"The Fightin' Side of Ween"

It was only a mild surprise when rumors began to circulate earlier this year that Ween long-player number five was 100% country. At least for those who had seen the band bait crowds mercilessly, play the same song two, sometimes three, times within a set, compose a bouncy little ditty called "HIV Song." and interrupt a rockin' live set with an interminable unlistenable psuedo-folk song sung in pig-Yiddish. Ween grows bored when things start getting too comfortable. It seems every chance they get, enslaved by their latest musical obsessions, they test the devotion of their most rabid fans, practically drawing a line in the dirt and daring them to follow.

But recording a typical limp faux country-rock record just ain't Ween's style. Instead Mickey Melchiondo (lead guitar, vocals, aka Dean Ween) and Aaron Freeman (vocals, guitar, aka Gene Ween) packed bags for Nashville-the hallowed Bradley Barn Studios to be exact to work on what would become 12 Golden Country Greats with a team of legendary session players, most of whom are old enough to be Mickey and Aaron's parents. Old timers like Charlie McCoy and Hargus "Pig" Robbins, Russ Hicks and of course, vocal group the Jordanaires, whose voices any American recognizes as quickly and innately as that of their own mother. These are pickers and singers who worked on records with Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, Lefty Frizell, Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison; in short, some of the premier country and western waxed in the '50s, '60s and during the last of the '70s glory days. "Pig" Robbins and Charlie McCoy also worked with Bob Dylan when he puzzled fans by doing some recording in Nashville (see Blonde on Blonde and Nashville Skyline).

Mickey explains: "We had a handful of songs that were country, that we were pretty sure were gonna be on our next record, but we figured rather than just record one or two country songs, it would be better to just get 'em all out of the way. It was just a session but we figured why do it half-ass." Setting up the sessions was surprisingly as easy as a couple phone calls, with the help of Ween-friend and 12 Golden's producer Ben Vaughn, who spends a lot of time in Nashville and is pals with Charlie McCoy.

"Charlie McCoy was our band leader," Mickey explains, "and he wrote the charts for everybody. We just sent him a tape of the songs, and at the session he would hand everybody their charts, play them the four track version, and they would talk about it, and arrange it. Talk about who would solo when and whatever." Then, unfazed by the two young. smart-ass Yankees who had written blue, scatological country songs ("Those guys had seen a lot worse than us," Aaron says), "they would just bust it out, solos and all. We had them for three days," Aaron adds, "but we could've done it in two. They could do songs once and nail them."

Nay-sayers are calling out the whole project as a joke; two lazy, bored wiseacres nihilistically deciding to piss off their record company. squander funds and alienate fans (many of whom will surely be turned off by the Jordanaires harmonies, lap steals, dobros and fiddles). It's safe to assume Elektra was probably none too pleased with Ween's decision. When asked about label response to the record, Mickey wearily quips "They were really, really happy. Turns out, they were hoping we would go to Nashville to do a country record. They were gonna ask us, but they didn't want to be out of line."

During 12 Golden Country Greats weaker moments when Ween lean too much on the session players jaw-dropping chops and indulge in somewhat lazy songwriting-the detractors have a point; 12 Golden Country Greats becomes nothing more than a novelty piece. A highly listenable one, but a curiosity, a stop-gap before the next "real" Ween record (which they've already started and seem more excited to talk about during the interview than their current one). At its best, though, there's classic Ween potty-mouthed gags like "Piss Up a Rope," a twisted, hard honky-tonk number in which Aaron orders the "big booty bitch" who done him wrong to "wash his balls with a warm wet rag" And dig "Mr. Richard Smoker," a Merle Travis country boogie cum Western Swing number about a perv who surrounds himself with "little boys on crystal meth." The album closer, "Fluffy," sounds like Townes Van Zandt on cough syrup.

There's also some good "straight" country music here. "Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain" is a wonderful self-destructive loser's plea that bounces along effortlessly like Merle Haggard's "I Take A Lot of Pride in What I Am." "You Were the Fool" is more melodic and folky, sounding vaguely like ex-Byrd Gene Clark's early solo country-rock experiments. The album opener, "I'm Holding You" is probably the record's most striking track and one of the best songs of Ween's career. It sounds like a lost Willie Nelson classic until you hear the lyrics. No matter how much reefer he supposedly smokes, Willie would never lay down a chorus hook like "I'm holdin' something more precious than fine ore, baby, I'm holdin' you." The arrangement is beautiful, Gene's voice and clipped phrasing are great. And to hear the Jordanaires harmonies echo Ween-style lyrics is enough to make someone like myself who is both an old Ween fan and classic country music lover-weep with happiness, knowing that for the brief time Ween and the Jordanaires were in a recording studio together, everything was right in the world.

