Craig Wedren on Yellowjackets, School of Rock, Wet Hot American Summer and Storytelling

July 16, 2024

Soundtracks, Scores and More Staff

The words of the day at the Wedren house were “storytelling,” “porousness,” and “cannibalism.” “Unnecessary cannibalism” to be precise. Craig Wedren is one of the composers of Yellowjackets, so he knows when the consumption of human flesh is necessary to the story. His first artistic encounter with cannibalism, however, was unintentional. Or so he claims.

BY JASON LAZARCHECK

 

The words of the day at the Wedren house were “storytelling,” “porousness,” and “cannibalism.” “Unnecessary cannibalism” to be precise. Craig Wedren is one of the composers of Yellowjackets, so he knows when the consumption of human flesh is necessary to the story. His first artistic encounter with cannibalism, however, was unintentional. Or so he claims.

The cauldron has meat in it. You know, we went to the meat-packing district and got some giant rack of ribs. And the lyrics, there’s references to meat and bones and things. Much Music banned the video for unnecessary necrophilia and cannibalism. Of which there is none. And we were like, our job is done here. 

Before Craig began composing for film and TV, he sang lead vocals and played guitar in Shudder to Think, an alternative post-hardcore-punk band based in Washington DC. Their music video for the 1994 song “Hit Liquor” featured an angelic young boy in it as a character and then a band member stirring a giant cauldron. Somehow television censors assumed the band had eaten the boy.

The cauldron has meat in it. You know, we went to the meat-packing district and got some giant rack of ribs. And the lyrics, there’s references to meat and bones and things. Much Music banned the video for unnecessary necrophilia and cannibalism. Of which there is none. And we were like, our job is done here. 

What exactly constitutes “necessary necrophilia and cannibalism?” It’s all in someone’s imagination, and for Craig, that’s the point. His music is deliberately more imagistic, photographic, dream-like, and suggestive, and it’s up to the listener or viewer to fill in the blanks. It’s participatory, which sometimes leads to misinterpretations and his band being canceled on the Canadian cable TV, but Craig’s impressionistic approach aspires to be transcendent. It’s the kind of art that he responds to.

You give me enough to run with it and make it my own story… It’s storytelling but more in the Lynchian mold. Or Stan Brakhage, who was a big experimental filmmaker in the 50s or whatever. And on the surface, it’s abstract but there’s something so emotional about it or grounded about it or leading, but it’s not leading on the part of the creator. It’s leading on the part of your own story and experience.

This is actually where Craig and his Shudder to Think bandmates drew their inspiration for the “Hit Liquor” music video, from the abstract storytelling and surrealist literature they were reading at the time, specially the mid-century French absurdist movement.

We were on a boat and speaking of stories and literature. It was based on Genet. Our Lady of the Flowers. One of his stories. And it’s like these gay sailors on a boat. Just beautiful writing. And we’re like, “Oh, let’s do a video based on that! Great.”

Craig and Shudder to Think used the stories and art they were collectively watching and listening to and passing around in the van as a band as inspiration. In this instance, Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers seemed to go really well with the lyrics. “Hit Liquor” was the opening track and stylistic centerpiece to the 1994 Pony Express Record, and the song was very personal to Craig, so he led the charge with that one, incorporating whatever he was interested in then.

It’s not necessarily like we learn new things, but we see things out there that we already knew but hadn’t articulated to ourselves about who we are and what we love and what our style is, right? And so whatever fragments of music were turning me on then, it might have been John Cage or John Coltrane or The Melvins, wound up in this strange fragmented alternative rock music that was very unique and felt very personal to me… So it’s more this jigsaw of inspiration that appears to be something new, but really is just a collage of all the things you recognize out there, all the stories you see that already are you… It’s a Ouija board… And sometimes everybody’s on the same game and board and sometimes not.

 

As a composer, Craig Wedren has scored everything from Wet Hot American Summer, School of Rock, and Reno 911! to Glow, New Amsterdam, and Yellowjackets. As an artist, he’s also a musician, vocalist, lyricist, guitarist, filmmaker, and devoted storyteller. And whether it’s necessary or unnecessary, actual or absurd, Craig is always been exploring the edges and pushing boundaries wherever he goes, including in his home studio.

We’re making a music video in there. It’s for a song on my new record. It’s just a really catchy song. We’re trying to make sure that the video is not universal but just porous and open enough that anybody who watches it can just be like, “Oh yeah, I feel that too.”

The song is called “Fingers on My Face” and the video is available on YouTube. It’s the lead single from Craig’s new album, The Dream Dreaming, which came out on January 26.

The Dream Dreaming is a solo album, but throughout Craig’s career, he’s cultivated a long list of long-term collaborators, from his former bandmates in Shudder to Think to the comic writer-performers of MTV’s The State, a mid-90s sketch comedy show, who went on to make Wet Hot American Summer and Reno 911!

Another long-term collaborator resides at the house with Craig: his wife, producer Meggan Lennon.

As Craig and Meggan grew together as a couple over the years, they were always helping support each other’s creative projects, and their working relationship developed organically. Together, they’ve worked on a number of film projects, from little indie documentaries and By the People, the award-winning HBO documentary about Barack Obama’s campaign, to the 2022 thriller What Comes Around and even this latest music video for “Fingers on My Face.”

