The Mollusk press kit

We started work on "The Mollusk" in September of 1995, our plan from the beginning was to make an entire record down the beach during the winter (non-tourist) season. We decided on Holgate, the southernmost part of Long Beach Island, New Jersey because the fishing is really good, and also because it's a place we've been hanging out since we were kids. We rented an oceanfront property at the end of the island and everything was pretty smooth for a while... we would drive down the beach from New Hope every Sunday night, and we would usually come back Wednesday afternoon. There was nothing, (and I mean NOTHING) to do down there except record and surf-fish for striped bass and bluefish. We went down about 6 times and filled up a lot of tape with nautical songs in 3/4 time before we took a break in November to go to Nashville and record "12 Golden Country Greats." As it started to get colder down the shore, we realized that our house didn't really have any heat. Our mixing board and all of our gear could heat the place up a little bit, we would also crank up the broiler in the oven and open the door, but it still never really got above 59 degrees in the house. We consumed an excessive, but steady amount of alcohol throughout all this so that helped a little bit too; the only places. open during the winter down there were a 7-11, a liquor store, and a supermarket, all about 3 or 4 miles down the island. We went to Nashville in early November, and after returning, we went down to the beach house like once or twice until X-mas season rolled around and a massive blizzard hit the east coast. The landlord had "accidentally" changed the locks on our beach house, so when I went down to check on the house, I couldn't even get in. After much confusion, I arranged for someone to leave us a key under the mat. All this time our gear was sitting down there, and we needed to get some of it to play a show up in New Hope (this is around the second week in January.) When we pulled up to the house, I could see water coming down the front steps and gushing from every crack and crevice in the floor. The pipes had frozen and burst in the kitchen, flooding out the entire house and studio. I think water might have been pouring out of the walls for up to 2 weeks before my arrival, because all the tiles from the floor were floating around. The water was up to my ankles, completely covering the tops of my sneakers. Most of our equipment was elevated, (including the tapes) but the walls were dripping with beads of water; it was kinda like standing inside a big fishtank. The house was trashed, and we had to get our shit out of there immediately, we had no idea if there was any damage to the tapes or the equipment at this point, so we moved everything to our friend's house back home to let it dry out for a while.

Mostly it was our momentum that got killed by all this; we went on tour with the Foo Fighters, the country album came out, and general laziness prevented us from re-locating the studio. We found a new house (a barn actually) and got psyched to resume the recording of this album. (This is about May of '96).

We jammed for exactly 30 SECONDS in the new studio before the first noise complaint came in. It seems that our new landlord failed to mention that a group of Hare Krishnas were renting some apartment space behind our 'studio.' They were very polite, peaceful people, and we had been down this road before with our neighbours, but at this point there was no way we were going to compromise our recording schedule for someone's peace of mind/higher consciousness. We had no choice but to get our security deposit back and look for another place. We finally found yet another farm house and finished the recording in late 1996. When all was said and done, the music on this record was created in 7 different recording studios, and masterfully mixed, salvaged, produced, chopped and diced by Andrew Weiss. It's pretty obvious which songs were created down the beach, there's definitely a nautical theme that runs throughout this record. Our intention was to put out this record and the country record back-to-back, but the Boognish prevented it from happening that way.

Dean Ween

July 1997

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