BRIDGE NINE RECORDS, SULLY’S BRAND OWNER, & YANKEES SUCK MERCH SUPPLIER CHRIS WRENN JOINS “THE HAPPY HOUR!”

Unknown Speaker (0:03): Can I get your attention, please? Yo yo. You ready for this? Coming at you from Wicked Big Studios in Peabody, Massachusetts. Sit back.

King Hap (0:21): Buckle up because you're in the happy hour with your boy, Kick Happ. What is up, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the happy hour. It's your boy Happ, and I am amped up for tonight. I'm glad to be here. Gotta let everybody know we're being brought to you tonight by our fantastic friends at Liquid IV.

King Hap (0:43): Liquid IV is the official hydration drink of the Happy Hour Social Club. Promo code king hat will save you 25% site wide. Right now, you guys wanna talk about some old school stuff like we're gonna talk about tonight? Right now, we got sugar free ring pop. Liquid IV is out there.

King Hap (0:58): Make sure you guys get over to liquidiv.com. Use promo code King app. Save 25% site wide. Also being brought to you tonight by our fantastic friends at Blender's Eyewear. Blender's Eyewear, the official sunglass provider of the Happy Hour Social Club.

King Hap (1:12): Guys, summer is coming. Make sure you get over to Blender's Eyewear. Use promo code King Happ. Save 20% off their already low prices. I am amped up for the summertime, guys.

King Hap (1:22): We cannot get the good weather here fast enough. And I'll tell you, I know when the I know when the good weather's coming because you start seeing, you know, you know, the trees stop blooming, the weather gets good. We got some major league baseball going, and I'll tell you, you start to see the Yankees suck shirts all around Boston at Fenway Park, and I'll tell you what, there might be one SOB that caused it, and we'll talk about that in just a minute. But ladies and gentlemen, let me please tell you, I wanna welcome this man to the show. He is the founder of Bridge Nine Records.

King Hap (1:58): He is the author of Fenway Punk. How did he get the how did he get his own record label? We'll talk about that in just a minute. But ladies and gentlemen, do me a favor. Please welcome Chris Rent to the show.

King Hap (2:09): Chris, welcome to the happy hour.

Unknown Speaker (2:11): Happy. Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

King Hap (2:13): Amped up, man. I mean, it this is I mean, number one, great great story, great book. Everything's fantastic about it, but we got a lot of things I wanted to touch on. But I gotta say two things that really right off the bat gave me a a a warm, fuzzy feeling about this book. So number one, right away, I seen Happy Hour Social Club VIP member.

King Hap (2:34): Dave Wedge gave you an amazing review on this book. When Dave says the book's good, it draws my attention to it. Number one, kudos get grabbing a New York Times bestselling author like him to go ahead and give you that. But what a great guy Dave is. Right?

Chris Wrenn (2:49): Dave's incredible. I mean, he's one of the first people that got a chance to read the book and give me feedback. I mean, I'm a first time author, so I needed someone that could you know, who's done it all to to give me some some kind of some pointers, and he was great.

King Hap (3:01): And not just that, but you go ahead and you grab the Boston Voice guy, Chris Schuller, happy hour social club VIP to go ahead and read the audiobook. And I'll tell you what. I mean, this guy's voice to go with the Boston based story. We're talking about punk rock. We're talking about the Boston Red Sox.

King Hap (3:19): I mean, you couldn't have got a better guy to read the book. I mean, congratulations on that as well because if anybody who's going to Audible, any anywhere else you guys get audiobooks, I mean, besides getting King Hap to read the damn book, you got the best guy. Right?

Chris Wrenn (3:33): I appreciate. Yeah. I mean, he's incredible. He's done, I mean, something like 600 books, so

King Hap (3:37): he's a row. He's he's crazy. And I'll tell you, he did moxa Paula. He does he does a lot of them. It's fantastic.

King Hap (3:42): I, have the Speechify app there. I don't if you've seen that. And I enter the the PDF into it, and they got the King Hab voice reading it. Oh my god. It's awful.

King Hap (3:50): I sound miserable on that. But Chris Shullo sounds amazing on Audible, so I gotta say, I purchased the audiobook. So I have the hardcover that I use for my prep, and I also listened to the audiobook. So, kudos to him, and thank you very much for number one, a fantastic story, and number two, coming on the happy hour, my man.

Unknown Speaker (4:08): I appreciate that. Thank you.

King Hap (4:10): First time author. Gotta read this book for support. Yes, Marie ten twenty five. Thank you. Beantown Bad Boy says this show's gonna touch the hot strings with the the Beantown punk scene.

King Hap (4:19): Of course, it is. So excited for this show, Joe. Absolutely, guys. Thank you guys so much for being here. So, Chris, tell me this.

King Hap (4:27): Number one, you didn't start off thinking that you were gonna be a merchandise maker. You didn't think that you didn't even know what you well, I mean, you started off getting into the punk scene as a teenager skateboarder. I mean, I tried my luck skateboard. I can remember I fell off my skateboard at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett, Massachusetts. I fell, broke my wrist.

King Hap (4:46): My skateboarding days were over. But I gotta say, you you started off as a teenage skateboarder. That's how you kinda got into the punk scene, and you loved it ever since. Correct?

Chris Wrenn (4:56): Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I was probably 13, 12, 13 when I got my first skateboard. I was 19 when I started the label, and, you know, I'm 50 now, so it's it's been a lifelong passion.

King Hap (5:07): It has. And and I'll tell you, one thing that, the book taught me about you was that, your preferred method of transportation when you first started the, the record label was skateboard. You didn't have a car. You I mean, you didn't have much money to go ahead and grab a cab. You were taking the skateboard almost anywhere.

King Hap (5:24): So that kinda, number one, lends a little bit of, nostalgia to the whole, you know, to the whole record label where this is punk rock, etcetera. But at the same time, it must have been difficult on those rainy days. Right?

Unknown Speaker (5:37): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's times when you just couldn't go anywhere, you know, or you were huffing it.

King Hap (5:41): Oh, yeah. We've all we've all dealt with that. So as you go ahead and you sit here and you decide to yourself, I think I wanna go ahead. You you, you know, you had friends in bands, things like you said, I think I, you know, I think I can make these albums. I think I can push these, But what happens is you got no money.

King Hap (5:58): Right? I mean, so you stop what you call the do it yourself method, which is fantastic. And I'll tell you, that's one thing you and I have in common because happy hour has never had billboards or anything like that. You had some billboards. You didn't get them the conventional way, though.

King Hap (6:14): Right?

Chris Wrenn (6:15): That's right. Yeah. I mean, I I was just doing guerrilla marketing back then. I had I had no extra money because, you know, at the time when when Bridge Nine was really starting to kick it off, you know, at first, I was a college student with no money, and then I was living in Mission Hill with no money. And I I basically had to find ways to promote the artists that I was working with, but it was just grassroots.

