When Chris Wrenn founded his record label in 1995, the mailing address was his parents’ home in Glastonbury, Conn. He was 19.
Wrenn needed a reliable address because the label’s office was his dorm room at Green Mountain College in Vermont, where he studied fine arts and graphic design. After graduating, the office moved several times to the apartments and houses he shared in Boston’s Mission Hill area. He was into skateboarding and spent much of his time immersed in Boston’s hardcore scene, going to shows featuring bands made up of his friends.
The first few bands he put out on his fledgling label were buddies from high school. The early distribution deal for those records was a merch table at various hardcore shows and trading 7-inch records with other small, independent labels. He put out a record for one band only to have them break up shortly after.
It was DIY in the truest form.
He wanted bigger and better for his friends, but he was barely clearing minimum wage working in the basement art department at Tower Records. Long before Kickstarter or crowdfunding, he went to banks looking for a loan.
“They pretty much all laughed me out of the bank,” Wrenn said. “I was a young kid with sneakers and torn jeans, and I had no distribution deal. I was running the label out of my bedroom. I was not a safe bet, so I had to come up with an outside-of-the-box way of making it happen.”
With the help of Boston sports fans, he did. Those fans unintentionally funded Bridge Nine Records — one of the city’s most influential punk and hardcore labels.
Chris Wrenn of Bridge Nine Records. (Courtesy of Katherine Batten)
Wrenn is a hustler in the best sense of the word. His first hustle came by chance.
A friend of his managed a Hot Topic store in Connecticut, and he one day noticed a display full of black and white stickers featuring “edgy” phrases on them. Wrenn thought they were corny, but he also saw an opportunity in them.
His friend put Wrenn in touch with a Hot Topic buyer, and Wrenn started creating random designs on his home computer for the chain. What cost him 10 cents to make, he sold to Hot Topic for $1.
“That turned into me selling, like, tens of thousands of bumper stickers to the Hot Topic chain and making tens of thousands of dollars,” Wrenn said.
Almost all of that money went to fund the Bridge Nine label and his first few releases.
His second sticker hustle was even more lucrative. He sold “Yankees Suck!” stickers and buttons outside Fenway Park.
Boston’s hardcore and punk scene always has had a sports element to it, going back to bands in the 1980s and ’90s like Slapshot, which took its name from the movie, and Ten Yard Fight, a tongue-in-cheek football-themed band.
Before he was the drummer of the Dropkick Murphys, Matt Kelly, who grew up in Leominster, Mass., was in hardcore bands Hatchetface, Fit for Abuse and Dive, the latter appearing on a 7-inch compilation called “Boston Hardcore: In Memory of …” featuring the late Reggie Lewis of the Celtics on the cover. He said it wasn’t uncommon to see people at shows wearing sports gear.
“People would be wearing Bruins jerseys or Bruins hats, jackets. Red Sox stuff, Celtics …” Kelly said. “The basketball jersey thing hadn’t quite full-on gone bananas in the hardcore world yet. But you saw that sort of thing because people had civic pride.”
In Boston, hating all things New York comes naturally.
“For people in Boston, it’s life or death,” said former Red Sox pitcher Joe Kelly, now of the Chicago White Sox. “It’s one of the best rivalries in all sports. Their fans are hardcore in the best way.”
“You would hear ‘Yankees Suck!’ chants at every single game — whether or not the Yankees were in town,” added Wrenn, who grew up a Red Sox fan. “You would also hear it at Ozzfest, at concerts, at weddings … I mean it broke out wherever there was a large group of people.”
Matt Kelly remembers the scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s when fights would break out at shows between fans of Boston and New York crews.
“There was a lot of ill will, passion and hatred,” said Kelly.
On Oct. 17, 1999, Ten Yard Fight, who had become one of Boston’s influential straight-edge bands, played its last show at the Karma Club on the first National Edge Day. Straight edge — a lifestyle of no drugs, alcohol or tobacco products — came to the forefront in the early 1980s with influential hardcore bands like Minor Threat and Boston-based SS Decontrol.
Tim Cossar, a guitarist who lived in the basement of the Mission Hill house, was in Ten Yard Fight. Singer Wes Eisold, who lived on the first floor with Wrenn, was a roadie for the band. One of Wrenn’s upstairs roommates made T-shirts with Ten Yard Fight on the front and “Yankees Suck!” on the back. The shirts were a hit, and the group sold T-shirts outside Fenway Park.