Of course, taking on a new genre of pop music is nothing new to Ween. Since the band began back in 1984 approximately "two days after we became friends," by Aaron's estimate - Bowie-style ballads, Philly soul, bubblegum, Funkadelic, hoary Mexican folk ballads, Prince, you name it, has been dissected and sewn back together with Ween's retarded vision showing in every stitch. But what makes these ventures so enjoyable, is that Ween has almost always managed to balance an utter lack of reverence - an inability to resist some good yuks-with a respect for their influences. They have an innate knack for mimicry and understanding of the genre they're lampooning but never stoop to stiff record collector fetishism, always managing to put an indelible Ween stamp on their heroes' work. They don't just make funny records that goof on other's music either, Ween has proven itself capable of writing fine songs too. 12 Golden Country Greats is no different. It's just that their new fascination (actually, they're probably onto something new by now) has been taken to a new level of obsession, and fucking with country music is gonna get on some people's fightin' side.

Firstly, those who hate country, just the sound of pedal steels and G-C-D chord progressions, usually really hate it. Secondly, many country fans find any lack of reverence for the holy history of their music cause for ass-whuppings and beat-downs (that this supposed hallowed ground is riddled with criminals, drunks, pedophiles, wife-beaters, dope fiends, murderers and bonafide loonies doesn't seem to moderate this impulse.) What these purists don't understand, however, is that this lack of veneration, combined with the best session players Nashville has to offer, is what makes 12 Golden Country Greats one of the most enjoyable country records of the last couple years.

If you think it's rough being a fan of quality r&b these days, it's absolutely no fun being a fan of country music in 1996. Commercial country has sunk to depths previously unimaginable. If you haven't caught a whiff of the ungodly stench of contemporary country music lately, it's essentially 70s arena rock, singer-songwriter diarrhea and tight-stuffed trousers with a twang, a big dopey cowboy hat perched above a WWF-regulation bi-level and maybe a mention of a honky-tonk added here and there (a mix Aaron refers to as "power western"); music that is awe-inspiring not only in its shamelessness and lack of taste but in how much money it sucks in. On the flipside, there's the so-called Alternative Country scene, which is so mired in awkward, self-conscious genuflection toward its forefathers that it makes for unbearably stiff and dull music. It is music paralyzed by good taste.

Ween don't pretend. They're two potheads from New Hope, Pennsylvania, and they don't kowtow to Nashville or Austin, Hank or lefty. or, best of all, predictable nostalgia, which is precisely what makes this record such a gas. Traditional country music is a lost art, possibly gone forever. It was of another time. Iris Dement may be able to pull it off, but Gillian Welch, Son Volt and Ween can't. Ween is smart enough not to try. Take the aforementioned "Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain." The band sounds great, and Russ Hicks' pedal steel solo, in particular, is a thing of wonder. (Refreshingly, the sounds and feel that Ween rely on - mostly mid-to-late '60s Roger Miller, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard as well as early countrypolitan - has barely been mined by the current country revisionists who prefer '50s honky-tonk, rockabilly and Western Swing or the rawer, folkier mountain sounds of the Carter Family.) The lyric is classic country, told in Ween parlance. "It's a shame when morning hurts/I've seen bad and I've seen worse/But it's the nature of my being/I took some money from your purse," the protagonist says as he begs for one last chance. Beneath the song's sense of humor is a hopeless resignation that only country songs can capture. It's also notable that a song with the word "mucus" in its chorus could be so touching. And it certainly beats the faux-hayseed charm of acts like Gillian Welch or Freakwater, or tripe like the Dave and Deke combo.

Perhaps Ween will get their comeuppance/wish, and all their fans will abandon them, death threats will be sent from overzealous country music crybabies, and their label won't have the patience to put up with them any longer. Most likely, though, 12 Golden Country Greats will probably be ignored (much like a rambling diatribe about the state of country music in a predominately rap magazine) and die a quick, unjust death. Regardless, Ween seem confused, even annoyed, by the attention Golden Greats is get-ting, and are coping with it the best way they know how: by laughing or ignoring those who don't get it, holding up alone in their studio with a newly added keyboard player, who, strangely enough, (but appropriate in the Ween universe) was an original member of Blood. Sweat & Tears, writing songs, and nearing completion of foot-long number six.