"ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY PEPPER"

Ween fucking rocks and there's nothing you can do about it.

Words by Ron Hart
Photos by Danny Clinch

"It's all bullshit," proclaims Gene Ween, referring to the long-standing rumor that he and his partner Dean Ween persevered through the recording of their 1991 drug-rock classic The Pod by huffing cans of Scotchgard. "We thought it sounded really funny at the time. I'm surprised we're not in jail for that. I've seen kids come up on the side of the stage with their cans of Scotchgard, and I see 'em huffin' it and you see the checkerboard come across their face when they pass out. It's really fucked up."

Whether or not the dispelling of this Ween myth is legit may only be known by Dean, Gene and the elite few who were present in the tiny apartment on a Pennsylvania horse farm where The Pod (its namesake) was made. But that's the thing about Ween, it always keeps you guessing, whether in magazine interviews or in its bevy of twisted ditties generated over the past decade and a half. The duo's seventh album, White Pepper, is no exception, although it certainly shows how far these two brothers from different mothers have grown and developed as artists since their 1990 debut masterpiece God Ween Satan: The Oneness. Recorded over the course of a year-and-a-half in a variety of studios (including Bearsville Studio in Woodstock, NY), White Pepper could very well be Ween's most ambitious work to date. It's a collection of songs that upholds the band's long-running history of shoving a Salvation Army record bin of genres through a rusty sonic blender. Here the group blasts through a grab bag of '70s arena prog-rock, Motörhead-esque fist wavers and flighty British folk songs. Even though Dean and Gene may not be masking their vocals with four-track trickery and keeping the grooves tight via rhythmic tape loops as they have in the past, this album is as Ween as anything the group has ever done. Only this time around, the boys enlist an ensemble that includes strings, brass, and back-up vocalists.

"We've always been talking about selling out like that," explains Gene (a.k.a. Aaron Freeman) from his home in the group's hometown of New Hope, Pennsylvania. "The backing vocalists was it for us. We've always talked since we were 14 that when we get the backup singers in then we will have truly sold out."

The track that Gene is referring to is "Bananas And Blow," a Jimmy Buffett-style number that is one of White Pepper's highlights. The song was born out of an idea that the group had been kicking around since the making of its brilliant 1997 nautical masterpiece The Mollusk: creating a collection of songs somewhere in the Caribbean on a diet of nothing but potassium and cocaine.

"'Bananas And Blow' has been a concept we've had for a long time. It was initially going to be an EP; it still might one day. Then we came up with that jam, and it was like 'Oh shit, this is it. This is "Bananas And Blow."' It was kind of a case of premature ejaculation but we still have big plans for it."

White Pepper was recorded with the group's full touring band - another first for Ween - who retained the services of an outside studio wizard, engineer Chris Shaw. Shaw worked on such timeless gems as Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet, which was instrumental in the group's decision to hire him. According to Gene, however, he wasn't Ween's first choice.

"We almost had Todd Rundgren produce this album," he said. "But Todd kinda scared us a little bit. I mean, I love Todd Rundgren, but it was kinda scary because what if he didn't like [what we were doing] after working on the album for like a week. That's why we picked Chris. We figured a good engineer would be great for this because it would still sound great and we can retain some semblance of Ween. He's the type of guy who we could easily float around ideas with and he would understand what they were and put them on tape."

In addition to the development and execution of White Pepper, which is slated to hit stores on May 2, Dean and Gene have also spent their two-year break expanding the Ween empire, most notably on the Internet. Their official Web site, www.chocodog.com, is a veritable town square for Ween's ever-growing community of fans.

"We're trying to build up a pretty heavy grassroots thing," Gene explains. "So in the instance where we do get dropped by Elektra, we don't have to resign to anybody. We might be able to get it together to handle it ourselves, and the Internet is a great tool. Plus we're establishing a Ween headquarters here in New Hope where we are gonna operate our merchandise and management. Kinda like what the Beastie Boys have done with Grand Royal."

As far as the group's reputation for being a joke band goes, Gene is just as quick to dispel that myth as he is the Scotchgard story.

"We're just a band with a sense of humor," he claims. "People who say that we're a joke band don't really listen to us and they've never seen us live. Weird Al Yankovic is funny and he tries to make that kind of music, but we're not really like that. But there's not been many bands who do what we do, so people don't know how to interpret it. We just try to keep it simple and scummy in Ween. Nothing pisses me off more than when we get compared to They Might Be Giants. They're like smart, anal college humor. Our humor is straight up scumbag. We fancy ourselves to be dirty douche bags, and that's the way I like to have it. We're just keeping it real."