"OUT OF THEIR SHELL"

BUCKS DUO WEEN COOKS UP ‘MOLLUSK’ AT THE SHORE …SHOWCASE 

Many adjectives have been used to describe the music of Bucks County duo Ween, including iconoclastic, ingenious, charming, funny, tasteless and self-indulgent. None, however, is as overused as “weird.”

Not that Dean Ween minds one bit. Just don’t call the pair “wacky.”

“I hate that word,” said Dean in a telephone interview from his New Hope home. “Wacky puts you on the same level as Penn and Teller. I don’t mind the word weird, ’cause it really is weird music.”

Since releasing “The Live Brain Wedgie” (Bird O’ Pray) in 1988, faux-brothers Gene (Mickey Melchiondo) and Dean (Aaron Freeman) Ween have recorded five more albums, plotting a bizarre course through the musical landscape, dipping their eager, cannabis-stained fingers into genres as diverse as funk, jazz-blues, metal, reggae, flamenco, folk and country.

In the past, Gene and Dean often recorded in their smoke-filled living room on a four-track tape machine, but for last year’s “12 Golden Country Greats,” they made a pilgrimage to Nashville and recorded with a group of top session musicians. Their latest release, “The Mollusk,” was recorded at the Jersey shore. (Ween will showcase material from the disc tonight at John & Peter’s in New Hope.)

“The Mollusk” is vintage Ween — pop music thrown into a psychedelic blender, producing a sound that makes you giggle with glee as it soothes the soul. The record clearly mirrors the setting in which it was produced, although Dean cautions against classifying “The Mollusk” as a summer album. “It’s definitely an ocean album, but more of an ocean during winter. It’s like if you’re 500 miles out to sea on a stormy winter night. That’s where the nautical vibe comes from.”

Although Gene and Dean started work on the album in September 1995, the dynamic duo hit one brick wall after another, from the blizzard of early ’96, which flooded their seaside house, to neighboring Hare Krishnas, who complained about the “noise.” Halfway through production, the two packed their bags and headed for Nashville.

“Basically, we’re really lazy, so all of that kinda broke any momentum we had,” said Dean “But I don’t make any excuses. We really have no work ethic. We’d sit down to record something and end up going out for burgers.”

Between visits to the nearby liquor store and 7-Eleven, the two managed to overcome any couch-potato inclinations to assemble an album that feeds off the duo’s freestyle tendencies. While Dean is generally considered the band’s trippy guitarist and Gene the schizophrenic vocalist, the two spend whatever hours they can improvising new material.

“We usually realize all the songs together,” Dean said. “We just record everything. A lot of spontaneous stuff comes out of that.”

Childhood friends who liked the Beatles and punk rock, the two signed a record deal with Twin/Tone Records after graduating from New Hope-Solebury High School. Gene and Dean released 1991’s “The Pod” soon after, and the disc was successful enough to rescue the two from the doldrums of pumping gas and making Mexican food (the “Pod” song “Pollo Asado” is a Mexican restaurant menu set to music).

“It’s been 13 years since we started all of this, which is half of our lives, and I’m still amazed,” Dean said. “We sell a good amount of records, enough to stay on a major label (Elektra since 1992). I don’t think we’re worth a dollar, but it’s an honor to be making money doing this.”

The band’s attitude and productivity is all the more amazing considering the almost unmarketable nature of the music, not to mention that songs such as “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)” and “Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain” aren’t exactly radio-airplay friendly.

This summer, Dean and Gene will play to some of their biggest audiences ever as part of the H.O.R.D.E. tour, where they will join Squirrel Nut Zippers and Ben Folds Five on a second stage in support of main-stage acts such as Neil Young and Beck. (The tour will stop Aug. 17 at the Blockbuster-Sony Music Entertainment Centre, Camden, and on Aug. 20 at Montage Mountain Mountain Performing Arts Center, Scranton). “It’d be nice to rub shoulders with Neil, but we’re not exactly Blues Traveler,” said Dean.

Never ones to tour with the same backup band more than twice, Dean and Gene will be joined onstage for this go-round by drummer Claude Coleman, bassist Dave Dreiwitz and guitarist Glenn McClelland, formerly of Blood, Sweat and Tears.

In the end, however, after all the tours, interviews and guest appearances on shows such as “Oddville, MTV,” the two will once again return to the tranquil surroundings of New Hope, the place Dean says he will always call home.

“I guess it might be advantageous to move to either L.A. or New York, but living here has never hindered our career, or at least not that I know of,” said Dean. “Besides, I can only take L.A. for a few days and New York for a few hours.”

Ween will perform at 10 p.m. today at John & Peter’s, 96 S. Main St., New Hope. Doors will open at 8 p.m. Tickets: $10. (215) 862-0823.