On the first floor of their house, Wrenn ran a “Yankees Suck!” button and sticker business — one for $2 or three or $5. A good salesman with a gift for the upsell, Wrenn figured he was making at least six figures at one point. He funneled the Fenway Park money into Bridge Nine.
“The first time I went (to Fenway), I sold hundreds of them and made more money in, like, two hours than I had made in my two-week paycheck from my job (at Tower Records),” Wrenn said.
“The other people were just in it for the hustle or they wanted to make a quick buck,” added Eisold, who was part of the sales crew. “They blew all the money, people went to jail, and people died. Chris wasn’t about that at all. He was laser-focused.”
The nature of their business meant becoming a top target for Boston’s code enforcement officers — colloquially known as “codies.” Before they got seller’s permits, they’d have elaborate escape plans for a quick getaway.
Many band members became sellers with either the T-shirt or sticker crews. Right Brigade, American Nightmare, Fastbreak, In My Eyes, Have Heart and Stop And Think all had people on the then-Brookline Avenue Bridge (now the David Ortiz “Big Papi” Bridge) or at the entrance to Kenmore Square selling to fans. It was not only easy money — they were paid a commission — but also flexible work that allowed them to go on tour, come home and cover expenses.
“I was one of the worst sellers of all time,” said Eisold, who put his money toward paying rent while on tour. “They ended up giving me, like, mercy cash just for hanging around in case a fight happened or something like that. I was a cheap enforcer.”
Now flush with cash from generous Red Sox fans, Wrenn put that money into releasing American Nightmare’s 2000 self-titled debut. He paid for a real recording studio and professional graphic designers, and he placed ads in magazines and on the radio. When they went on tour in Europe and on the West Coast, he fronted the money for their plane tickets.
“I did full-color posters, promotional postcards, all sorts of marketing efforts that were brand new for me as a label,” said Wrenn, who also had just landed a job in the marketing department of Big Wheel Recreation, a Boston-based independent label that put out bands such as Jimmy Eat World and Piebald.
Working at a bigger label meant Wrenn was able to tap into a national network when the distributor who handled Big Wheel’s releases agreed to distribute American Nightmare’s debut. The release took off, and American Nightmare ended up becoming one of the most influential hardcore bands of the 2000s.
Wrenn focused on putting out more records, including American Nightmare’s 2001 EP, “The Sun Isn’t Getting Any Brighter.” At the time, most of the more established labels were moving away from hardcore and into more commercially viable releases. Bands saw the kind of money and support American Nightmare received, and Bridge Nine started to become a label hardcore bands wanted to associate with.
“I can’t overemphasize the impact that this money coming from sports fans had,” said Wrenn. “This money going into punk really put a lot of bands on the map that would have not otherwise had the push they got from us.”
For the first three years, the merch served exclusively to fund Bridge Nine and put out the best punk and hardcore bands Wrenn could find. But it was so profitable that he saw another opportunity. “The business we started by accident,” he said, “was actually better than the one we were trying to fund.”
He opened Sully’s, an apparel brand catering exclusively to Boston sports fans. He expanded the business to cover the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots and the universities in the area.
“We came up with Sully’s because in Boston, everybody knows a Sully,” said Wrenn. “It’s a common name, but it also has personality.”
When the Sept. 11 attacks happened in 2001, the animosity toward New York — and even the Yankees — was paused. Wrenn pivoted, first to making anti-Osama Bin Laden shirts and later focusing on his pride in Boston, eventually creating one of his best sellers: “Believe in Boston.”
Ben Affleck wearing belive in Boston T-shirts. pic.twitter.com/yaH6X3M7sV
— ʙᴇꜱᴛ ᴏꜰ ʙᴇɴ ᴀꜰꜰʟᴇᴄᴋ (@BestAffleck) June 1, 2020
According to Eisold, it’s more than just a motto for Wrenn. He has believed in countless bands — particularly the ones from Boston.
“He was just down to do whatever because he believed in it,” said Eisold. “He didn’t have to do any of that. He did it because he actually liked it, actually cared about it. It was actually important to him.
“He’s of it, and he loves being there. He created a world himself, and the city gave back to him.”