Boxers and Ballerinas was one of the early indie documentaries they worked on together. It’s about teenage Cuban and Cuban-American athletes, and Mike Cahill and Brit Marling were the directors and it was one of the first movies they made.

These two babies showed up on our doorstep… They were 19 years old. And they were like, “Follow us into Cuba!” We were like, “OK.”

Certainly our most creative collaboration is our life. Home. Son. Family. 

For Craig and Meggan, it was a beautiful experience and fun. With a nimble crew, they got to go around the country recording Cuban artists, rappers, and old folk singers. Craig never quite finished the score on it, “because Fidel Castro shut the internet down.” 

Part of the funding hinged on them doing some of the post in Cuba. So I finished the score in New York, and Lee Mars, my friend and mixer, was mixing it when we had to go to Cuba. For the mix.

But that was the day George W. Bush was elected to his second term. And when he won, Cuba shut down the internet. So there was no way to get the music from New York to Havana. They worked to finish it using demos but wound up with amazing recordings from Cuban artists, from old men doing the blessing of the plants to the teen rapper, MC Garcia Afro. Ultimately, Craig and Meggan were able to license one of Garcia Afro’s songs for Reno 911!

Working on the Obama doc throughout his 2008 campaign, Meggan wore many hats. She was a Field Producer and a Director of Photography, while Craig wrote all the music. The film encompassed Obama’s run for the presidency, and Meggan said, “I think we literally had 25,000 hours of footage. We started in 2001 through 2008.” 

The documentary feature was nominated for the 2010 Emmy. Around that same time, Meggan and Craig began their most important collaboration of all, when their son was born.

Certainly our most creative collaboration is our life. Home. Son. Family. 

Meggan concurs with Craig, and in her own words, she adds to the laundry list of their collaborations: “Our business. We work together. We do everything together. It’s kind of cool. And unusual.” As a pair, they’re very complimentary. And very different. Craig appreciates how Meggan is very grounded, “nuts and bolts,” and likes to plan ahead. “Meggan the Producer.” She’s the adult in the room.

And I’m more like “Bah! What about this? What if we wear this?!” Even now, just talking, something will come out of my mouth, and like, “Did that even make sense? That doesn’t even make sense. Does that make sense?” My tendency is refrigerator magnets and Meggan’s is fucking encyclopedia. 

“That’s so boring sounding,” Meggan worries. Craig is characteristically quick with his reply:

It’s so not boring. It’s so vital… That difference between something that falls apart because it can’t find fire, it can’t find what’s it about, and things that have creative friction and create something greater than the sum of its parts. You definitely make things greater than the sum of its parts.

Meggan keeps the ship afloat and keeps the level of cannibalism at “necessary.” “Nothing more, nothing less.” As artists, Craig is more creative, but Meggan “can make it happen.” She is also his sounding board, the first person he will ask, “Is this anything?”

Both of them have been thinking about and discussing storytelling lately. Craig is into his latest music video, among other projects, and Meggan has been wrestling with story, working on her latest documentary. It’s a short about Alok Vaid-Menon, an acclaimed non-binary writer and performance artist, and “Alok” just premiered at Sundance.

Meggan thinks that humans are “storytelling machines” and “we love to make meaning out of things.” We’ll find patterns, even if there’s not really any there, and “we like to tell the story of our life and cohere and we like to try to make sense of it.” When it comes to storytelling for an audience, however, Meggan believes, “It’s really important to find the flaws in a person. To find compassion and make the character relatable.” She’s been thinking about that in terms of major Hollywood motion pictures now, how that’s not the formula anymore. “It’s just awesome superheroes who are always awesome and save the world. The flawed humanity, is, I think, the most compelling part of character arcs in storytelling.” She feels like it’s a little bit lost, and she’s presently trying to find that with Alok’s story. “Find the vulnerability. Not the flaws so much but the vulnerabilities that can make anyone relate to them.”

Meanwhile, Craig is actively crafting his own stories through new music and music videos, and his sensibilities aren’t centered on a character arc. His work is less patterned and more porous, hopefully just as relatable but in a less literal way.

More dreamlike, more—abstract isn’t the word, because to me it isn’t abstract—suggestive, I guess. Impressionistic… And it’s interesting with this new record I’m working on, because I’m doing videos for basically every song, and I started during Covid, just because with the strike, there was all the time in the world, so I started making these songs, started figuring out how to make music videos, and was reminded of college. 

Craig was in a theater program at NYU, which was essentially a performance art program. He used to make experimental VHS videos, which often had some ambient music to them or components he and his friends would make on a 4-track. 

Sometimes they would be projections in installation-type things, sometimes they would just be assignments, that I would very very very loosely interpret, where my teachers would begrudgingly or not even begrudgingly, they would say, “OK, I’m giving you a B on this because it’s good, but it is absolutely not the assignment. You just like made something you felt like making.” Well, yeah.

Now that Craig is working on these music videos for all the songs on his new record, he remembered how he felt about every video he’d ever made in the past.

Every video I’ve ever made with somebody else was frustrating, disappointing, maddening, and I never quite knew why. No, not all of them. I love the video for Nine Fingers on You that David Wain and Mike Jann and I think maybe even Tom [Lennon] directed. But I never knew why… I was always disappointed, and it was probably palpable. I’d be like, “Oh, OK, it’s good.” And it was only when I started making videos that I was like, “Oh, it’s because I need to fucking make these myself.”