Chris Wrenn (6:35): So I was, you know, altering billboards, making them say Bridge nine. I did this thing where I was making advertisements that fit the the ad frames in the MBTA, like, green line trains.

King Hap (6:49): Amazing idea, by the way.

Chris Wrenn (6:50): Yeah. Just went around and changed all the you know, a whole ton of ads to kinda say what, you know, I was promoting and what I was selling. And that's actually what ended up getting me my first real music business job, because a guy that ran a label in the '90s into the early 2000s called Big Wheel in Boston, You know, they put out a lot of stuff. Jimmy World was a big one of theirs that they had done some some stuff with. Ended up giving me a job because he saw the guerrilla marketing efforts that I was doing.

King Hap (7:21): And you'd I mean, like you said, redoing the billboard, graffiti, also the MBTA thing. I mean, this was legitimately you just out there, blood, sweat, and tears going ahead doing everything you could to try to make yourself a promoter, make yourself a record label, and just actually go with it. At what point did you realize that this was gonna become a real company, and it wasn't necessarily a dream? Because even as you start to make money, you knew for you to make any more, you needed to completely and totally reinvest. So when did you actually think to yourself, this this got a shot here.

King Hap (7:58): This got a shot.

Chris Wrenn (8:00): Yeah. It's probably 2000, you know, fall two thousand going to 2001. In 2001, I went full time. You know, I quit my job. I was just focusing on the label one hundred percent.

Chris Wrenn (8:14): And also what we're doing at Fenway Park, which we'll get into. Yep. But it was yeah. Probably maybe six years into having started the label. Because in the beginning, I again, I had no money, I would just do one record a year, maybe.

Chris Wrenn (8:26): It was a hobby. It was something to do with my friends, something to stay connected to to people that I that I liked. You know, I was very involved in the I I came up in the hardcore punk scene where you see a lot of people doing stuff. You know, it's a very DIY scene. It's a it's a community of artists that nobody waits to be told what to do.

Chris Wrenn (8:47): They just find a role. And so I knew other people that had put out records and started their own labels. I knew people that did fanzines. I knew I knew people that were show promoters and were doing events and and having bands play. So there was a lot of examples of people making things happen.

Chris Wrenn (9:05): So it was it was, inspiring to say the least.

King Hap (9:08): First band that you signed. I mean, so when you first had a like, the first band that you had that actually put out an album, the first one you made, I believe you said was, like, a small seven inch album if I remember correct. So who what was the name? Like, what was the band like like, were they excuse me because what my punk lingo here. With that, were they somebody that you thought was gonna go ahead and sell a ton of albums or was it some but some that you thought just this is business.

King Hap (9:38): I I finally got some business. Did did you have high hopes when you did the first album, or was it just this is something to get started?

Chris Wrenn (9:44): It was it was just something to get started, but it was never about building a big business. It was my friends are in a are in a band. Yep. They you know, for that first record, it was this band called Tenfold who you know, they didn't do much by themselves, but members went on to a lot of other projects and a lot of other bands. But I just wanted to, you know, they I just wanted to document their music.

Chris Wrenn (10:07): They they had kicked out their singer. The guitar player was now singing for the band. They wanted to put something out quickly. Their bass player, I think, had pressed a record for them originally, the fur their first record, but wasn't able to do the second one. So I just stepped in and and offered to do it.

Chris Wrenn (10:23): So and then the second record was the same band, but it was they had already broken up. And they had a few songs that they had recorded that sounded great, but it was only on a demo tape. And I wanted it to be pressed on vinyl because once it's pressed on vinyl, it's it's it doesn't get lost Yes. History. You know?

Chris Wrenn (10:40): Like, it's it it becomes documented. So I I wanted to do that. So, I mean, these weren't things that I really thought were going to be big business opportunities. It was just like, these are my friends. I like the music they're they're making.

Chris Wrenn (10:52): Let's press their record. And it was very limited in quantity. I think the first pressing of that second record after the band had broken up, I mean, made 300 of them. Yeah. But they sold so quickly, we made 500 more.

Chris Wrenn (11:05): So, like, it was something where it was it was just about documenting cool bands.

King Hap (11:09): Yeah. That's that's pretty awesome. And, you know, like you said, you're you're not making a lot of money, but you're doing something very passionately as you know, in in the book, one of the things and guys, you guys know I ain't giving the book away here. Only a couple of little snippets, but your cheap SOB's gonna have to buy the book. I'll tell you what, though.

King Hap (11:26): One of the things in the book that you do say is that you actually well, one of the reasons with the, bridge nine name, you actually painted on a bridge in one of your best ads ever that was seen by a 100,000 people. And, if the if the fuzz are listening, I apologize. This this graffiti's, outdated. So, guys but, I mean, you legitimately went up on a bridge yourself and walked on a pipe and spray painted an ad. I mean, that's insane.

King Hap (11:55): Right?

Chris Wrenn (11:55): Yeah. I mean, well, so we could talk about it because it was twenty seven years ago. Yep. So I

Unknown Speaker (12:00): think Statute of limitations.

Chris Wrenn (12:01): Yeah. I think they they passed, but it was it was the it was the, the railroad trestle near BU over the Charles River. Every car driving down Storro Drive sees this. I painted just the name of my company, Bridge Nine Records, across this bridge, and it was there for months. You couldn't miss it.

Chris Wrenn (12:24): Again, these were things that I couldn't afford traditional advertising, I had to find ways to get the name of my business out there. Just because I had been really into graffiti in high school and as a teenager, it was just a way that I knew that I could help get that message out.

King Hap (12:41): Absolutely. Alright. See, my design maker is big into graffiti, Kelt Rock Design saying hello. Good to see you, Kelt Rock. I will definitely ask that question in a little bit.

King Hap (12:50): So one of the other things here I I was gonna say, so now you you you start off in Mission Hill, and then you go ahead and you first, start in your dorm room to Mission Hill out of the out of the home, then you go ahead and you move and you go ahead and you take it on the road. And now you're starting to see a little bit of something something. We'll talk about how you get this money. But where are your next stops on the road here with, Bridge nine?

Chris Wrenn (13:14): So the the next big thing was, finding a band that was willing to to really work hard and really tour. So my first few releases were, you know, bands that were playing shows locally, but they weren't really dropping everything and hitting the road. So in the 1999, I moved into a new place in Mission Hill with a bunch of a bunch of friends, a bunch of guys, people I skateboarded with, people I knew from the hardcore punk scene. And they started a band called American Nightmare. And this band, almost immediately, there was momentum.

Chris Wrenn (13:51): There was excitement. There was interest. I was their roommate. They wanted someone to put out their record. I had a record label, so it was just an in house thing.

