Up on a hill, down by a river by the ocean, across a field... With those words, both the Boognish and Ween were born unto all. Ten years later, we find ourselves with a kinder, gentler, dare we say, matured Ween. Ween have persisted to release record after record, initiating untold numbers into the folds of their worthy followers. This May, prepare to bear witness to studio album number seven, White Pepper (their eighth record counting 1999's double live release Paintin" The Town Brown).

For all intents and purposes, Ween is Dean and Gene Ween, also known as Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman (their rightful names, respectively). In the beginning, the band was just the two chums who met in junior high. Over time, however, that franchise has turned into the Ween of today, a five-piece musical touring and recording outfit that has remained solid for the last three to four years.

White Pepper has 12 tracks, lacks naughty words and will be the first Ween album released without warning labels on the front. According to Mickey/Dean, the writing process was very different this time around.

"We actually traveled; we had to go away. Like, we started the record with pretty much zero songs. So we went away on a couple of different trips to work on the writing together. First we went to Maine, not last summer but the summer before. That was how it started. We rented a house up in Maine, just Aaron and I, in the middle of nowhere. We wrote probably half of the record up there. Then we came home for the rest of the summer and then in late fall/winter, we rented the house where we did The Mollusk (1997) again, down the Jersey shore. It's this house up on the beach and we stayed there all winter writing the rest of the record. Then we went out on tour last year and played a lot of the new stuff every night. So when finally it came time to make the record, we had a pretty clear idea of what we were going to do. It isn't the way we work usually.

The beach house Mickey is referring to inspired the nautical theme found throughout The Mollusk. On White Pepper, the track "Bananas and Blow" closely mirrors a like Caribbean feel. It's very "Copacabana" or Jimmy Buffett.

"That was a concept that we've had around for, like, two or three years, the idea of having a song called 'Bananas and Blow.' We actually wanted to have a whole EP called Bananas And Blow recorded in the Bahamas or something. But when we were down there (at the beach house), we were playing around. Aaron was playing with a keyboard and he came up with the steel drum part on that song."

Ween has recorded a country record (12 Golden Country Greats), gone nautical and sang about AIDS and spinal meningitis. The laughs never cease. They even answered a plea for help from a small Colorado town called South Park when they contributed "The Rainbow" to Chef Aid, performing it live in the mountain town. One would think that a Ween animated series was the obvious direction for such a versatile group.

"I don't know what the hell we're going to do next. Someone used to talk about that a lot. Our old manager used to say 'The Ween Saturday Morning Cartoon Show.' but...no." Amidst the pop, soft instrumentals and lave songs (a.k.a. Ween-lite) stands perhaps the most rocking song Ween yet, "Stroker Ace, written by Mickey. "I don't know what the hell that song is about and I wrote it," he laughs. "I think I wrote the music first and it sounded like a stock car racing song. So then I wrote the lyrics kind of based on, like, a stock car vibe.

Also picking up the beat on this record is "The Grobe," written by Aaron. And what exactly is a "grobe?"

"I don't think it's anything, he says. "I think it's just a bunch of jive. I'm sure it means something to Aaron but probably not much."

Now that White Pepper is complete, Mickey has mentally moved on to the next record, but don't expect another themed release anytime soon.

"We were never really about a theme record until we did the country record, but it was a country record and not so much a concept album. But then by following it up with The Mollusk, which just had the nautical thing going throughout....I think a lot of people expect that's what we do now. Like, 'Ah yeah, Ween plays disco! It reduces us to like a total comedy act. That's not really what we're trying to do. I started thinking about our next record while we were working on this one just because once you start working on something over and over again, you really want something else. It's not really worth me mentioning because it'll change 800 times. It depends on the situation."

For more information about Ween, check out www.ween.com