Bridge Nine in 2025: A Recap

2025 has been another whirlwind year for myself and Bridge Nine. It marked thirty years of the label, having started back in 1995, and over 300+ releases. It wasn’t the busiest year for us in terms of new music, but we managed to get a few things out that I’m super proud of, and host a bunch of cool events at the Bridge Nine store in Beverly, Massachusetts.

The first release of the year was a very special 25+ years anniversary re-issue of Faster Than The World by H2O. This had been on deck for a while, and we were able to expand it into a double LP featuring the album on vinyl for the first time since it’s original first pressing by Epitaph Records in 1999, as well as a bonus 17-song LP featuring demo tracks of the album, produced by Tim Armstrong (Rancid). Special Thanks to Gernot Nentwig for helping us secure a lost copy of the tape from that session! We’ve got two versions of the 2xLP available right now, grab those HERE!

I followed that up with the most important addition of the year. I became a dad for the second time! My wife Katherine, daughter Georgia, and I welcomed our daughter Eleanor Mae Wrenn on March 21st. She is now nine months old, happy, healthy, and hilarious. I get a lot of joy in making physical things, and made a lot of stuff this year, but Ella was my favorite.

A week later, we helped Iodine Recordings re-issue Fastbreak’s Fast Cars, Fast Women LP. I even wrote the liner notes for this album! Fastbreak were friends and peers of mine from the Connecticut scene in the mid-90s and helping get this record, which had been originally released by Big Wheel Recreation (a label that I would later work at briefly in the early 2000s) was a thrill and long overdue. Grab a copy of the B9-exclusive variant HERE!

On May 10th, I helped my daughter Georgia open a store in Salem, Massachusetts! If you’re familiar with her brand, she’s been illustrating cute skulls, ghosts, vampire bats, and more since she was six years old. Those drawings became the foundation of a brand called Georgia Made This which was a staple during the Haunted Happenings vendor markets during October every year. This year, that brand found a brick-and-mortar store of its own just two doors down from the coffee shop where Georgia drew the skull that now adorns her sign. Visiting Salem? Georgia’s shop is a block from Old Town Hall downtown, and less than ten minutes from the Bridge Nine store! Check out her website HERE!

May also saw our heaviest release of the year by Death Before Dishonor and their album Nowhere Bound. Recorded by Zeuss and it sent them on tour through 24 countries in 2025. Some of the hardest working guys in the scene and Bridge Nine is proud to have been their label since 2004.

In May we also received two of my favorite Have Heart pressings, for both The Things We Carry and Songs To Scream at the Sun. They were pressed with color-coordinating cornetto-pattern vinyl, replicating the sunburst in the artwork of TTWC. We still have some copies left of that one so grab one while you can HERE!

In June we invited artist Chris Robots Will Kill to the B9 warehouse for special pop-up gallery exhibit of his iconic Robots Will Kill paintings and illustrations. We featured 21 pieces of art and two collab T-shirts that we made, each limited to a one-time printing of 75 per design. We only have a few pieces of original art left from the collection (check those HERE) and we have some of the T-shirts left, grab those HERE!

In July, I announced the forthcoming release of my new book, Fenway Punk: How a Boston Indie Label Scored Big on Baseball’s Greatest Rivalry. It is finally arriving in stores on February 10th, courtesy of Running Press Adult/Hachette Book Group. It’s the true story of how the Yankees Suck hustle by myself and friends from the Boston hardcore scene helped fuel both the rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox, but also a generation of bands, with all of the money I made slinging stickers and T-shirts outside of Fenway Park after games in the early aughts. If you haven’t yet, please consider pre-ordering the book HERE!

In September, we added to our growing list of legendary gigs in the B9 warehouse by inviting Ten Yard Fight to perform an intimate set. Almost thirty years to the date from their first show, TYF tore through a set of songs for the first time in the Greater-Boston area in over twenty-five years. It was a warm-up gig for them before they headed to Alabama to be a part of this year’s Furnace Fest. Photo courtesy of Todd Pollock!

One of the greatest joys of doing a label like Bridge Nine is having the opportunity to work with artists I love and respect, and, in a few cases, even those from the days before the label started. Getting a call from Roger Miret of Agnostic Front to see if I’d like to release a new single for them is an honor I am humbled to receive. To help set up their latest album, Echoes In Eternity, on Reigning Phoenix Music, Bridge Nine did a limited-to-1000 copy 7-inch featuring the songs “Way of War” and “Matter of Life & Death,” which also featured guest vocals by Darryl “DMC” McDaniels of Run DMC fame. For a label guy who came up exploring music in the 80s and 90s, this is bucket-list level stuff. There are only a few copies of this left on brown vinyl, grab one HERE while you can! 