Chris Wrenn (13:59): Yep. So I was able to put their record out and realized very quickly this band is gonna need a lot more to push them than what I was doing before. And and my job at the time was working you know, when this was happening, I was working at Tower Records in the art department. I mentioned in the book, I'm making a buck more than minimum wage. I'm not really in a position even to cover my own rent, much less launch a band that has a lot of potential.

Chris Wrenn (14:26): That was when I started realizing I'd always had side hustles. I'd always had ways to kind of fund my passion projects, but I needed way more than I had ever had when I started talking with this band.

King Hap (14:39): Yep. And now this now, like you said, this is around the, you know, the, know, the year 2000 and then, you know, right around here is when the, you know, the Boston Red Sox curse of the Bambino, etcetera, this is where it starts boiling. And like I said, we'll get to that in a minute. But, so now one other thing I wanted to touch on about you at this point is you have no money, you're starting to get some things. You're getting, you know, local shows, you know, probably and and this is I I the Wonderland Ballroom, things like, I imagine, you know, you know, in Downtown Boston with the the paradise, things like that.

King Hap (15:15): Is that, like, where y'all putting these, shows on?

Chris Wrenn (15:17): It was it was more like like VFW halls.

Unknown Speaker (15:20): Oh, wow.

Chris Wrenn (15:21): Church basements, you know, like, rented rooms for the most part. It it wasn't so much clubs. I mean, we'd have bands that would play at The Middle East. Yep. You know, TT the bears, you know, when when when it used to be called that.

Chris Wrenn (15:36): So there'd be, you know, places like that, but oftentimes, it was rented halls or, you know, like church basements.

King Hap (15:44): Wow. That's that's insane to think that that's where it starts. Now, guys, if you guys, I'm gonna break a little news here. What I mean? We've already Bridge Knives already put out over 300 recordings, which is pretty freaking awesome.

King Hap (15:57): You know, you're gonna need all kinds of money to do this. So now as the curse of the Bambino, the Boston Reds now I'll tell you, man. I've been a I was a Boston Red Sox fanatic back then. I didn't have the money to go ahead and really go to some games, but I would scrape up whatever I could to get to the games. On my way in, you always see those guys selling stuff and, you know, merchandise, T shirts, stickers, etcetera.

King Hap (16:22): And it's very competitive. It turns out you guys have an idea where some of your buddies get involved. You go ahead and you decide now. We we you know, you see some people out there doing some things with, you know, Yankees, this, blah blah blah, whatever. But you decide that you can go ahead and perfect this now.

King Hap (16:41): You may you actually and now the chat room, just so you guys hey, what's up Corvette Wayne? Yes. This is a good one. You actually start with stickers. Right?

King Hap (16:51): Like bumper stickers. That's basically your claim to fame at this point. Right? You make bumper stickers that say Yankees suck on them. Correct?

Chris Wrenn (16:58): Yeah. So in, like, '96, '97, '98, I was making bumper stickers and selling them to that chain, Hot Topic. Yep. You know, like that kind of like subculture store in the mall. I had gone into one because a friend worked at at a Hot Topic store.

Chris Wrenn (17:13): And I remember I was waiting for him to close the store, and I was looking in like the, you know, the the glass cases where their cash register is. And they have all these silly black and white bumper stickers that have catchphrases. And I remember looking at it, and I was like, I can make these, and I should try and do that and sell them to Hot Topic. And so he got me their number. I gave him a call.

Chris Wrenn (17:34): I said, hey, I've got these stickers. And they ended up buying a few of them at first, and then they added more. And so they ended up buying a lot of stickers during the mid nineties. Awesome. It started to fizzle out towards the end of the nineties, but it was kind of really eye opening for me to know that, oh, I can I can make these things that cost me 10¢ each and sell them for a buck Yes?

Chris Wrenn (17:58): Wholesale to a place like Hot Topic. And they were ordering 600, 800, a thousand at a time. Huge. So it was for for somebody that, again, was working like a pretty low paying job, I mean, having that come in every month was was pretty significant.

Unknown Speaker (18:13): Huge supplement. Yeah.

Chris Wrenn (18:14): Yeah. So by by the end of the nineties, you know, yankee suck is is literally the most chanted, you know, chant. It's like it's like that slogan was everywhere. You went you went to a red sox game, it didn't matter if they were playing the yankees or not. If they're playing any other team, there'd be twice as many Yankee sucks chants because everyone hated them.

Unknown Speaker (18:36): And it was really something that you couldn't escape. I mean, I mentioned in the book, like, you would you go to, like

Unknown Speaker (18:40): Disney on ice. Yeah.

Chris Wrenn (18:42): I mean, I remember I went to, like, Oz Fest and there was a Yankee suck chant.

Unknown Speaker (18:45): Awesome.

Chris Wrenn (18:46): You know, in the like, 2000 or something, 2001. I've, you know, heard of it happening at wedding receptions. It was just something that was so common. So friends of mine and I thought, let's start making merchandise. Initially, what happened was so we were all friends with this band called Ten Yard Fight, and they had their last show on 10/17/1999.

Chris Wrenn (19:10): And that date's significant because it was during the the ALCS. So the Yankees and Red Sox were playing at Fenway Park, and their last show was at the Karma Club on Lansdowne Street

King Hap (19:21): right Yep. Next to the For anybody who doesn't remember, that was it was Karma. You had all those clubs right directly across the street. I can remember sneaking in there my fake ID. Boxes.

Chris Wrenn (19:31): Mamakin, all these all these clubs. But so there was all these people that were, like, hardcore punk fans that were out, on the street, and there was also all these Yankees and Red Sox fans. Friends of ours wanted to see we wanted to see this band, Pindarfy it off. It was a celebration. It was a big deal that they were breaking up.

Chris Wrenn (19:50): So I ended up making these you know, like, these spray painted posters that kinda had the date of the show and a bunch of photos of the band, and I was selling those. And a friend of mine made his own Yankee sock shirt. And that shirt was designed by a friend of ours that had a screen printing company, and they used you know, this is the the Yankee sock shirt that everyone knows. It's the the bold right across the chest. Yankees, you know, with a big box, like a navy blue box underneath and suck knocked out in white letters.

Chris Wrenn (20:21): Yep. That's originally based that design was based on a punk rock fanzine, ironically from New York, called Boiling Point. And the font that was used is the same as this band, SSD Control. Because SSD Control was one of the earliest foundational hardcore punk bands in Boston. And so, as an homage to that, this font was chosen.

Chris Wrenn (20:48): It's a perfect font because it's collegiate. It has that look. And so, you know, my my friend at the time made this shirt, sold them at the show, sold some on the street, sold out of them really quickly. Then the season was over because the the Red Sox were eliminated the next day. Yeah.

Chris Wrenn (21:06): So, you know, basically, all of us saw how crazy it was and how, like, fervent people were buy you know, buying this stuff. They were like, alright. Shit. April you know, come April, we gotta be back and and and have, like, a whole plan to make money off of fans selling Yankee Suck merch. So I started making bumper stickers.

