the guy from 28 Days Later (Cillian Murphy) in it. Our music has also been used in a lot of MTV ads and weird things.

Splendid: Did that make it possible to be a working band? You still all have jobs, don't you?

Kevin Whelan: Unfortunately. Money is the very last thing. If it ever comes. It still has never come. We have to have our day jobs, to do what we can to make it.

Splendid: So, I'm guessing that you had a lot of pressure to quit during this period, from people who probably thought that they were thinking the best for you and maybe it was time to for you to grow up and stop being in a band and be responsible. I'm hearing that in tracks like "The House that Guilt Built". Was that a problem?

Kevin Whelan: It was only a problem when we were trying to deal with relationships, you know. I think that a lot of people, when they think of rock bands, they think that you ought to be 25 and go out and play gigs and do drugs and all that kind of thing. When you're older, it's a different thing. We just want to make good music. It's okay to make good music. You don't have to give up every good thing in your life. You don't even have to be either at work or be an artist. We believe that you can do what you can do. You don't have to give up your dreams.

Splendid: I think that's one of the things that's really wrong with the music business: there isn't music by and for people who aren't out there trying to pick up people of the opposite sex and get drunk all the time. There's no music for people who are sort of on to the next stage. The kind of music you're making, the industry is not willing to produce.

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, I guess they feel that there's not an audience out there, but I'm telling you, there's definitely an audience. The industry always thinks that the audience is absolutely stupid. We've learned that audiences are really smart. You know what I mean? People who love music, people who go to shows, they know whether something's good or bad fast.

Splendid: Well, as long as we're not drunk...

Kevin Whelan: Yeah. Well people go on to a different phase. Just because you turn 35 doesn't mean that you don't love your Iggy Pop records or that you wouldn't love something new that's good.

Splendid: Yeah, well, one of the things that I was noticing about Meadowlands is that it seems to be about this whole process of trying to do something in music and trying to manage your personal lives, that it's just a very difficult thing to have relationships. The women in the songs are writing you letters or leaving or yelling at you. Do you want to talk about the toll that this sort of thing takes on relationships and how that feeds into your work?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, I think for sure there's a toll. It's hard. Very hard. Not only for us, but also for anyone that we've been involved with. Because we would work nine to five jobs and then we would come home and work from seven to midnight, and we did that for five years. If you work on something that long and that consistently, anyone who comes along is going to wonder, is that what I want in my life? Just because you like somebody who's an artist, that doesn't mean that you've signed up for all the problems. That's where it kind of gets hard. You can't be judgmental. It's a hard thing. And that's when it got down to being so hard for us. You know, maybe we're not doing the right thing.

It's not that you can't settle down. You look at Jerry. He's married. He has three kids. It's just how things work out.

Splendid: But there aren't any of these "Wow, I'm in love" songs that you hear on pretty much every other album -- and I guess it's just because you're not at that stage in your lives?

Kevin Whelan: I guess so. We've always been kind of a sad band. You know, on the records. We've always been more like a sad break-up kind of band. Not like a "I'm driving around. I'm so happy" kind of band. Which is an awesome thing. And we like that, too. I don't know. We just do more of the other thing...

Splendid: People are doing the other thing. You don't have to worry about that. Other people are taking care of that.

Kevin Whelan: Yeah. But everyone goes through some break-ups and hardships.

Splendid: I really love the song "13 Months in Six Minutes."

Kevin Whelan: Thank you.

Splendid: It seems like it's really specific and it's beautiful, and might be tied to some sort of real situation?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, I think... Charles wrote that one. We all kind of worked on it together. He wanted to get a little bit more specific than the rest of the songs on our record. The rest of the songs, when they're about relationships, we leave them a little bit vague. Here I think it was better to be more specific, and certainly the story line was real. Many people go to airports or a coffee shop and they're looking at that person...going away.

Splendid: I also really like -- there are a couple of fuzzy, very distorted rock songs on Meadowlands where the guitars are way up front and the vocals are kind of buried, and it reminds me of early REM and maybe Wire.

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, you're naming all my idols. You're right on target. As far as REM goes, maybe they went down in their later career, but they're a band that made how many wonderful records? Of course, we model ourselves after those records, or aspire to those records for sure.

Splendid: What about The Feelies? Are they another influence...because they're another Jersey band that does the jangly pop thing?

Kevin Whelan: Maybe. Not as strongly as the others. But we definitely know them.

Splendid: The album also reminds me a little of the last Wilco album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. They had some similar problems getting their work out. Were you following that whole thing?

Kevin Whelan: It's funny. We weren't following it at the time. We made the record, and then we kind of heard about what they were going through. I was more listening to Summerteeth when we were making our record, and certainly Wilco is in the same category, making really Beatles-y, pop-type songs. The thing is that we didn't want to make it like a record trouble story. We were just more like...it's more about our dreams. It's more about the way you hold onto your dreams. Even if you're in a small town...

Splendid: There are a lot of references to New Jersey in your albums, and for anyone who's ever been there, it's evocative of that particular place. Do you think that's limiting, or is it a good thing?