Craig isn’t entirely sure where directing these music videos will lead to next, whether it’s to directing narrative shorts or a scripted feature or not. As a musician rooted in bands, he admits he has a shorter attention span for filmmaking and storytelling, and that a story arc of 1-3 hours requires painstaking architecture and forethought, as well as more help and collaboration. At least he’s finally satisfied with his music videos, because now when he experiences them, they are what he meant.

As storytellers, Craig and Meggan have complementary skill sets, as well as backgrounds. They grew up differently but both gravitated toward literature and the arts. Meggan studied English. She wanted to read all the classics, look at all the stories, in order to learn how to write. She went to Madison, which she says had “very radical, very leftist politics,” and she studied “super feminist literature. And that was an interesting lens to learn about storytelling. It gave me a much broader sense of the world. And I took African storytelling and I took French literature in French. And getting a more global view of humanity and the common things we have.”

Craig didn’t do any of that. “You rolled around on the floor,” Meggan said of Craig’s college experience, which was essentially an experimental theater workshop. “You liked to roll around.” Craig actually read some feminist literature, too. In addition to his performance art background, he has a literary education. (After all, he was the one reading Genet.) His mom was a big writer, so writing, language, and English communication was paramount on his mom’s side of the family.

 

Grandma was an English teacher. Mom was an English teacher… So it was a lot of knuckle cracking, get your grammar, clarify your intention, what is a paragraph. But then around 10th grade I had this teacher named Marsha, a creative writing teacher, and she just blew it right open. There was no going back. And things became much more surreal and personal and autobiographical but in a non-linear way.

Again it comes back to this porousness. Having enough information or enough of an impression that you can really take it and run. Personalize it. Project your story onto it. And that, it just became my true north for all of my writing since.

Craig is sure this creative shift coincided with whatever books he was reading at the time. On the one hand, in terms of pop culture, he was obsessed with Clive Barker and Anne Rice.

You know, vampires and horror stuff. But then on the literature side it would have been probably starting to read James Joyce and not understanding it, or beat poets, or Hunter Thompson which was this extremely surrealistic self-aggrandized subjective kind of journalism that appealed to a narcissistic teenager, like obsessed with rock ’n’ roll and punk rock.

Around that same time, in early college, surrealism and dreams became vital to Craig as a young artist. Like gonzo journalism and punk rock, Craig believes surrealism is also particularly appealing to teenagers, but he thinks there’s something profound about dreams and memory.

Again it comes back to this porousness. Having enough information or enough of an impression that you can really take it and run. Personalize it. Project your story onto it. And that, it just became my true north for all of my writing since.

As an artist, Craig wants to do that and be that for people. But he also just wants to feel OK in the world. In his own formative years in the 80s, that meant connecting to the songwriting and lyric-based storytelling of the many bands or artists he was listening to at the time.

Some of them were even gibberish half the time like Cocteau Twins or REM or something like that. But then of course there was Lou Reed and Tom Waits or Richard Hell, who were people, who were writers. Kate Bush. Real poets, real storytellers.

Craig grew up with storytellers in his family. For example, his grandpa loved to hold forth and tell the same great stories about his life over and over.

They were infinitely entertaining, and he was just extraordinarily charming. And even when he was doddering and old and not such a great storyteller anymore, there was just such a sweetness to it and again a relatability or just porousness and you could just enter into his heart-space. And it was just very easy to smile at his storytelling.

The most amazing storyteller in Meggan’s family is her brother, Thomas Lennon, the actor and comedian behind Reno 911! and Night at the Museum. Tom is Craig’s good friend and another long-term collaborator going back decades. To Meggan, Tom is her little brother, but he’s also a great writer and a comic genius. “And he was like that since birth… When he was a baby, he learned to wink, and it elicited reactions from people and that turned into being a comedian and that is just his thing. So I grew up with that.” Craig chimes in that Tom says she was like this since birth. The adult in the room. “Someone had to be,” Meggan quips, but Craig insists that’s not an insult.

Books and films were important to both their families. In Meggan’s household, “That’s just what was worshiped as religion. My mom was a theater director actually. And my dad was an art historian.” As a result, Meggan not only experienced storytelling through narrative theater, but also paintings. The stories that paintings tell about context, time, place, and culture is very important to her dad. He’s a painter and was an art conservator at the Art Institute for 45 years, so art was everywhere in Meggan’s life. Craig enjoys how passionately his father-in-law talks about it. The stories just flow. 

There was no question in my mind as to what the music needed to be, how it sounded, what was working, and what wasn’t working. It was that sort of blessed first, you know—I have this theory that you get a couple freebies at first when you’re on the right path. It’s like, “Come on in, man. You’re welcome here.” Then the real work starts. So for film stuff, that was still sort of halcyon, and it was like, “I know exactly what to do. It is what it is. It’s going great. It sounds awesome, looks great.” But, I mean, I would literally sit there with a VHS cassette, a remote in my hand, and my sampler and some wine glasses and try and manually sync things up. I had no fucking idea.

Meggan also learned a lot about history this way. “History of the world through art storytelling. A kind of beautiful lens.” Whereas Craig’s family’s style of storytelling is anecdotal “story-stories.”