Chris Wrenn (21:28): That's what I've been doing for years. All of the stickers that I've been doing for Hot Topic, that had fizzled out, so I just started ordering these big Yankee sock bumper stickers, and had them ready for opening day in the 2000. And, yeah, that's where it started.

King Hap (21:44): And then you get there. Right? So you get down to Kenmore Square, and I mean, there's plenty when you say plenty of fans, I mean, jeez, Louise, there are so many fans walking around at this point. I can remember. And now I had season tickets for, fourteen years at one point, and I can remember it used to be I really wanted to go to the game, but the amount money that people would give me for the tickets was so red like, you couldn't fit another body in there.

King Hap (22:09): So Kenmore Square had so many people there and enough people to buy shirts, etcetera, to go around, but you're not you're not just welcome with open arms when you get there. People aren't happy to see you. Correct?

Chris Wrenn (22:22): Yeah. Well, so if you could imagine, there's a whole, like, industry around Fenway Park. Right? And Fenway Park is cool because it's right in the middle of the city, and a lot of professional stadiums and sports teams' stadiums are on private property. They're far off in a place where, as a street vendor, you don't have access to these people.

Chris Wrenn (22:44): So there's this whole industry around Fenway that's very grassroots. It's very DIY. It's just people finding different hustles, whether it's people I remember hearing from guys that have been around much longer than I had been about people selling hot dogs out of their cars. People screen printing t shirts on the sidewalk and selling them. So there's always been this long tradition of people selling stuff outside of Fenway Park.

Chris Wrenn (23:18): And it's a very delicate balance for how things work because there's only so many square feet around the stadium. Right? So we showed up and really disrupted it at that time. In the 2000, know, anyone else that was already out there doing their thing, you know, and these are groups of two people, three people kinda, like, spread out. We showed up with about a dozen people and just, you know, just took took things over.

King Hap (23:46): And, you know, not not not to, pass judgment, but being from the punk rock, you know, background, etcetera. You come in with some big sons of bitches, and, guess what? There's 12 of us. There's two of you, and, we're all punk rockers, and we're headed, you know, to we're not here to, you know, take part. We're here to take over to quote to quote Conor McGregor.

King Hap (24:06): I mean, you guys walk in, you know, strength in numbers, and you kinda start taking over the territory, etcetera. Correct?

Chris Wrenn (24:13): Yeah. I mean, that's that's basically what happened. You know? And and, again, it wasn't personal. We didn't know any of these people that were already there doing their thing.

Chris Wrenn (24:21): We just wanted I mean, we knew there was an incredible opportunity there, so we just wanted to jump on it.

King Hap (24:25): Yeah. And from somebody that's, you know, spray painting or you're walking across doing the freaking high wire act on a on a pipe to spray paint a bridge, you know, there's a little bit of desperation there. So you roll in, you start doing your thing, you're having some fun to doing it, but they're always the people coming, they're trying, you know, the state, you know, the people are coming in, you you shouldn't be here, you're out of here, confiscating your cot, you're dealing with all this shit, but something changes. You have one shirt out there that's, you know, a certain somebody doesn't like, and all of a sudden they ask you to get rid of it. I mean, tell us this story.

King Hap (25:01): How does this work where you got a shirt out there, somebody's upset about it, and then you end up making a good decision that goes ahead and helps you out for, you know, a a big portion of your success down there?

Chris Wrenn (25:12): Yeah. So when we showed up, I mean, we didn't really know anyone personally. Right? Whether it was the other vendors, people that were working the street doing some of the other brick and mortar stores, the code enforcement police, the general police. But basically, when we showed up, there was one group of people that were in charge of trying to keep us away, and that was the code enforcement police.

Chris Wrenn (25:39): Those are the city employees that basically go around, and they're tasked with keeping unpermitted vendors out of the way of the stadium. But we got to know them over a period of time. They didn't like us when they met us, but they grew to like us and grew to respect us. And it was mutual. We had a mutual respect with them.

Chris Wrenn (26:07): So we started talking. There was an open line of communication with them, and we would obviously try and circumvent them in any way that we could. But we try to be honorable about it with them. Yep. And so basically, I had a T shirt in 2004.

Chris Wrenn (26:23): It was early in 2004 that said, killing with shilling, because Curt Schilling was coming to the Red Sox. It was a really big deal at the time. And I had this T shirt that basically riffed on the fact that he was number 38, so I had the silhouette of a 38 special handgun on the front of the shirt.

Unknown Speaker (26:43): Genius, by the What's that? Genius, by the way.

Chris Wrenn (26:46): Thank you. Yeah. It was it was know, it said Yankee hater across the shoulders, like a jersey. His number was in the back with, like, a baseball for the caliber, you know, on it. And it was I mean, we sold I sold 2,000 of these t shirts just to the the garden crowd before the before you even pitched.

Chris Wrenn (27:05): Right? Like, this was just a really popular shirt. And came out to Fenway, started selling it once April came around, selling it. All of our vendors had them around the stadium. And the mayor got wind of this shirt and got really upset, like mayor Menino, because it was a t shirt that had a gun reference on it, he didn't want a gun t shirt being sold so openly on the streets around Fenway Park and in Boston, because I think at that time, there had been more gun violence than usual.

Chris Wrenn (27:41): Yeah. He just thought it was a bad look. So he reached out to the head of the code enforcement police that I had grown a rapport with, and he basically said, I want the shirt off the street. Do what you gotta do. And the code enforcement officer was like, you know, I mean, it's First Amendment.

Chris Wrenn (28:00): If they want sell a shirt, they're going sell a shirt. He's like, I don't care. Do what you got to do. Get rid of it. And so the code enforcement officer called me, reached out to me and said, Hey, this is the deal.

Chris Wrenn (28:11): The mayor wants it gone. I, you know, I had a lot of different ways that I was selling. I was selling to, like, Newbury Comics. I was selling online. We we had a different a bunch of different lanes.

Chris Wrenn (28:23): So, you know, I said, if the mayor wants it gone, alright. That's fine. We'll I'll pull that shirt down. We won't have it outside of the park, and and and we'll, you know, we'll we'll keep we'll keep moving forward. He tells the mayor.

Chris Wrenn (28:37): The mayor is, like, really, really happy about that. And he turns around and tells code enforcement now at the time, we had these hawker and peddler licenses, these little permits that allow you to make sales on the city streets around Fenway, but you can't stand in one place. It's meant for door to door of stuff, so you have to always be moving. And now, Fenway Park is a very small general area that so nobody's walking around it. They'd set up on a corner, and that's what they would do until people left, and then they'd go home.

Chris Wrenn (29:08): And they would always bust our balls basically if we just stay in one place. The mayor said, You know what? It was really cool that he took that shirt down, let him stay in his place. So we went from getting chased around the park and pushed every time we make a sale, All right, keep moving, to them letting us maintain our street corners. It was a game changer for us because it made things so much easier.