In September, we started a pre-order for a new pressing of American Nightmare’s Year One LP. In collaboration with Wes Eisold’s label Heartworm, Year One is a compilation of their first two 7 inch records on Bridge Nine, originally released in 2000 and 2001, and is the release that is most responsible for putting Bridge Nine on the map twenty-five years ago. The artwork for this release was reimagined by Del Jae, who I first met in 2001 on American Nightmare’s first UK tour when Del’s band Sworn In opened. Grab a very special red/white/blue striped vinyl LP HERE!

To help close the year out, we curated an exhibition for our favorite local live-music photogapher, Todd Pollock. Titled “Thirty Years,” we hung prints for every year both Todd and I have been documenting bands, from 1995 through this year. It was our first full gallery exhibit and it was up for just under two weeks, and will be the template for future events here in the B9 warehouse. You can check out the exhibition online, HERE!

Through all of this, we worked hard with the smallest staff that we’ve had since the Mission Hill days. Special thanks to Larry Kelley, without whom our events wouldn’t be possible, the B9 crew (Katherine, Bobby, Colby), and all of our friends, family, and loyal supporters who help make what we do possible. Happy New Year, and look out for what we have going on in 2026!


Bridge Nine: 2024 Review

When I first started renovating the building that became Bridge Nine’s record store and HQ in Beverly, Massachusetts, I wanted to make a place where cool things could happen. It wasn’t going to just be a record label office, we’d already had that for over 25 years in a succession of spaces, starting in a bedroom and an evolving in a series of warehouses, each bigger than the next. They had their own character and let us work on records and mail them to people, but we were hidden away, hard to find, and unable to be a space where our community could gather and grow. By the time the pandemic started, I wanted something that fostered connection. And 2024 showed that we have become that space and so much more.

Bridge Nine is a record label first and foremost, so finding and supporting artists that inspire us is our most important role. We were excited to invite HEAVYHEX onto the label and support them with the release of their debut album, True To You, recorded by Jay Maas (Defeater, Love Letter).

We were also proud to get new pressings of Ceremony’s Rohnert Park (in time for their insane show at the Hollywood Palladium where they played the album front to back; the DYS Brotherhood LP (on green!); and Have Heart’s The Things We Carry and Songs To Scream at the Sun albums in time for their reunion shows this summer!

We were also happy to collaborate with our friends at Blackout!, Iodine Recordings and Trust Records to release Bridge Nine exclusive color vinyl pressings for a half-dozen albums for bands that we dig like S.S. Decontrol, Love Letter, B9 alums Crime In Stereo, Further Seems Forever, Stretch Armstrong, and coming very soon: Piebald!

We also celebrated the release of new books by our favorite artists: Matt Pryor (The Get Up Kids), Ray Cappo (Shelter, Youth of Today), Vinnie Stigma, and Roger Miret (Agnostic Front):

and invited a whole bunch of great artists to exhibit throughout the year, like Alyssa Watters, Lori Dawn, Mike Gallo, Christopher Michon / Failed Imagineer, Timmy Tanker, Alyssa Driscoll, and Meesh Dumas / Bold, Old, and Gold!

We partnered with The Vegan Market THREE times throughout the year, and packed our warehouse (and in August, the street next to our building) with delicious vegan food vendors:

The Vegan Market: August 2024 Edition

We also turned the B9 warehouse into a movie theater for two film premieres: Don’t Forget To Leave (about Tim Landers of the band Transit) and Join Or Die, about the importance of being an active part of your community!

Frank Turner cameo in the film Don’t Forget To Leave about Tim Landers of the band Transit

But the thing that got us the most excited, was to invite some of our favorite bands to perform the most intimate of sets in the B9 warehouse. HEAVYHEX celebrated the release of their new album on B9 back in May with their friends The Promised End and Spite House:

HEAVYHEX Live at Bridge Nine. Photo courtesy of Dom DiNardo

another highlight was having Calling Hours (ex-Farside) perform our two-year anniversary of the store being open show:

Calling Hours performing live at Bridge Nine on September 14th, 2024. Photo by Chris Wrenn

But the absolute banger, the “how are we going to top this” event was NYHC-pioneers Agnostic Front performing live as part of the release of Roger and Vinne’s new books:

Agnostic Front performing live at Bridge Nine Records on December 7th, 2024. Photo by Dave Boccio.

with a special half-New York, half-Boston AF lineup that featured Mark McKay (Slapshot) on drums and Jaime Sciarappa (SSD) on bass with Chris Foley (SSD) hopping on the drums for a cover of S.S. Decontrol’s song “Glue,” and Eugene Hutz (Gogol Bordello) helping Vinnie sing “Power.”

Also special shoutouts to Lenny Lashley, Keith Bennet, Smooth Brain, 5Ever, Return Address, Hyber, and Marley Brown for their special performances at B9 this year!

We want to extend a special thank you to Larry Kelley, Katherine Wrenn, Chris Padgett, Katie at Soy Much Brighter, Crystal Rose, and everyone who has made these events happen. We dreamed of a space where we could do stuff like this, and it’s become our reality. We’ve got a TON of things in the works for 2025, so make sure to keep up with what we’re doing and be a part of it!

Chris Wrenn
B9