Grandpa has legitimate war stories, but my dad had legitimate crazy stories, you know? Of like, “You did that?!” Which is very charming versus historic, educational, which is more like [Meggan’s] dad’s. 

Craig’s dad was more of a charismatic funny character than a great storyteller. 

One of the gifts for which I’m eternally grateful that I got from my dad is that guy just had 10,0000 cockamamie ideas a day. “What if I ran for office?” “Don’t do that, Dad. That’s not a good idea…” 

One time in the early 2000s, Craig didn’t have a lot going on at that time. Shudder to Think had broken up. He was doing film work but it was few and far between. And his dad called him up and told him he just read an article about Pearl Jam in the Sunday Times. Craig was friends with band and had toured with them. The following is a real suggestion from Craig’s dad.

“I got an idea. Why don’t you give Pearl Jam a call and see if they need a singer?” I’m like, “OK. Why don’t you give the government a call and see if they need a president, Dad?” So he always had really good ideas.

Obviously, Craig didn’t wind up singing in Pearl Jam, but his film composing career did take off around this time. Getting to that point wasn’t easy. At the end of the 90s, Shudder to Think fortuitously had some heat when the New York City indie film boom was starting to happen, and a music supervisor, Tracy McKnight, brought the band in to score their first film, Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art. 

There was no question in my mind as to what the music needed to be, how it sounded, what was working, and what wasn’t working. It was that sort of blessed first, you know—I have this theory that you get a couple freebies at first when you’re on the right path. It’s like, “Come on in, man. You’re welcome here.” Then the real work starts. So for film stuff, that was still sort of halcyon, and it was like, “I know exactly what to do. It is what it is. It’s going great. It sounds awesome, looks great.” But, I mean, I would literally sit there with a VHS cassette, a remote in my hand, and my sampler and some wine glasses and try and manually sync things up. I had no fucking idea.

The wine glasses weren’t for Craig and the band to drink. He was attempting to use them, the musical sounds he could make with them, to score the film. Wrangling his ideas and the music he could produce in his apartment into an actual film score, however, was bewildering. In terms of Craig’s very first feature film projects, the challenges and problem-solving was mostly technical. Plus, he admits that there was a lot of pride, ego, and insecurity.

The impostor syndrome thing. “I didn’t go to a conservatory. I don’t really know what I’m doing.” It worked in rock music, but that’s meant to work in rock music. That sort of like amateur cockiness… Film is a whole different thing.

The next opportunity came to Craig and the band through the music supervisor, Randall Poster. 

We got a call from Randy, who was doing Velvet Goldmine, the Todd Haynes movie, a sort of like glam rock valentine. And they needed a few original songs, sort of Bowie-esque. And we were more than happy. And that was one of those little escape hatch moments, like “Ahh, fresh air.” And it was perfect, because we all know that era and that music so well. It’s just in our DNA. And we could do it without feeling guilty, because we weren’t selling ourselves out creatively. And that just then led to this really sweet long-term relationship where we, every few years, would work on something.

Just as Craig’s relationship with music supervisors like Randy and Tracy McKnight began to blossom, his band broke up. Shudder to Think split in 1998, and around that time, Craig himself had endured and successfully battled Hodgkin’s Disease. His recovery from the life-threatening cancer required many months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Moving forward, Craig’s artistic future was uncertain, but he was determined to evolve creatively, despite the two conflicting ways he felt at the time.

Very insecure. Very clear about what I wanted to do. But then too, because I was known for Shudder to Think, people thought I was crazy. I was like, “I want to do a disco band, I want to do a pop band, I want to start writing for boy bands, and scoring movies and television.” And people were like, “Just do what you’ve done. Like, stick to it.” But that sounded like self-smothering to me and, self-image-wise, it was a very low feeling period. Even though, creatively and chops-building, it was like boot camp. I had all the time in the world.

I was used to being a band guy, like an artist. We would take a year or two to in our eyes hopefully perfect twelve songs. Forty minutes of music a year. And now I make forty minutes of music every five days. I mean, last night I did two improvised performances, one solo and one with my new band which is called Flesh Car, and we composed ninety minutes of really good music, in an afternoon.

Craig was living in New York and knew deep down that he could do all this trailblazing creative work he wanted to do. He just needed to figure out how, but he was determined. He took on a couple small indie film projects. As the real work continued, Craig realized it would take him a long time to achieve everything he wanted to do, starting with composing for film and TV. 

A couple years after High Art and Velvet Goldmine, Craig was hired to do his first TV show, a big hourlong network show.

I had never done TV. I had done some sketches for The State, but that’s a very different thing. This was real scoring on a real show, and the woman who hired me, Tracy McKnight, who had brought Shudder to Think on for High Art too so I owe her a great debt of gratitude, she was like, “Listen, this is real. This is NBC or CBS or whatever, ABC, and you’re going to need to show these to the suits, and so you need to have a studio.” 

Craig was literally composing in his living room which was also his dining room which was also his den because this was just a little New York apartment. Tracy also warned him, “You need to turn things in on time.” 

I was used to being a band guy, like an artist. We would take a year or two to in our eyes hopefully perfect twelve songs. Forty minutes of music a year. And now I make forty minutes of music every five days. I mean, last night I did two improvised performances, one solo and one with my new band which is called Flesh Car, and we composed ninety minutes of really good music, in an afternoon.