Chris Wrenn (29:35): These t shirt carts were unwieldy sometimes. It was actually more dangerous to be trying to push these around in in in you know, amongst all these people than to just stay in one spot, make your sales, and then and then be done with it. So, yeah, that was that was a really great opportunity for us.

King Hap (29:50): That's that's huge. And, you know, I always felt like Mayor Menino was an excellent mayor in Boston. He actually would seem very fair, and, you know, hearing that actually makes me think even more highly of him. Mayor Menino, I thought was I thought he was aces. So as you're doing all this, the Red Sox still can't win.

King Hap (30:08): They can't beat the Yankees. Now you get to 2003. Alright. So we got we got the rivalry going. So everybody in the chat room knows this.

King Hap (30:20): I mean, it one of the one of the things that I can remember in my heart. Yeah. I mean, right now, my hot guy. I got one of these going on as we speak. Tim Wakefield gives up that home run.

King Hap (30:31): I mean, it was never I mean, Yankees really sucked. You know what I mean? I can remember I had the t shirt. I don't even know if you guys made it. It had the It said, yank these and the baseball was made into a set of testicles underneath.

King Hap (30:46): That was a shirt somebody bought me. I actually almost wore it on the show tonight, but passed. Yep. But I gotta say, everybody hated the Yankees so much. They got Alex Rodriguez, who was supposed to come to the Red Sox, then he goes to the wow.

King Hap (31:02): You just can't just make this stuff up. I mean, maybe the most talented offensive player in the history of the game of baseball is traded for by the, by the Boston Red Sox, and then the league nixes it. He goes to the Yankees. Now we're really talking. We got o four rolls around in 2003 into 2004 must have been the time that you guys said, holy shit.

King Hap (31:28): This is real because I don't think I've seen a person without a Yankee sock shirt back then. That must have been and correct me if I'm wrong because I'm guessing, but 2003, 2004, 2005, I gotta think, was the most banging years for you.

Chris Wrenn (31:44): Oh, it was absolutely crazy. I mean, and, like, that so that Kurt Schilling shirt, again, I mean, selling 2,000 of those shirts before he even pitches. Yep. But we also I think my other bestseller at that point this, you know, in the spring two thousand four was A Rod as an A hole.

Unknown Speaker (31:58): Right.

Chris Wrenn (31:59): Navy blue shirt, A Rod as an A hole, sold so many of them. But it's, you know, obviously, the red sox would have been happy fans would have been happy to have him if he came here. But now that he was with the yankees, you know

Unknown Speaker (32:11): Screw him.

Chris Wrenn (32:11): Draw. Hell. Yeah. Exactly.

King Hap (32:13): And I'll tell you what. So what funny story about me is that, years back, I had Brian McNamee on the show, and this was like two days after his gag order was up and, some sponsors, myself, cease and desist orders from Roger Clark. You had something similar happen yourself. Mean, you you end up getting a cease and desist order for, from, you know, for one of the shirts you made. Correct?

Chris Wrenn (32:40): Yeah. So we that was the risk. I mean, we we really tried to just kinda stay away from the intellectual properties, right, of other people. We would use only enough information or connect the fewest amount of dots to get the idea across without using like, we weren't making Red Sox shirts. We were making shirts for fans of the Red Sox.

Chris Wrenn (33:01): Right? Like, you know, before us, a lot of the people that would be selling t shirts would be selling counterfeits. They would be they would make a Red Sox shirt Logo. Crappy, sell it for cheaper, you know, in the street, and try and take money away from the Red Sox. We weren't doing that.

Chris Wrenn (33:15): We were trying to make things that resonated with Red Sox fans, didn't actually step on on the toes of some of these people and organizations. But we did have a shirt in 2004 that was it was basically it was for Johnny Damon. It said, you know, if if anyone that if your listeners remember those Jesus is my homeboy t shirts that were so huge in the early 2000s, they were everywhere. I remember. So we made a t shirt.

Chris Wrenn (33:41): I had a shirt that basically had Johnny Damon instead of Jesus, and it said because he was getting all these Jesus connections, the long hair. So it said, Damon is my homeboy. And sold a ton of them. It was a really popular shirt in 2004. And then at some point in the season, later on in the season, a fan was wearing it in the stands at a Yankees Red Sox game.

Chris Wrenn (34:03): And, like, the the b roll camera footage, they zoomed in on this guy when Johnny Damon was at the plate, and you could read every detail of the shirt, which was awesome. We sold a ton of them. But, like, three days later, we got cease and desist letters from, you know, his agent, from the players association, from the brand that we were, you know, parodying. So, like, it just kinda it just it got out of hand, and and we ended up having to retire it. But that's the risky run.

King Hap (34:27): Absolutely. But I'll tell you what, I can remember that shirt myself going down to the stadium that and, another one that you guys made. I gotta give I gotta give a shout out to it because, this was a little more, down the line, and I got a couple questions for you about o five, o six around there. But before that, you you were I mean, after that, you worked with Joe Kelly. You did the Joe, the Joe Kelly fight club shirt, which a lot of people seem, which is pretty awesome, and that was for a good cause.

King Hap (34:53): Correct?

Chris Wrenn (34:54): That's right. So that was you know, by that point, a lot of the rivalry stuff that we had done in the past had faded. So we we there we didn't we weren't really selling Yankee sucks stuff. We weren't really selling the Yankee hater stuff that we had been known for in the past. But, you know, when when someone like Joe Kelly, who was, you know, pitching in April in 2018 and wasn't exactly the the favor the fan favorite, I think, at the time, because I know he had kind of blown a game earlier, you know Yeah.

Chris Wrenn (35:24): Weeks earlier. So when he, you know, had this whole bench clearing brawl incident that kinda came out because he had he had thrown you know, he ended up throwing at one of the, you know, the one of the batters for the Yankees, and it was because that gentleman had slid into second base. Know? Plated him. Up.

Chris Wrenn (35:44): You know? Right? So, like so he was sending a message. Bench is clear. Fight breaks out.

Chris Wrenn (35:49): You know? Punches are thrown. I mean, it's nothing crazy. Right? I mean, it looked fun, and it looked a little wild, but, I mean, nobody was really getting hurt, you know, in this fight.

Chris Wrenn (35:57): So we thought it would be funny to make a Joe Kelly Fight Club T shirt because I had done a series of Fight Club shirts, you know, in the years past Love it. Going back to, you know, Luchic Fight Club back in, like, 2008. So made the shirt, had it in the stadium the next day. It was like a Wednesday night. The fight happened on Thursday afternoon.

Chris Wrenn (36:16): We had the shirt at the stadium. All the magazine vendors were wearing it to build awareness, and then we had a vendor selling them. And we same thing as the Damon shirt. Some guy bought it, went inside, and then when Joe Kelly went up to the to pitch because he had been suspended at this point, but it was on appeal.

