"More than Just a Couple of Wacky Guys"

Greg Roth discovers the true essence of Ween

There's a famous scene in the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland where the heroine is dashing about with a golden key, unable to get through any of the doors, despite there being dozens from which to choose. Well, the guys from Ween have no golden key. Perhaps the duo doesn't want to enter one passageway and proceed down a single tunnel. They seem much happier standing in the corridor, peeking through each keyhole for a glimpse of what lies on the other side.

In the 14 years Aaron Freeman (aka singer/guitarist Gene Ween) and Mickey Melchiondo (guitarist/occasional vocalist Dean Ween) have been making music, the only constant in the band's sound has been continuous change.

For example, Pure Guava, Ween's Elektra debut in '92, is chock full of the band's own version of twisted, sometimes disgusting pop/punk. 1994's Chocolate and Cheese is widely recognized as the band's most accomplished work, drawing largely from classic rock and Philly Soul. In fact, before the alternative-country movement kicked into high gear, Ween saddled its fans with 12 Country Golden Greats, recorded with Nashville session greats.

The band's latest release, The Mollusk, is a collection of tighter, less-frantic songs with something of a nautical theme. Many of the tunes have a swelling 6/8 feel and are a result of the duo's time spent fishing and relaxing off the coast of Long Island, NY. By far, the most rewarding tune on the on the record is "The Blarney Stone," a relentless drinking song, complete with Irish accents and chortling laughs in the background.

Outside of Ween's Grateful Dead-like following (aka Weenies), the band is most likely known to the world as two guys with plinky voices (just tape effects, actually) singing "Push the little daisies and make 'em come up" for a stumped Beavis and Butthead. Believe it or not, the song was a top-10 hit in Austrailia.

"We have been cornholed," says Freeman. "We're that 'wacky duo' or 'quirky pop' band. If you really listen to it, its not that silly. Some of it is silly, and that's what most people grasp onto. They can listen to it and go ‘oh wow, that song was humorous. They must be a silly band' and that's all they remember. We write about life and whatever hits us and just try to be true."

Inevitably, the stigma of two guys with off-the-wall stylings draws comparisons to another duo with a similar penchant for the peculiar, They Might be Giants.

Freeman laughs at the comparison.

"I think They Might Be Giants, they're good musicians, but they seem to me like goofy college kids. I was never a goofy college kid," he remarks. "They're just too tight-lipped and too smart. I don't like music that's smart. I consider us smart, but when I try to write music, I don't try to show off my intellect and come up with phrases that only my fellow smart college friends enjoy, and that's what I think They Might Be Giants do. It kind of pisses me off. I like music the toothless fuckin' whore from Detroit can listen to and relate to. They're just not my thing at all. I would never sit down and be like ‘Hey let's listen to They Might Be Giants! Wow, Listen to that! I get it!"

The Mollusk, produced by Andrew Weiss, is another deft exploration of the duo's seemingly endless repertoire of sounds and styles. And while each of the band's last three albums have some sort of central theme, it's still pretty much anything goes and everything gets a turn. According to Freeman, it would take "a real concerted effort" for Ween to settle into one particular style, and that's unlikely. Chalk it up to an infinite love of all musical styles and a short attention span.

"None of the bands I love, none of the great bands of all time stick to one thing," says Freeman. "The Beatles, they did all kinds of shit all the time, but they weren't considered a parody band or taking the piss out of Indian music or this or that. Whereas, we are seen that, because bands nowadays are too shut in, they can't see anywhere. They lock themselves into one style, and they're too dumb to expand their minds and get out of it."

Freeman refers to the Beatles often, as the Fab Four have been highly influential in Ween's music. Some of the songs on The Mollusk, namely "Buckingham Green" and "Ocean Man," swim in a Liverpool-pop sound. And while there are quite a few modern bands who claim an affinity for The Beatles, Freeman doesn't feel any kind of kinship towards those anglophiles.

"I think a lot of these bands now are just absolutely awful," he says. "There's Sublime, and there's four offshoots of Sublime. It's so sad. I thought Sublime was pretty good, actually. They had their L.A. thing, 'I'm into Dalmations, I'm fat, I got tattoos and I'm a tough guy,' and they were cool, y'know? But now you hear that 'I Just Wanna Fly' song – y'know what I'm talking about? It's so fuckin' weak, man. It's so sad."

Ironically, the Brothers Ween, practically world-famous for four-track and self-recording, are planning to enter a major studio for their next record and bypass the whole low-budget, independent mindset.

"Change of pace," says Freeman. "And we wanna make a good record, y'know? A record like Led Zeppelin II, because that's the kind of music that we look up to. We don't look up to some stupid band that never sold out or anything. We're musicians and we want to represent it the best we can. I'd like to have a lot of parents with Ween in their record collection, turning on their kids to Ween. It seems that we've freaked people out and affected their lives and that's pretty cool."