After years of learning and doing, Craig says then you get so good in a snap. He became less precious about his process and he relishes not having to get “in the zone” anymore. Here’s what he’ll tell creative friends who feel the need for quiet retreats.

“Oh, you should work in TV. You won’t ever need to think about the zone.” I don’t ever need to think about the zone. It’s just like, “Oh you need it? What do you need? How much? What’s the vibe? Don’t know the vibe? Let’s find a vibe. OK.” And it’s so cool. It’s a groove. And you figure it out. And it’s amazing. It’s not of lesser quality. There might be a wide spectrum. But there is when you’re trying to perfect one thing too. You make some shit and you make some gold. And you stick with the gold. It’s the same thing. It’s just warp drive.

Another big difference between Craig’s songwriting, whether it was in Shudder to Think or his more recent bands and solo work, and Craig’s composing for TV and film is submitting to someone else’s vision and notes. 

I think because of my relationship to movies and to story, it’s an honor and it’s a total joy. If I were only doing that, I would probably go crazy, just like when I was only doing band music and making records, I started going crazy because one is too solipsistic and the other can wind up feeling too slavish or something like that. But the sweet spot, when I’m getting to do both of them is a dream to me. I love whoring around, getting to collaborate with different directors and writers, and it’s something I was not able to do in a band, especially in the 20th century, it was verboten to do something outside of your band. It’s like cheating. And in the film and TV world, it’s all cheating. It’s the best! 

 

On a TV series, Craig enjoys operating in a limited, very intense relationship, whether it’s for six months or a year or five seasons, and then he can go do something completely different. In doing so, these close collaborations have reinforced to him the power of story and what it means for us all.

You’re getting to really get to know, on an almost primordial, if we consider storytelling to be this prerequisite to being human, you know? It’s like you just get to go right there with people. And sometimes it works, speaking of the chemistry, sometimes it’s genius and magical, and sometimes it’s…

Craig makes some squeaking noises. The sound of gears grinding.

Sometimes our parts don’t fit. But that’s still so fun.

When Craig was a teenager, and even going further back to when he was a kid at summer camp or hanging in his friend’s parents’ basement, he found lifelong collaborators and friends in writer-directors Jesse Peretz, David Wain, and Stuart Blumberg. In college, Craig also befriended comic writers and performers such as Ken Marino, Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney, Michael Patrick Jann, Michael Ian Black, and Joe Lo Truglio. Craig considers them some of the funniest people on earth, and although they grew up together, they’re all mentors to him.

All of the ones along the way, they just keep me sharp, they’re challenging. We all keep each other sharp. And it’s all all right. We’ve been friends, like with David and Stuart Blumberg, it’s been, you know, literally fifty years of friendship. And with Ken Marino and Tom Lennon and Kerri Kenney, it’s been, I dunno, like thirty-five years. So there’s no danger. You can tell me when you don’t like some of my shit, which for sure happens. And vice versa. It’s like, who cares? I want to know why. And usually I‘ll be like, “Yeah, you’re wrong.” Years and years and years of “it’s all right.” No one’s going anywhere. Famous last words. We’ll all break up over some dumb thing later.

With every decade that goes by, Craig’s bonds with all these talented comedian and filmmaker friends seem unlikely to break. At the time, in the 90s, they were working on their thing on the stages of comedy theaters and in film and TV, and Craig pursued his: songwriting and performing in bands, along with experimental theater and performance art. Together, Craig formed bonds with these friends over their shared sensibilities, both comedic and dramatic, as well as their separate opinions on cinema.

Movies were huge, the big story, movies and books… But with me and my friends growing up it was movies, movies, movies, movies, movies. And like shitty 70s and 80s TV. But that’s just cuz that was all that was there.

Craig has his own deep relationship with film and was obsessed with movies growing up. He considers movies a close second to music in his life, so he fit right in with these filmmakers and comedians who came together to create the MTV sketch show, The State, and Craig collaborated with them and composer Theodore Shapiro to score the series. After that, it was only a matter of time before Craig’s next scripted comedy collaboration: Wet Hot American Summer.

My friend, Laser Rosenberg, who was a friend from summer camp, the very summer camp that Wet Hot American Summer was based on, used to have this great store here on Highland called Homework, and he just has such a great eye for such great stuff. And when we still lived in New York, I would come to LA for work and that was kind of our club house. I would just hang out in his store and there was this awesome pink ape lamp that became my studio mascot back in New York City, and then when it was here I was like, “Well, it needs a name,” and that’s the mascot. So it’s Pink Ape.

David Wain asked Craig to score the iconic comedy film with one of the best casts ever assembled. Like on The State, both Craig and Theodore Shapiro collaborated on the music. Shapiro had more experience with composing for TV and film than Craig, so Craig learned a lot collaborating with “Teddy” on The State and Wet Hot American Summer.