Unknown Speaker (36:34): Yep.

Chris Wrenn (36:34): So he's, you know, he's up there to pitch, and they zoom in on this guy wearing the Joe Kelly Fight Club shirt. And it was great because, like, you couldn't hear the guy, but he's, like, screaming Joe and you could see his mouth move, Joe Kelly Fight Club. He's holding up holding his jacket open. You can read the shirt perfectly. That shirt design that that that that video of this guy became the b roll that they played every time he got up to pitch.

Chris Wrenn (36:58): So it was like a free advertisement for us for, like, the rest of the week. And, the whole Kelly family bought the shirt. I think his wife tweeted about it, and it was very cool. So we connected with her and said, hey, because they had again, he was now all of a sudden really popular, right?

Unknown Speaker (37:19): Hugely popular. Made Love him this guy.

Chris Wrenn (37:22): Were pissed at him six hours earlier. Now they love this guy. She took it as an opportunity to start promoting his charity, which was an anti human trafficking charity. He was raising money for a very good cause. So we basically said to his wife Ashley, why don't we do something where you're fighting against human trafficking, why don't we take his Joe Kelly Fight Club shirt?

Chris Wrenn (37:47): We'll keep making them, and then anyone that donates $50 or more to your charity, we'll send one to them for free. Love it. You know, just send us their size and their address, and and we'll take care of the rest. And for the next six weeks, they would send us spreadsheets of every single person that had spent $50 or more for the charity, and we just dropped them in the mail. They ended up raising a ton of money for the charity.

Chris Wrenn (38:10): The t shirt was part of that. Mean, Joe Kelly had a very cool career here in Boston, but I think the Fight Club is one of the things that he's best known for. Yeah. Absolutely. Proud to be a part of that.

King Hap (38:20): Definitely. Now I I just a question about that. As you make these T shirts, you see them on TV. I mean, you get goosebumps. Because seriously, I'm not joking.

King Hap (38:27): Like, see, you know, I go someplace and, I see a Happy Hour Social Club sticker or I see somebody I you know, I'll always be having on and people be like, oh, yeah. Happy Hour Social Club, man. I know you listen. I'm like, of course I do. You know?

King Hap (38:41): I just keep going. But, I mean, things like that really make my day. And, I mean, that must have been amazing for you.

Chris Wrenn (38:48): It's real it it is so cool. And, I mean, that was what I wanted to do as a teenage graffiti artist. Right? Like, I mentioned in the book, you want to get your name out there. You want to put your name up in places.

Chris Wrenn (38:58): Oftentimes, it's illegitimately. It's in it because you can't afford that traditional advertising. You can't afford to take out those billboards. You can't afford to do those ads. So for me, it went from graffiti to getting my brand out there through stickers, through people wearing our t shirts, that kind of brand recognition.

Chris Wrenn (39:23): You know, until later, then we started doing, you know, TV commercials on, like, Nesson. Yeah. So it's but, yeah, when you see it every day, I mean, even now, you know, twenty six years later for Sully's and thirty one years later for Bridge nine, like, if I see some of our stuff out in out in the wild, it's it feels great.

King Hap (39:40): It's it's awesome. And, you know, hearing that's awesome and thinking about that's awesome. But you know what wasn't awesome was the money that you're making from the Yankee suck apparel stickers, everything. You're not buying Lexuses. You're not buying, you know, mansions.

King Hap (39:55): What you're doing with this is you're actually taking every dollar of it pretty much, and you're investing it into a different company, which is, they're like we say, now we boom, ladies and gentlemen, the book right there, Fenway Punk. I'll tell you. So basically, what it is is you're you're putting all this money into Bridge 9. And at this time, you I mean, you're still basically taking every doll you have, putting it either back into making more shirts, more stickers, whatever you can make, or this is going to promote the next band that you're working with, printing some albums, printing advertisements, and you're just basically robbing Peter, paying Paul, and you're trying to keep going, keep going, etcetera. And you're still at this point just skating by.

King Hap (40:36): Correct?

Chris Wrenn (40:37): Yeah. I mean, you know, I I think I was doing this as a side hustle. The the Yankee sucks stuff and and like all anything outside of Fenway, it was just a side hustle for the first few years. But by 2003, I realized, wait, this is actually what I'm doing at Fenway is making more money than the record company. It's it's it's a better business.

Chris Wrenn (40:57): So, you know, I I I at that point, what was just a side hustle became its own brand, and, you know, it became Sully's brand

Unknown Speaker (41:06): Yep.

Chris Wrenn (41:06): In 2003. And I was still putting every dollar into the label. I was, you know, in the nineties, putting out one release a year because that's all I could afford. But by 2001, I was putting out a dozen.

Unknown Speaker (41:19): That's awesome.

Chris Wrenn (41:20): 2003, I was putting out 20. You know, I think we were putting out over 25 new albums a year by the mid-2000s. So yeah, we've put out over 300 releases at this point, documented a lot of incredible music and a lot of incredible bands, not only from Boston. Surprisingly, we've also put out a lot of records from bands from New York, ironically. But then also bands from the West Coast.

Chris Wrenn (41:44): There's this band Terror. They're coming to play Royale in a couple weeks here in Boston. They're headlining a show there, big venue.

Unknown Speaker (41:51): Love Royale.

Chris Wrenn (41:52): Yeah. I bought their first tour van from selling Yankee Suck bumper stickers. It's unbelievable. And this is in 2002, gave them $5,000 to go buy a van just from selling Yankee Suck bumper stickers.

Unknown Speaker (42:06): That is unbelievable.

Chris Wrenn (42:06): They're still out there doing it. They just released their tenth album. So it's, we're very proud to have been part of their, you know, kinda like kicking kick starting them, I guess.

King Hap (42:16): Yeah. The journey. I mean, you're you're part of the journey. And like you said, it's documented now. The albums that you know what I mean?

King Hap (42:21): That's that's a piece of history just like the Yankees in o four, you know, losing it. You know? So, basically and I just wanna kick it back to o four for a minute. The Yankees go down, the Yankees go up three o. And you as an entrepreneur, I guess, we'll say, you know, being a hawker out there, etcetera, and you kinda got, like, Starkzilla for the, you know, for the AL you know, maybe the world sees.

King Hap (42:47): So now you're stocked up. It looks like we might end up with a sweep. At this point, you must and, hey, you might wanna make Yankees, suck bloomers, Yankees suck diapers because you'll probably, you know, shatting the old bloomers if you know what I'm saying. You got all this stock. I mean, you now are, like, basically sweating bullets out there.

King Hap (43:07): Correct?

Chris Wrenn (43:08): Yeah. Because you you have to I mean, you have to be ready for the next game. You can't, you know, order this stuff and wait three, four days. You know? Like, you have to have it on hand.

