Following two surprise reunion sets last weekend at Los Angeles’ Permanent Records, beloved Washington, D.C.-reared rock outfit Shudder to Think are working on their first new music since the late 1990s and eyeing additional performances later this year.
The band, which features frontman Craig Wedren, guitarist Nathan Larson and drummer Adam Wade, are beloved for their influential, unique blend of post-hardcore, alternative rock and glam. After emerging on legendary D.C. indie label Dischord Records with classics such as Funeral at the Movies and Get Your Goat, Shudder to Think signed to Epic and in 1994 released one of the strangest major-label debut albums of all time, Pony Express Record.
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Following an uneven response to its 1997 follow-up, 50,000 B.C., the band split up. Short reunions took place between 2008-2009, but prior to last weekend, Shudder hadn’t played live since a 2013 one-off to celebrate D.C. venue the Black Cat’s 20th anniversary. At the moment, bassist Stuart Hill is not involved in the comeback, with longtime Wedren associate Jherek Bischoff handling those parts while fellow collaborator Clint Walsh is covering the guitar bits Wedren would normally play live.
Below, Wedren, who has become an established film and TV composer in his own right, fills SPIN in on how the reunion blossomed, how Shudder to Think’s dynamic has evolved over the decades and what fans can expect in the months to come.
How did last weekend’s shows come about?
Craig Wedren: It’s been a slow, long percolation where I would throw up smoke signals every year or year-and-a-half with multiple different band threads that we have going on, which are all very fun, funny and sweet. I said, it’d be really fun to make some new music. I’ve got folders filled with parts. We could film it and maybe make a documentary or something cool and visual. The goodwill was there, but it was really just more a question of logistics and geography. Everybody’s got lives and wives and careers and kids, and Nathan’s in Sweden. Interestingly, the kid factor kind of unhooked it. Nathan’s son Nils, who is 14, is a total shredder, which is not surprising at all, and he’s a Shudder to Think superfan. I think that gave Nathan this new sense of purpose, like, yeah, we did do something.
Not too long ago, Adam and I went out to lunch and he was like, look dude, we’re not getting any younger. All of our friends are out there playing shows and I want to play shows too. We figured we’d get in a room and see what songs we can remember. Also, I needed to see where my voice is at. I sing a lot, but I sing very differently than I did with Shudder to Think because I’m not trying to be heard over Marshall amplifiers. Nathan was feeling the same way. He was like, I haven’t moved my fingers in these ways in a very long time.
We all love each other and we all love this music. It still feels very present. There’s definitely a lot of new music to explore, but we were very wary of putting the cart before the horse. We didn’t want to just book a show and then everybody is stressed out over this single goal. Me, Adam, Jherek and Clint, without Nathan, started playing together and it just felt great. I was playing my parts. Clint was mostly playing Nathan’s parts, and then Nathan came in for two weeks and Clint switched over to my parts. We had worked out nine or 10 songs by then. Really, within hours, it was like, holy shit, this is really good! In many ways, it felt stronger than ever, thanks to all the intervening years and nuance and subtlety and maturity and seasoning. We called Permanent Records to see if we could do a hardcore matinee show on a Saturday and they were very accommodating. It mushroomed into a couple of sets because a lot of people couldn’t get in who wanted tickets.
At first, it was just going to be a friends-and-family thing to share what we’ve been working on the last couple of weeks and celebrate it and maybe film it. But like any party or wedding, you don’t know where to cut off the guest list, and then the club wanted to sell tickets, so it turned into a proper afternoon. It was just beautiful. It felt and sounded great. We rehearsed in the studio in the back of my house and set it up so that we could demo new stuff in whatever stage and phase it was at, no matter how wet and sloppy, and that also felt great. Everybody had a ball. It’s really the first time in close to 30 years that everybody’s been absolutely on the same page working on the same project together. The sheer, visceral weight of playing heavy music in a room was really something that was missing for all of us.
You’ve been open about the difficulties the band faced during the last few years of the original era. How cool is it that now you can literally go into your own backyard with your mates and do this in a way that satisfies everyone?
100%. I mean, it really was remarkable. There was so much laughter. Old echoes of stuff would come up, which we would work out in real time rather than stuffing it. We just weren’t equipped then as young men to be able to do that. Any weirdness that came up was me misinterpreting Nathan’s expressions. There was one time where I was throwing out something that for sure in my brain was a new Shudder to Think song, and it didn’t quite land at first. It took us a little while to find our way into it as a group and then it just took off. At first I was like, oh no, this is just like when I was bringing stuff in after Pony Express Record but before 50,000 B.C., and I would lose the room or get stonewalled. Nathan was like, oh my god, that’s totally not it! He was just furrowing his brow trying to think about what part he wanted to play (laughs). So, that felt joyous and healthy and intense.
The Internet claims that the new song that was played last weekend was called “Playback.“
That’s correct.
So, what happens next?
We’re trying to do this in a very organic way that works for everybody’s individual lives and collective health. We’re going to keep working on new music together in a room and each in our separate corners. We have shared ProTools sessions where we record demos together, but then everybody can tweak ideas on their own. It’s a more multi-dimensional, accordion-esque creative process rather than just being in a room, working on the song, playing the songs live and recording the songs. The intention is to hopefully have a record done within a year from now — next summer or fall or something like that. If it winds up being a series of EPs or singles, it doesn’t really matter. We just want to make new Shudder to Think music together, and we’re documenting it all. My friend Frank Barrera, who is a wonderful DP, came in while we were demoing ‘Playback’ and filmed all of it, which turned into this really great group therapy session. Let’s call it the happy version of [the Metallica documentary] Some Kind of Monster, but where there’s no enemy or even real tension to speak of (laughs).
Is the idea to not play live again until some of the new material is more developed?
We’re starting to look into playing some shows. They’ll probably be a little piecemeal until we put a record out. We’re talking about a couple East Coast things in the fall, and maybe select festivals. As the new music comes together, we’ll make some bigger decisions. Everybody wants to play shows, but the prospect of touring in the traditional sense deserves a good rethink-slash-disruption. It might just be a couple of weeks at a time, like a sensible bunch of old dudes, but we’ll see.
Are you guys utilizing any bits that are from the collective past of the band or are the things you’re messing with in terms of new music more contemporary or fresh?
It’s a combination of all of the above. There were one or two songs that we were working on before we split that were really good but were never finished. There’s some excitement about developing at least one of those, which was called ‘Circus Metal,’ into a proper song. I’m also sharing with the group my various Shudder to Think folders, which have parts and lyrics and melodies, just to see if they jive. We even have some brand new stuff that just came up from being in the room together, which felt really fun and made us all giggle and smile.
In the meantime, are you working on anything new and exciting in the film and TV world?
Yellowjackets season three started a few weeks ago and Anna Waronker and I just put a bow on the soundtrack, which I think is coming out April 11 on Lakeshore. We wrote and recorded a new original song for the finale called ‘Sleepwalking’ and are shooting a video for it. There’s a new David Wain/Ken Marino movie that begins shooting in a couple of weeks, so I’m starting to explore ideas for the score and a couple of songs they need for that. That’s going to be super fun. Jherek and I also did the music for a movie directed by Michael Patrick Jann called Alma and the Wolf, which is a mythical, horror/thriller thing about a werewolf.
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