In addition to being a dear friend and a brilliant composer, he had a more traditional education, and so I would just be like, “So, what’s that? Whatcha doing? How’s that work? Oh cool!” And there have been people like that along the way, whether they’re composers or players… It’s like, “Hey, what’s that you’re doing? That sounds cool. That looks cool.” I definitely like to think that I surround myself with people who are a little better than me at whatever it is I want to be doing, doing something different, their own version of it, but it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I know I want to be doing that, and I feel I can do that, so what are they doing and what’s useful to steal?” It’s not theft. It’s going to mutate and become my own in the process of doing so it’s more like technical theft, and Teddy would be one of those people.

It’s not a zero-sum game, just a playful heist of skill, and that’s what mentorship or apprenticeship is to Craig. He pays it forward to people in his creative life, including mentoring former assistants like composer Matthew Wang and other people Craig’s worked with in his studio.

So many people who are coming from band backgrounds but who have a yen for this sort of thing wind up coming through this studio, which I call Pink Ape. And, you know, like Jherek Bischoff, who is a wonderful composer and arranger and a member of Flesh Car. And he was a band guy who wanted to get more into film, and now he’s kicking so much ass.

Craig’s home studio makes him extremely happy, in part because it’s a lovely, beautiful place. The original recording studio was just a practice garage, but one of his former assistants is also an interior designer, and as she was getting her design business started, she knew exactly what Craig’s studio needed and turned it into what it is now. Even the name of the studio is related directly to collaboration and connection in Craig’s creative life. 

My friend, Laser Rosenberg, who was a friend from summer camp, the very summer camp that Wet Hot American Summer was based on, used to have this great store here on Highland called Homework, and he just has such a great eye for such great stuff. And when we still lived in New York, I would come to LA for work and that was kind of our club house. I would just hang out in his store and there was this awesome pink ape lamp that became my studio mascot back in New York City, and then when it was here I was like, “Well, it needs a name,” and that’s the mascot. So it’s Pink Ape.

Working on Wet Hot American Summer was not only a chance for Craig to grow as a composer. The film called for original songwriting, so Craig’s skill set as a songwriter in bands like Shudder to Think and a student of musical genres resulted in original songs like “Higher and Higher,” featured prominently in the movie and on its soundtrack.

Writing songs for movies, which started in earnest with Wet Hot American Summer, was like being freed from a cage of my own design. And relates to that idea of identity and purity and integrity, which was kind of a young idea for me. It was suddenly playtime. I, and we, meaning my musical collaborator friends, we all grew up listening to everything, and Shudder to Think was one facet of highly original music, and it was really important, vital even, to me to mine that. And then at a certain point, it started feeling a little like a straightjacket.

Craig remembers a meeting Shudder to Think had with their A&R guy at Epic Records. It was a compilation of songs for a 90s fundraiser, and musicians were covering pop songs for it. One of the songs on the list of options was “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies.

Couldn’t be more pop. It’s a perfect song. And we were like, “We want to do Sugar Sugar,” and our A&R guy—meanwhile they’re trying to get us to write poppier songs, but he’s like, “You can’t do ‘Sugar, Sugar.’” Essentially he was saying, and he wasn’t wrong, “It’s too off-brand. It’s too far-flung from who you are and what you do.”

Craig totally understands this from a business and marketing perspective, but it was infuriating and mildly heartbreaking at the time, because these kind of artificial restrictions eroded the band’s creative foundation. On the other hand, he and the band were lucky to work with some great record executives during their heyday, and Craig considers Ian MacKaye from Discord Records a mentor to this day. Still, the creative “straightjacket” was tightening and contributed to the feeling that Shudder to Think as a band was not going to work long-term, because its members wanted to be able to do whatever the hell they wanted to do.

So when something like Wet Hot came around, it was just playtime. Because it’s like, “Cool. We need a song.” And when I get asked to write songs for movies and TV shows, it’s freedom from “Who am I? What is this about? Am I authentic? Is this what I want to be putting out into the world? Is this what I want to say?” It’s none of that. You put on a costume. It’s character acting. You get to indulge so many kinda cheap thrills and fantasies that you might not otherwise let yourself indulge. And so it’s great. And so it eases, again, the sort of balance between film and TV and making records. It eases the pressure on either side, for either side to have to be everything and do everything. And I get to make pop songs and disco songs and, you know, a string quartet, and it’s just so fun. And it’s this idea of just whoring around, but it’s more genre slut. Which is great.

After Wet Hot, Randy Poster rang Craig again to say, “Hey, I’m working on this movie, this Mike White, Jack Black movie, and it needs some rock score. And a power ballad.” Craig said, “Sign me up!” And that turned out to be School of Rock. Craig Wedren’s idea of “whoring around” creatively lead him to do his first PG-13 movie. Of course, School of Rock is not just for kids. For Craig, it was a dream job. In addition to composing the score, Craig also served the film in post-production and acted as the “band wrangler” for the film’s promotional tour.

An eerily parallel wonder-slash-horror of being in a band in the 90s and having a unique idiosyncratic sensibility that works in your favor, except when it just doesn’t and flat out gets rejected. So I knew of That Dog but I didn’t know That Dog back then, and similarly she knew of Shudder to Think but didn’t know Shudder to Think. 

So I would rehearse with the kids, and kind of intervene with the parents. Oh yeah, and then just sort of go on whatever late-night shows with them and make sure everybody was cool and the parents were cool, the kids were cool, and everybody would rehearse and we’d do sound check.

Craig always really liked working with kids, whether it was teaching or being a counselor at camp. So that part of the School of Rock journey was also a pleasure. 