Chris Wrenn (43:17): Yeah. You know? This was something that happened to me. I was I was actually there's a photo of me on the cover of the Boston Globe, I think, in 2820, 2016 maybe, because I had bought I I had I had bought 4,000 blank t shirts, and I was they're ready to be printed in case the Patriots won. Yep.

Chris Wrenn (43:37): And, of course, they didn't win. So I think this was actually no. This is 2018. So I I had, like you know, the article was about the people that are affected by the loss.

Unknown Speaker (43:46): Yeah.

Chris Wrenn (43:47): And, you know, thankfully, I was able to take a lot of the gray t shirts and make Joe Kelly Fight Club shirts

Unknown Speaker (43:52): Huge.

Chris Wrenn (43:53): Couple months later, which was Thank you, Kelly. That was incredible. But yeah, you have to go big, and you have to stockpile it and be ready to make that opportunity happen. And, you know, by being down three nothing, I mean, I don't care what anyone tells you. Nobody thought the Red Sox were gonna win.

Chris Wrenn (44:13): You know, we were basically almost giving away T shirts. You know, from, like, the fourth inning on during game four, people are coming out. There nobody wants to see them get So people are all leaving, and we're we're selling t shirts for $5 just to try and get rid of them. Yeah. It was it was rough.

Chris Wrenn (44:33): And, of course, thank thank god they they came back and won that game. And

King Hap (44:37): That's history. I mean, after that, those must have I mean, you must have went from $5 to full price immediately because after that, it was Fever City, and Yankee suck was something that I people have it tattooed. People have it. I mean, legitimately, Yankees, like people, like you said, people at weddings, Disney on freaking ice, the circus. Yeah.

King Hap (44:59): Yankees suck everywhere. Now my question is, they win the world series. Do you see a do you see that go down after o four when they, once they go ahead and actually beat the Yankees, then they sweep in the world series, which didn't give us much of a because if no. That's the other thing. They they go ahead and sweep.

King Hap (45:17): If they don't, you're selling more merchandise. You're getting it out there. So, basically, you're rooting for an extension of series, and something like a rain out is detrimental to your income, which is crazy. People don't think about that. You know?

King Hap (45:31): I I get pissed off with a rain out. I gotta set a ticket. I'm gonna have to go on a Tuesday afternoon now. Somebody like you, you you go ahead and you take a bath on those nights. Right?

Chris Wrenn (45:41): Yeah. I mean, sometimes they'd reschedule it and you'd you'd benefit from it, but not always. A lot of times you just lose that that opportunity. So, you know, there were so many variables that affected whether or not we would make money. And, you know, one of them was, you know, are we getting chased by code enforcement?

Chris Wrenn (45:57): Are we dealing with headaches there? Do we get in a fight, and now all of a sudden we've all got to take off? We can't stick around. That happened a few times. There were times where they the the Red Sox would blow a team out and people would leave early because they would be, you know, eight runs up, and that actually would affect our sales.

Chris Wrenn (46:20): Like, was better and I mentioned in the book, it was better sometimes to lose by one run than to to have a total blowout and have the the Red Sox win because you want people to stay in the game. Yep. You know, when when people are trickling out, the sales were harder to grab because people didn't wanna stop necessarily. But when there was a whole wave of people, and you'd get some people to stop and people would line right up behind them, and it was it was great.

King Hap (46:45): Yeah. That is that is actually pretty awesome. Now here's here's another one I got for you. Right? And I have to bring this up.

King Hap (46:50): You know? Hey. I'm I'm Italian, so I gotta bring this up. One of the things I wanted to mention is during and and this is in the book, guys. So, yeah, this one I'll give you for free, fellas.

King Hap (46:59): So you're in there. You're out. You're doing your thing. You're having a good time, and all of a sudden, some of the guys from the North End, hey. Oh, hey.

King Hap (47:08): Here comes, Joey Macaroni and Bobby Meatballs. They come down. They're looking to sell some, Yankee suck, stuff themself, and it gets kinda ugly kinda fast. And, you know, all of a sudden, it's the Italians and the punk rockets. Right?

King Hap (47:23): I mean, this was something that was a serious situation that could have been detrimental to business. I mean, think about this. I mean, think of Bridge 9 as we know it today could be very different if this doesn't work out the way it does. Correct?

Unknown Speaker (47:37): Yeah. So most of the people that we would compete with, I mean, it was it didn't take much to for us to be able to just do whatever we needed to do. There was there was more of us. We would just roll up. If there was two guys that were trying to sell something, we'd put three in front of them.

Chris Wrenn (47:50): They couldn't sell anything. They would move on. The the guys from the North End were formidable. You know, they were I mean, at the time, probably, you know, ten years older than any of us. And so they were seasoned, you know, hawkers.

Chris Wrenn (48:05): You know, they're hard dudes. They they they rolled out. And basically, we're just knocking off the Yankee sock shirt that my friends were selling. Yeah. You know?

Chris Wrenn (48:14): So like they we didn't feel like they had any entitlement. They shouldn't they shouldn't be there. But, you know, basically, we had to figure out a way to, you know, to to address that situation. I, you know, I go into into the book. I I don't want go into too many details.

Unknown Speaker (48:30): Nope, nope, make them buy it.

Chris Wrenn (48:32): Yeah. I will say that it did end up having It was a punk rock connection that brought everyone to the table and and and allowed, things to kinda like, you know, take the temperature down a little bit.

King Hap (48:48): Yep. And if they wanna find out, the name of the book is Fenway Punk, and this is a first time author. He's killing it right now. I got we got a couple minutes left here. And I gotta say, so nowadays, if people wanted to find, Sully's, which is the name of the company that makes all the apparel or Bridge nine reckons, I mean, you're very local to the Wicked Big Studios and Lounge in West Peabody, Massachusetts.

King Hap (49:10): Correct?

Chris Wrenn (49:11): Yes. We're in Beverly, Massachusetts. We have a storefront that has both brands. Bridge Nine Records is our record store. It's our record label.

Chris Wrenn (49:19): We are mostly a punk rock record store, but we're on a main street in a coastal city, so we have a little bit of everything. There's a lot of people that just see that we're a record store, so they come in. When we opened, it was almost all punk rock, people would come in and be like, I know Vinyl's back, but I don't recognize any of these bands. So we've kinda softened up a little bit so that we have all the things you're gonna wanna find if you're a punk rock fan, but we have a little bit of something else for everybody else. And then Sully's brand too.

Chris Wrenn (49:48): So, like, all the sports stuff that we're known for, all the apparel, it's all on one side of the store, the vinyls on the other. So I would definitely ask if anyone's in the area, definitely come through. You know, we're open Tuesday through Sunday. And sully'sbrand.com, bridge9.com are the two spots to find us. I'm on Instagram, just Chris b nine.

Chris Wrenn (50:10): And, yeah, I think that pretty much covers it.