Boston’s Joe Kelly fights the Yankees’ Tyler Austin. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
When Joe Kelly started throwing haymakers at Yankees designated hitter Tyler Austin during their 2018 brawl at Fenway Park, he was cementing himself in Boston lore.
The next game, not even 24 hours after the brawl, Kelly saw a fan near the Red Sox bullpen wearing a “Joe Kelly Fight Club” T-shirt. He thought the shirt, made by Sully’s, was awesome, and it wasn’t long before it went viral.
“You know, it just exploded,” Kelly said. “Guys on my team were like, ‘Hey let me get a shirt!’ I was like, ‘I don’t even have a shirt!’ Everybody around town during that time was dying for one of their shirts.”
Shortly after, Kelly’s wife Ashley reached out to Wrenn to get some shirts for friends and family. They ended up partnering on a charitable venture, where a $50 donation to Mission 108 — a nonprofit organization that fights human trafficking — would get a free “Joe Kelly Fight Club” shirt. According to Kelly, they ended up raising roughly $24,000 for the charity.
Today, Sully’s has an exclusive 400-square-foot space in the Target on Boylston Street near Fenway Park, where Wrenn doesn’t have to worry about code enforcement or belligerent fans looking to fight. He still does almost all the designing for Sully’s merchandise himself. Recently, they did a co-branding deal with Dunkin’ Donuts for a new line of “Believe in Boston” shirts.
Started in his dorm room, Bridge Nine Records has been in business for almost three decades. Wrenn figures they’ve put out 300 releases with bands including American Nightmare, Have Heart, Agnostic Front, H20, Terror and more.
In 2012, they released a limited edition Dropkick Murphys baseball picture disc from their live show at Fenway. Matt Kelly said working with Bridge Nine was a natural fit given the label’s importance to the Boston scene and its sports connection. The Dropkicks also had merchandise made by Sully’s.
“It just seemed like a no-brainer,” said Kelly, who owned a “Yankees Suck!” shirt. “They’re very important to the (punk and hardcore) scene. I can’t think of how many freakin’ bands of note from Boston aren’t on Bridge Nine or haven’t had something on Bridge Nine.”
Last year, Wrenn opened a store in Beverly, Mass., for both of his business endeavors. The Bridge Nine store is on one side, and Sully’s is on the other. Like many businesses, they struggled through the pandemic. At present, Wrenn employs five people who are shared by both his businesses, roughly half the number working for him pre-Covid.
Part of their shared space is a warehouse, where Wrenn has started putting on shows. In June, American Nightmare got back together to play a special all-ages show. Eisold had recently returned from Europe, where his band Cold Cave was opening for Depeche Mode in front of 80,000 people.
It was a stark contrast to the warehouse show, which was free for the lucky few able to land tickets.
“It was really beautiful,” Eisold said from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s so rare that you play a show like that. It’s free, it’s all-ages, there is no stage, and the lights are on. That doesn’t happen much for me, so I really cherished it and loved it.”
On one of the walls of the store is an old photo of Wrenn and Eisold selling “Yankees Suck!” stickers. When asked whether American Nightmare would exist as we know it without the help of sports fans, Eisold had to pause.
“I never thought of it so bluntly,” he said with a laugh. “It’s impossible that it would exist as we know it without sports fans. At the time, Bridge Nine had only put out a couple of 7-inches, and (Wrenn’s) drive and the blind kindness of Yankee-hating fans is what propelled this band. It’s really funny; I never thought of it like that.”
Wrenn, left, Wes Eisold, center, and longtime associate Larry Kelley standing in front of a photo of Wrenn and Eisold selling “Yankees Suck!” stickers. (Courtesy of Katherine Batten)
Wrenn jokes that had he been more business-savvy, he would have invested in real estate. It would have been easy to shutter Bridge Nine and continue with the more lucrative Sully’s, but Wrenn always has been about supporting his scene.
“He used that money (from sports merchandise) to put it back into the scene to put out more records and shows,” Matt Kelly said. “That’s the beauty of it.
“He’s obviously not doing it for the money. It’s a labor of love.”
Chris Wrenn of Bridge Nine Records put together a playlist of bands that benefited from the sale of “Yankees Suck!” gear.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Getty Images, Smith Collection / Gado, Dina Rudick / The Boston Globe; courtesy of Bridge Nine Records)