Kevin Whelan: New Jersey is certainly there, because we've been born and raised in Jersey. We've lived down the shore. It kind of gets into you. It may be because you're so close to New York City and you're never really quite accepted. We just took it a different way than, say, Springsteen.

Splendid: Now, didn't you do a lot of work on songs after you'd put them together? It took you a really long time to make Meadowlands.

Kevin Whelan: It took years. We could have finished the record in a couple of weeks, but it took us five years of redoing and rewriting. And the hardest part was to stop lying to yourself about what's good and what's bad. Of course, you can go a little crazy. You can go overboard, but you can really do a lot better if you just keep working at it.

Splendid: For example, take a song and tell me what it was before and how you changed it?

Kevin Whelan: Right, "Happy" is the perfect example. That was maybe one of the worst songs on the record. It was written for the A&R guy at Interscope and it was really poppy and terrible. So we took the chords and changed them around and then toned the whole thing down and then the band wrote a different song over the same base, same chords, and it turned out to be really good for us. Every song, I'd say, went through five, six, sometimes ten stages...

Splendid: Do you ever get to a point where you're doing that and you realize that you've gone too far and you should have stopped at the next-to-the-last thing?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, and then we kind of went back to what was better. Or what was better for record as a whole.

Splendid: So, was the sequencing really important and difficult?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah.

Splendid: It's kind of like a bell curve, starts off real soft and gets loud in the middle and then comes back down.

Kevin Whelan: That's exactly what we had to do. All our other records started off with really hard songs right away. With this one, it takes a lot of time to rev up. Yeah, you're nailing everything.

Splendid: Has the Internet made it easier for you to reach the people who like your music?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, and the people who like our music are amazing. We are certainly an unbelievably grateful band.

Splendid: How much contact do you have with your fans?

Kevin Whelan: Anything. If anyone writes to us, we try to write to them back, as soon as they write to us. Any sort of contact they want. We appreciate anybody writing us, whether it's good or bad. The Internet certainly has changed things for us. We haven't felt trapped. When we were doing the other records, we couldn't find anybody. We'd go into a town and we wouldn't find anybody. But now we go into a town and say, hey we're going to be there, and it's more fun for us. It takes a little power away from the record companies. Which is a good thing.

Splendid: Does it worry you that people are out there ripping your songs and trading them?

Kevin Whelan: I think it's wonderful. People love music. People don't mistreat music. It's the record companies that are mistreating people when they're selling records for $20. People love good music. It's people that do it right. Business does it wrong. People like you, you write about music because you love music, and it's so nice. You're not getting paid millions of dollars...

Splendid: (laughs) I'm not getting paid at all.

Kevin Whelan: Right. You're not getting paid anything. You've got it right.

Splendid: I think that for the record companies, what's important is the $20, and for everybody else, what's important is the music.

Kevin Whelan: Right, and I understand that it's a business as well. But it doesn't mean that for people like yourself that music that is hard to find is not as important, because it is.

Splendid: So, when I started listening to Meadowlands I immediately wanted to buy the rest of your stuff, and you can't because most of it's out of print.

Kevin Whelan: We're having a little trouble with that. We're trying to get it in print...

Splendid: I've been hearing that some of your records, you can get them for like $500 on eBay?

Kevin Whelan: (laughs) It's just been crazy. You have no idea. We had a person who wanted to buy one of our records for $100 and I wrote him right away. I immediately sent him the thing because he was so nice. But it's complete blushing all the time.

Splendid: But it looks like Absolutely Kosher is reissuing Abbott 1135?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, that we can do.

Splendid: With the other two, Silver and Secaucus, are there obstacles?

Kevin Whelan: There are obstacles because that's with BMG, and it's a little tricky. They don't want to reissue them if they're not going to sell millions of them. I'm sure...I think we will eventually get around that.

Splendid: You didn't erase the master tapes for those, too? (The Wrens held a big party after they finished recording Meadowlands and ended the whole thing by erasing the master tapes, so that they wouldn't fool with the record for another five years.)

Kevin Whelan: No. Those are still available.

Splendid: Did you really do that?

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, the master tapes for Meadowlands are gone.

Splendid: That seems like a big step.

Kevin Whelan: It was a little crazy. You've got to get rid of some things. We were finished. We said, we'll never go back, so let's burn them.

Splendid: What are you doing now? Are you working on new stuff or doing some shows?

Kevin Whelan: We're doing lots of shows. We've got a West Coast tour in February, the Midwest in March and the East Coast in April and May. Then we're going to concentrate on some more stuff, because we always have music that's ready to go. But after 13 years and seven years with Meadowlands, even if it ends today, right this second, I could not be any happier.

Splendid: I think your story has a lot of resonance for people who are struggling in the arts...it's like one of you got through. It's like a victory for everybody.

Kevin Whelan: Yeah, it's wonderful. The thing is that we never thought that we were going to get through. That's why the importance of what you do, the real stuff...that's why it took us so long...we had to make sure that even if no one heard it, that we could be happy with it.