One of Craig’s most recent projects features another group of schoolchildren, although in a very different genre. Yellowjackets is the acclaimed Showtime series about a talented high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes deep in the wilderness. The first episode infamously begins with cannibalism, and this time it’s very intentional and quite necessary to the storytelling.

Yellowjackets is also how Craig connected with his latest long-term collaborator: Anna Waronker. In the 90s, Anna was in the band That Dog, and Craig describes the commonalities Anna shares with him as a “band person.”

An eerily parallel wonder-slash-horror of being in a band in the 90s and having a unique idiosyncratic sensibility that works in your favor, except when it just doesn’t and flat out gets rejected. So I knew of That Dog but I didn’t know That Dog back then, and similarly she knew of Shudder to Think but didn’t know Shudder to Think. 

Anna and Craig didn’t know each other while their bands were active, but she was a parent at the same school as Craig and Meggan’s son, and they had a mutual best friend, who said, “You guys have to hang out. You have to meet each other.” And so Craig and Anna finally started hanging out. 

 

It was one of those instant “I know that we are gonna be friends” moments. There are certain people I meet and I have this “I can see the whole future,” not visually but emotionally. I’m like, “Oh, we’re going to work together. We got so much to do.” And sometimes it freaks those people out, because I’m just suddenly, not inappropriate in a creepy way, but ahead of myself in terms of familiarity. I’m like, “Let’s just skip the steps, because obviously we’re going to be doing shit.” And then she’s just been like a wonderful partner and friend.

Craig considers Anna a dear friend and a sister, and he loves working with her on YelIowjackets. She’s the latest among the many great collaborators and partners that Craig’s been fortunate to work with. And for Craig, Yellowjackets actually comes full-circle from his very first TV composing collaboration 30 years ago on The State. Way back then, Craig and Theodore Shapiro co-scored the MTV sketch show, and 20 years after the co-scored Wet Hot American Summer, it was actually “Teddy” who composed the score for the first episode of Yellowjackets. When he wasn’t able to continue with the series, Craig and Anna took it over.

Whether he’s collaborating with an old friend or a new one, Craig strives to maintain his core values and pursue his true north, while not being precious at all. Having integrity, while also being super flexible and trying new things. “You got an idea? Great. Who cares? Let’s do it.” He’s still trying to work on the best way to say, “I don’t like that,” and have it be constructive. He and Anna have a pretty good rapport in that sense, though, where it’s as simple as “Mep!” That’s the sound of “move on.” For Craig, that’s just a thickish skin, a leather that comes with time and practice and allows collaborators to always say to each other, “Let’s try it. It’s all good.”

Craig also cites his marriage to Meggan and the experience of couples therapy 15 years ago as key reasons why he’s evolved into a more effective collaborator. He learned how to communication better, gained perspective, and grew in relationship with his wife. Another life experience that’s made Craig a better collaborator is fatherhood.

Being a parent definitely helped, where it’s like, “You’re fucking beautiful and you’re perfect, and do you want notes? Cuz I got notes.” You know?

Sometimes Craig’s son would want his father’s feedback, and sometimes he wouldn’t. And that’s OK.

Sometimes you don’t want notes, because you’re working through it.

According to Craig, he and his 15-year-old son share a lot of overlap in their Venn diagram of taste, so they listen to music and watch movies together, then talk and pick art apart. At the time, they were going through lots of Scorsese in preparation for Killers of the Flower Moon. Craig and Meggan’s son is also a big Wes Anderson kid, and Craig says he’s even a genuine fan of The State, Wet Hot, and all the projects of their friends.

Going all the way back to when Craig himself was that age, living in Ohio, he took whatever he could get.

Growing up in Cleveland, we just took it all. We’re the middle of America, we didn’t have the luxury of too much snobbiness, so we were listening to Throbbing Gristle and Journey, The Bee Gees and The Sex Pistols. And we were watching Caddyshack and Blue Velvet, or whatever. It’s one delicious thing. And it was interesting when I moved to Washington DC. The punk scene there was strict for a while. As everybody grew up, it opened up, and then it was just like, “Oh, we’re all artists. Everybody is just making stuff.” But early on it was pretty strict, and coming from Cleveland, where we sort of were just stoked about music, I seemed like a freak! Just cuz Susie Suh and Steve Perry. Or Ozzy Osbourne or whatever. And so that was weird for a little while, but in retrospect, it’s quaint and laughable. We were little and that’s what was going on. But it feels too natural to do all of it. To do comedy and TV and movies and high art and low art and noise and pop.

Craig’s managed to do all that in his career and remain true to what inspires him, despite all the rigidity around him. He believes the austerity to genre or style that he experienced in the 20th-century music industry, how bands like Shudder to Think were expected to be, is not only false, but it’s not true of anybody.

It’s just that we’re addicted to our identities and our egos, and especially when you’re young, it’s important probably when you’re a teenager, in your 20s, but I think most musicians who are lifers, you get to a certain point and you’re like, “I’m doing this for music. I’m doing this for connection. I’m doing this for expression.” It really doesn’t matter what genre.

