"Ween"

DEAN AND GENE Ween look disconsolate. Last night, they played a rollicking three-hour set to a 200-strong baying crowd in their hometown of New Hope, Pennsylvania. But the morning after the night before, sitting in a corner booth of the New Hope Country Diner, nothing can sway their opinion that they sucked.

"It wasn't tight enough," complains Dean Ween (aka Aaron), beat and dejected. "I was ready to go to bed by about 10:30." His partner Gene (aka Mickey Melchionado) agrees. Even his mom was in the audience, proudly talking up her sons abilities. "My mom loves the whole thing," Mickey admits grudgingly. "Some stupid kid is sitting there, smoking weed and talking to my Mom. And she'll come back stage – 'Mick, I want you to meet Steve'," Mickey says in a mom-like falsetto. "Hello, Steve, piss off," comes the deadpan reply.

Today, at least, Ween seem to conform to the stereotype that the jokers in the pack carry the weight of the world upon their shoulders. Despite their reputation as wild and wacky guys, Mickey and Aaron are no bundle of laughs. They seem listless and distracted. Aaron is a little aloof. Mickey nervously punctuates his statements with constipated laughter.

At one point, in mid-conversation, Mickey's attention drifts to somewhere outside the diner window. "Hot… Hot-Po… Hot-Potato-Soup," he mutters randomly. "Hot-Pot-Roast", Aaron joins in. Outside, an old man in a peaked cap is standing on a stepladder, slowly slotting letters into a sign. Mickey and Aaron play 'Wheel Of Fortune' as he laboriously reveals the 'Country Diner Special'. "Hot-Pot-Roast-Saturday," Mickey guesses wildly, before exclaiming, "Hot-Pot-Roast-SANDWICH!

One would guess that this activity was born out of sheer boredom. There's few distractions in New Hope and Ween, by their own admission, have a lot of time to kill. "I find myself damaged now, from sitting around," Mickey admits. "I often think I'd like to have a job. Shovelling horse shit or something a couple of days a week. Just to have something to do." Aaron feels the same way. "It takes a lot of work to do nothing. It took me like three years to have a grip on not doing anything all the day."

New Hope is just the kind of archetypal, sleepy small town where one could turn goofing off into an art. It's a tourist trap (with a proliferation of New Age stores and a haunted inn) on the banks of the Delaware River, spitting distance from where George Washington made his historic crossing, and situated halfway between New York and Philadelphia. Aaron says that from the '50s to the '70s it was a community of artists who had fled New York for the boondocks. But now, with building restrictions lifted, it's turning into part of a sprawling suburban corridor. Still, Mickey and Aaron have found no reason to leave. They've lived here all their lives and have now settled down with their own houses, wives and families.

Ween have been making music together since they were teenage stoners at New Hope High School. The early years were a blur of cheap highs, obsessive recording sessions at home and all ages shows in nearby Trenton, New Jersey. The sleevenotes to 1991's Pod, their second album, note that it was born from "3,600 hours of tape and five cans of Scotch Guard".

Last night's gig was played in Mickey and Aaron's local bar, Bob & Pete's, little more than a shack with a back room. "We only expected 20 people to be there," Aaron says somewhat unrealistically. And whatever their take on it, these down-home heroes definitely gave it up for New Hope. Dean pulled out a prolific catalogue of charismatic hind-jiving. Gene gurned orgasmically while wrenching hi-octane riffs from his electric guitar. And the locals loved it.

Of course, there's a downside to being the most famous denizens of a small town where everyone is on first name terms. Mickey seems particularly unhappy to hear that a signed vinyl copy of their last album hangs like a Vermeer on the wall of a local record store with a hefty price tag. "Yeah," Aaron informs him, matter-of-factly, "that guy has you sign records, then sells them and keeps all the profit." Mickey will later make a point of walking into the self-same store to liberate a Ween CD from the racks. "It's OK if I give this to these guys from England and replace it later," he frostily informs the sheepish proprietor. "Uuuh, sure, Mickey," comes the reply.

Songwriting allows them to blow off steam from these kind of incidents. Some of Ween's more twisted musical portraits serve as subliminal character assassinations. "Yeah, there are some nasty ones in the back catalogue," Mickey admits. "Tons, actually, when I think about it. It's better not to talk about though," he says, guardedly. "You can really alienate yourself. The meanest song I ever wrote – 'Piss Up A Rope' – is about my wife. Of course, it became a staple part of our set. I have to live with that now forever." (With lyrics like, 'Pack your bags, I don't need your ag/On your knees you big booty bitch, start sucking,' it’s a wonder his wife ever let him back in the house.)

On White Pepper, Ween's seventh opus, their sincere rock satire sounds sweeter than ever. From the pseudo-spiritual, sitar-suffused 'Flutes Of Chi' – Mickey's mom's favourite – to the bar-room boogie of 'Even If You Don't' (about a faltering romance founded over pharmaceuticals) and 'Pandy Fackler', the touching story of a broken girl "sucking dicks under the promenade".

Ween's blend of absurd Americana and heartfelt humour at the misfortune of others has much the same appeal as Farrelly Brothers movies. It's a peculiarly American thing. "It's just the sensibility we've got from growing up in front of the television," Mickey explains. "There's something really fun about sweet melodies and harsh lyrics about things like spinal meningitis or AIDS," says Aaron.

It almost seems as if they have a perverse desire to squander their considerable talent. This time around, the boys even splurged out on hiring backing singers. But not just any backing singers. These ones have graced records by the likes of Sting, Stevie Wonder and Mariah Carey and cost as much as high class hookers. "We had them for about four hours. I think it cost us $3000 a piece per girl," says Mickey. Having shelled out for pros, Aaron and Mickey had them sing on the album's most kooky cut, a calypso-flavoured slice of hoochy-coochy titled 'Bananas And Blow'.

At the mildly-offensive suggestion that 'White Pepper's slick production values and straight-laced love songs seems to signal a mellowing out of the Ween oeuvre, Aaron and Mickey actually become more animated, trading possible futures for the band.

"Yeah, yeah, we're getting lame as we get older." Aaron seems resigned to the inevitable. "There's nothing you can do about it. It happens to every body."

"We were talking about it the other day," Mickey continues. "And we decided that rather than trying to be cool, we're going to just give ourselves over to being completely lame. The next record is going to be fucking totally lame, it's going to be cool."

"We're going to record on 50-track digital," says Aaron. "Direct to computer, with all the vocals going through machines so we sound like the Backstreet Boys," Mickey cuts in. "It'll be like smooth jazz," Aaron finishes. "People are going to hate it." But you can be sure Ween's fall from grace will be achieved with a certain wit and eloquence.