King Hap (50:12): And not just that, guys. You'll be able to find all this information in the show notes if you guys are listening on, you know, Apple Pods, Spotify, Sprigle, thehappyhoursocialclub.com. All that will be directly in the show notes. I have to say, if you guys are going down to, Backbeat Brewery, our good friends in Beverly, Massachusetts, a good place to stop on the way is right over Bridge 9 in Sully's. And I gotta say, at the as promised to everybody, at the end of this show tonight, I'm gonna drop a I'm gonna drop a brand new jam from our man Abyss the MC.

King Hap (50:42): And I gotta say, who knows? Maybe we'll find a spot in, Bridge Dive for Abyss. We'll see if we can, one of these days get, some of his albums in there. But I got a I got a couple more quick questions for you because I need that. There's a couple of need to know things here.

King Hap (50:57): You go ahead and you, you know, you go ahead, you go you're starting to put all the money back in, all the money back in. You end up going to Salem, Massachusetts. You think you're not gonna fit in. Everybody finds a way to fit in Salem, Massachusetts. So you have a stopover in Salem, Massachusetts, and then you actually a lot of the people here in the chat room will get a kick out of this.

King Hap (51:16): Guys, he was actually in Peabody, Massachusetts right near the old taco mansion over there. He was over by champions directly across the street from champions pub, some of the best steak tips around. But, I mean, so you were in Salem, Massachusetts, then you were, well, you were also in Peabody, Massachusetts before moving to Beverly. Correct?

Chris Wrenn (51:33): Yes. We've we've basically bounced around. You know, we were in Boston for a few years, Salem for four years, Peabody for fourteen years, and now we've been in Beverly for five. So it's, it's been a long journey. It's kinda wild that we've been doing this as long as we have, but we're happy to be here.

King Hap (51:51): Yep. Absolutely. And guys, how's this one for you? I promise. I I'm gonna I'm gonna speak for Chris how you like this.

King Hap (51:58): If you guys buy this book and you go in there, take a look around in the store, I'm sure you get Chris to autograph it. He'll tell you, congratulations being members of the Happy Hour Social Club, whatever the hell you want in there. He'll he'll give you an autograph on that book. Can you can you go ahead and assure the Happy Hour Social Club members that?

Unknown Speaker (52:15): Yeah. Happy to do it. I mean, I'm always here at the store. So if you ever come through, just say hello. Happy to sign it.

Chris Wrenn (52:21): If, if you're not local, if you wanna grab the book, we have it at fenwaypunk.com, through my publisher, but it's also available at both Bridge nine and Sully's brand, and we have signed copies available online. So if you wanna grab that, you know, same price.

King Hap (52:35): It's a first time author, guys. Make sure you show him some love, and you guys know Dave Wedge was on the show. You know Chris Shula was on the show. This is a huge network. These are all happy hour social club VIP members just like Chris, and I'm gonna make sure I get down to Rantouille Street in, Beverly.

King Hap (52:50): I'm gonna get mine autograph that's going up here at the Wicked Big Studios in the lounge. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is that time of the night. Time for last call. Last call tonight being brought to you by our good friends at North Cana. If you guys wanna ditch the alcohol and lose the lose the hangover but keep the buzz, you get over to northcana.com.

King Hap (53:10): I would tell you to use promo code King Hat, but the trick is North Canada's made it special. You get over to the happyhoursocialclub.com. There's a special link that will give you a brand new code every time so you always get 15% off as a happy hour social club member. And I gotta say, man, I'm having having a fantastic time tonight, Chris. We really appreciate you coming on.

King Hap (53:32): It's last call. Do you get anything left for the Happy Hour Social Club members? And once again, let them know where they can find you on social media, etcetera.

Chris Wrenn (53:39): Yeah. I mean, check out some of our bands. You know, we've put out records recently with bands like Death Before Dishonor from right here in Boston, Agnostic Front, New York. I mean, you know, we we had the whole anti New York thing going for so many years, but we've put out records with some of the most influential New York hardcore bands of all time, so agnostic front. They even came and played in our warehouse a couple years ago, so that's been very cool.

Chris Wrenn (54:04): Love it. Yeah. And we're we're doing more events. We're, you know, we're having some some live music here. We're we're doing know, still putting out records.

Chris Wrenn (54:13): So, yeah, just definitely come through, pick up a record, and and, and, check out the book, and and, yeah, thank you.

King Hap (54:19): Yep. Couple quick ones from the chat room. I'm a throw you away before we let you go. Number one, says here, it says another fire show tonight from King Happen, Chris. Yes, guys.

King Hap (54:28): We really appreciate you being here. This is amazing. Where is the store location? If I if I'm correct, do you have the, address off hand?

Chris Wrenn (54:37): Yeah. So it's 282 Rantoul Street right in Downtown Beverly. It's right next to, Jacob's Corner bar, which was the bar from that movie, the Tender bar, George Clooney, Ben Affleck film. So we're right right in the the middle stretch of Rantoul Street.

King Hap (54:54): Another one was they wanted to know if you have any new compilations coming out, anything new hitting the hitting the shelves anytime soon?

Chris Wrenn (55:01): So we're working on a bunch of reissues. We just did a twentieth anniversary repressing of Death Before Dishonored's first album, Friends, Family, Forever. So we're gonna have vinyl for that soon. We also repressed an album from a band from Los Angeles called A Life Less Plagues by a band called Carry On. We released it originally back in 2001, and they were one of the bands where everything was paid for from Yankee suck bumper stickers and and rivalry, you know, swag.

Chris Wrenn (55:29): So, yeah, they're they're they're celebrating 25. They're they they had been broken up for a really long time, but they're playing some shows this summer. So we, we wanted to get that vinyl, back in press.

King Hap (55:39): Yep. Danny Fuller says, from, from Cali says, Fenway Punk, love it. Well, I'm looking here. Awesome show. Ordering the book tonight.

King Hap (55:48): I love it, guys. Great one. Thank you, Corvette Wayne. I'll tell you, man. I really appreciate you coming on here.

King Hap (55:54): We're like I as promised, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna give you a brand new jam off of the Abyss album that is yet to drop, and I'll tell you what, I'm gonna keep Chris here for another minute. We're gonna hear the Abyss song, and we're gonna let you guys go. So for myself and everybody at the Happy Hour Social Club and all of us over at the Fantasy Sports Network, I've had a blast. I can't thank you enough, Chris, for being here. Thank you for being here.

King Hap (56:18): I mean, I had a blast, my man.

Chris Wrenn (56:20): I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me.

King Hap (56:22): Absolutely. So, guys, without any further ado, here we go. A brand new jam from our man Abyss in there. And, hey, who knows? Like I said, maybe we can get Abyss over at Bridge nine Records.

King Hap (56:33): Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we will see you Wednesday night live on the Fantasy Sports Network. It's your boy, King App, signing off. Love you all. Boom.