Craig Wedren

at the Black Cat, 1/15/2006


If you don't know who this is... Craig Wedren was the lead singer for a band called Shudder to Think. They were a favorite of mine, and I think their album, "Pony Express Record," is a must-have (as well as some of their others... but let's pretend the "must-have" list is short).

I'm short on time so I gotta make this quick... The show also featured Amy Miles. Her opening set was hit or miss in my opinion. This was the last night of their little tour, and I think they drank a little too much. Miles is a great singer, but I felt like she sounded her best when singing other people's songs. Apparently Craig is producing her next album - I'm curious to hear the results, I suspect it will be quite good. They sounded great singing together.

Miles and Wedren shared the same band - which must have made for an efficient tour. They also did a taping for Pancake Mountain earlier that day (see photo)- so the business end of this tour should've worked out pretty well?


Wedren played much of his new record, "Lapland." (you can stream some of the songs on his myspace page)

He also gave the crowd a thrill by playing a few "hits" from the Shudder to Think catalog. That sounded good -- but couldn't live up to my own memory of hearing them play live multiplied by the years of associating their performance on the Pony Express Record Tour that I heard in Austin as one of the greatest shows ever. My perception of that night still serves as a kind of benchmark by which other concerts are judged. Shudder To Think just played with such incredible precision, and gorgeous subtlety - plus Wedren's tremendous vocals = the best thing ever.

"Hit Liquor" sounded really nice. He re-arranged the grinding bridge part of the song: I thought that was a place where he played with a vibrator originally? (could be remembering wrong) but he did it using a delay to create a grinding wall of sound, and added some impressive vocal looping - as impressive as what I heard Feist do a few months ago.

That voice. He still sounds great, and he's writing interesting songs. I would probably praise this show more heavily, but it's hard to compare to my own expectations given my opinions about his old band. The Shudder to Think songs sounded strong, but the second guitarist was no Nathan Larson.