"Brain Wedgies: Ween"

ALT-ROCK'S GREATEST JOKERS, Gene and Dean Ween, return with their familiar stylistic restlessness and lyrical mixture of the sacred, the profane and the inane on Ween's new CD, "La Cucaracha."

The brothers Ween — aka Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo — offer mariachi, dance-pop, balladry, country, hard rock, reggae, new age, pop-rock, epic-rock and schmaltzy David Sanborn-abetted easy listening on "La Cucaracha."

The songs are, without fail, extremely tuneful, frustratingly memorable and characterized by lyrics such as "You are a piece of meat. And I am a butcher," "I can make an airplane that travels over land!" and "I'm in a very defensive place."

It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but "La Cucaracha" is consistently amusing and stands up to frequent listening.

"I'm really happy with it, which I can't always say about all our records," Melchiondo said recently. "I haven't been happy with more than a couple at the point of their release. By the time you're done with a record, you're sick of it. You don't ever want to hear it again. And then you go into rehearsals, practice it, tour and play it for a year.

"But I was really looking forward to this one coming out, because I feel confident that it is one of our better records," he continued. "It was fun to do and it was done fairly quickly. We didn't beat it to death — it had a sense of freshness the whole time. The songs weren't sitting around for years."

Ween, almost a quarter-century old and set to play a customary three-hour career-spanning set at D.A.R. Constitution Hall on Wednesday, is very popular with jambanders due to the duo's instrumental chops and loopy, stoned sensibility (Phish's support and admiration probably didn't hurt either).

Still, the label most often affixed to Ween is probably "parody act." Melchiondo disputes the classification.

"Parody implies something pretty negative," he said. "Is there a parody act out there other than Weird Al? Are we the second one? I don't think so. We listen to all kinds of music and the music we make is a reflection of what we listen to. We just make music that we would want to listen to."

So it's a sincere tribute to genres you like, then, not a joke?

"No! We don't think about this [stuff]! We don't put any thought into it," Melchiondo said. "We don't discuss it. It's a very natural thing. We listen to everything — Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Slayer. That's what made our style — the diversity of our record collections."

Express spoke with the genre-hopping guitarist about opening for The Grateful Dead, gigging with Yoko Ono and "SpongeBob."

» EXPRESS: Would you say "La Cucaracha" is less rock 'n' roll than previous Ween records?
» MELCHIONDO: I think it's more rockin', actually, but I have no context. My opinion probably counts less than yours does, 'cause I can't hear it objectively. When I hear Ween, I think about us recording it. I think about looking at Aaron with the headphones on. I don't know what it's like to sit down and listen to one, but I think it's pretty rockin'."

» EXPRESS: Are many of your songs based on true stories?
» MELCHIONDO: Yeah, most of it is autobiographical. But we play around with words a lot, too. There's a lot of stuff in there that just sounds good, but doesn't necessarily have any meaning.

» EXPRESS: Do you see yourselves as musicians or as entertainers?
» MELCHIONDO: I think we're a songwriting team. I don't really even view us as a band. I never saw myself as a musician. I've become one, but back when we started, I wasn't really a guitar player. I was as much the drummer as the guitar player. We fell into our roles. Aaron became the principle singer and I became the guitar player. He plays guitar and I sing, but over the years it's kinda morphed into that and we've gotten better at what we do.

But I think we're basically a songwriting team. It's pretty much 50-50. I write a lot of songs by myself. He writes a lot of songs by himself. We write a lot of songs together. There are records where I've written more of the lyrics, there's some where he's written more, but it's pretty balanced, overall.

» EXPRESS: You're often compared to They Might Be Giants and Frank Zappa, but I think a closer reference might be Tenacious D. What do you think of those comparisons?
» MELCHIONDO: I don't like Frank Zappa. I never have. I feel like he is making fun too much. The only thing we have in common with They Might Be Giants is there's two of them and there's two of us. We're not coming from the same place — at all. I don't like their music. It doesn't have any edge or teeth to it, it's too smart and it annoys me. We played with them in the '80s. I hated them.

Tenacious D is great. I know those guys really well, but it's a band born from a television skit. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The first time I saw them, I don't think I've laughed so hard in my whole life. But would people go follow them on tour and hear the same jokes every night?

» EXPRESS: Do people follow Ween on tour a lot?
» MELCHIONDO: Yeah, we get people who do the whole tours.

» EXPRESS: You've played Bonnaroo three times. What's the attraction?
» MELCHIONDO: Well, the first time we played, we played right before the Dead. Jerry Garcia, obviously, wasn't there, but the other guys were and if you're going to play a jam band festival, that's the way to do it. It was a highlight of our career.

» EXPRESS: On your blog, you wrote that 2007 "was a year of much-needed changes" for you. I wonder if you'd like to elaborate on that.
» MELCHIONDO: There's a reason it took us four years to make a record and it's mostly personal life changes — most of them bad, things that held us up. It took some time to get the band back on track and get everybody back on the same page, wanting to make a record, go on tour and do it in the spirit that you're supposed to do it — where it's fun and nothing else matters. And we got back to that place. Without going into details, there was a lot of personal [stuff] — divorces and stuff. It was all bad.

» EXPRESS: Was substance abuse an issue, too?
» MELCHIONDO: Yeah, that was a part of it. If you're in a band for a long time, it's like a rite of passage, some of the stuff we went through. But it never occurred to us that it could happen to us.

» EXPRESS: Other than opening for the Dead, what are some other highlights of your career?
» MELCHIONDO: Working with Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon. They made a record in '96 and they asked us to play on it and I sat in at the 9:30 Club with them on guitar. Hanging out with them and hearing stories about "John" — it's like, "You mean, like, John Lennon? Of The Beatles?"

The Nashville record we did with the old country guys — that's top of the list, for sure.

Being part of "SpongeBob SquarePants." I'm really proud of that. Actually, we've been part of three of the coolest animated things in the history of television: "Beavis and Butt-head" played five of our videos, I think, and "South Park" and "SpongeBob." I'm very proud of all of it.

» EXPRESS: What did you do with "South Park" and "SpongeBob"?
» MELCHIONDO: On "South Park," we did a benefit at the elementary school on the "Chef Aid" episode. We had to get Isaac Hayes out of jail. We played and did voice-overs.

"SpongeBob," before it went on the air, we got a call from the creator and he said, "I'm a marine biologist and I'm starting this cartoon that happens under the sea and I love your record 'The Mollusk.' When it comes time to do the show, I'd love for you to write something for an episode."

So, we did it, forgot about it and then the next year, when it came on the air, it became like the most popular cartoon in TV history. We got in on the ground floor. When they did the movie, they asked us to do music for that, too, so we did music for the "SpongeBob" movie. I have 7-year-old son and he grew up watching "SpongeBob." It's so cool to sit there on the couch watching TV — and then Ween comes on. I'm very proud of that.

» EXPRESS: Do you wish Ween were more popular?
» MELCHIONDO: Only for financial reasons. I'd love to have a lot more money, but I've never let that influence any decisions we've made. So, no, not really.

Kurt Cobain said he wanted Nirvana to be as big as Sonic Youth. That was his goal. I can relate to that. My goal was for Ween to be as big as the Butthole Surfers. So, we've been more than rewarded. I feel privileged to make a living playing music. I'm still blown away that people come see us.

I saw Charles Shultz, right before he died, say, "I still can't believe I get to do this. Every day when I wake up and I'm sitting there drawing Charlie Brown. I just can't believe it."

That's kinda how I feel.

» Constitution Hall , 1776 D St. NW; Wed., 8 p.m., $35; 800-551-7328.

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos
Photos by Bob Heil