What matters to Craig are the certain human things that obviously feel truer to a core, those impressionistic or dreamlike “refrigerator-magnet” things, whether they’re lyrical or imagistic. He’s always felt them deep within him, and he felt so connected to these artistic elements, that even as a teen, when a young artist can get knocked off the path, Craig was not at risk. There was no threat of that. No other way for him to be. 

It was too late. Because once you start getting those, once those clues start dropping in… it requires effort to sell yourself out, especially if you’re an artist and a teenager, and that was just not ever a worry.

Craig’s commitment to his path has led him to the career he has now, from Shudder to Think to Wet Hot American Summer to School of Rock to Yellowjackets, not to mention Glow and New Amsterdam, which is by far the most-watched show of all the ones Craig has scored.

There’s so much beautiful music in that… And I’ve started getting so much better on piano on that too, and I’m like, “I love this music!” It’s emotional. Or there’s sort of three worlds in New Amsterdam. There’s the emotional piano world, there’s the ticky crazy percussive hospital stuff, and then there’s the jazz, the free jazz drum stuff. And that was such a beautiful collaboration where they really let me do my thing. And they were so supportive. And so many people saw it and listened to it on Spotify. And so yeah, I would be pretty psyched, just on a baseline security level, in addition to the creative, to find another New Amsterdam, because that was a real gift.

Craig’s voice was his original instrument, and he became a decent guitar player because he had to write songs. Then one day 20 years later, he could say to himself, “I actually know how to play this thing.” 

 

The same thing is happening in very slow motion with piano, because I have to use it all the time for scoring. So I figure in ten or fifteen years I’ll be decent at piano. I mean, I plunk out real good, but you definitely don’t want me in your band.

Craig’s best advice might be to just follow what turns you on. Even as he’s working on Yellowjackets with Anna and films like Organ Trail by his old friend Michael Patrick Jann and preparing to release his new solo album, there’s still other new projects turning him on.

I’m waiting on, somebody’s mixing my new band’s first record, they’re supposed to send me today, and I’m so excited to hear it.

Craig is “super stoked” about this new band and what they can do together. It’s an improvisational band and they’re all composers who are at an age and stage where all music and all genres are welcome and nobody’s stressed about their identity. 

It’s pretty non-egoic. And again, in the spirit of collaborating with people who are a little bit better than me, they’re just the best fucking players I can imagine working with. So I really want to start scoring films together, where we really start, because there’s a rawness and spontaneity to it, because we’re composing on the spot. So there’s classic composition and song-ish composition and ambient composition happening, but it feels exciting because you’re in the process in realtime, of seeing music like waves, come and crash. 

Craig wants to find the right directors who would be psyched to get into a creative process like this with his new band, improvising to picture then honing the soundtrack. Even as he explores this more experimental composing method with his new band, he also wants to broaden his horizon and score more mainstream movies.

I’m just looking for some bigger weirder movies to do, like dark but beautiful, but like not invisible. I’ve gotten to do so many awesome projects that so few people have seen. And some that a lot of people have seen.

Of course, he’s thrilled about the success of series likes New Amsterdam and Yellowjackets. Working on these TV series is creatively rewarding, and he collaborates with great groups of people.

He’s also working with Meggan on her documentary about Alok Vaid-Menon. Alex Hedison, the director, had started following Alok, the gender non-conforming trans writer and performance artist, and Alex was really compelled by the footage. They have “hours and hours” of it, and Meggan the producer has been actively engaging with the material, “trying to find what’s the story, because it could be 25 different stories.”

First and foremost, the Alok doc is a portrait of an interesting person. “They are a stand-up comedian. They’re a lecturer. And their whole thing is degendering fashion.” Alok’s work calls for freedom from what they see as constraining gender norms, and they advocate for bodily diversity, gender neutrality, and self-determination. They also deal directly with violence against trans and gender non-conforming people. Their media personality is strong and brave but also has a genuine vulnerability. In Craig’s estimation, that’s their brand, flawed and tender, for the people, and he feels we can all relate to that. Alok’s media personality, however, is also very curated. “They create the world,” Meggan says of Alok, who is part of the social media generation. Although Alok’s persona, from their fashion to their philosophy, is unique, Meggan is determined to tell the most interesting and deeply relatable story she can with the doc, which Craig is eager to score.

This would be more than enough creative projects to satisfy several artists, but, of course, Craig Wedren has one more thing. And it might be the most compelling of all.

The other thing that I’m really excited about right now, I’m getting more into programming and composing for psychedelic therapy. So that’s important to me, and so fun. And so sort of new. 

He has doctor-friends who are starting a clinic, and together they’re wondering, “Well, what’s the sound world of this?” How can music contribute to psychedelic therapy and human spirituality?

Because it’s so integral, and people have done some research on it, but it’s really—I have a lot of questions and a lot of ideas and a lot of thoughts about how music and sound works as part of a therapy paradigm.

In 2020, during the pandemic, Craig started gathering people outside for live meditation sessions in which he performed improvised ambient choral music. These sound baths, which he calls “Sabbath Sessions,” seem to help people connect more deeply with their imagination and dreams, or at the very least, provide a nice power nap. Recordings of these musical meditative deep dives are available as podcasts.

Craig’s music has deep roots and is always true to who he is. Especially the Sabbath Sessions meditations, which combine so many of his core elements—live vocals, experiment art, and his generous creative spirit—to make something participatory and porous that transcends and connects us.

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