The Dean Ween Group Rocks The Met On January 18

During alternative rock’s heyday during the late ‘80s and ‘90s, Ween was getting weird and pushing their own artistic abilities while their contemporaries were competing with each other to see who could be the loudest. Ranging from psychedelia, lo-fi and all things experimental, Gene and Dean Ween (also known as Aaron Freedman and Mickey Melchiondo) were never afraid to stray from the norm. In 2012, Gene had to quit Ween due to dealing with some personal issues, but a few years later the band got back together in 2015. Both of them also have their own side projects and one of those will be making its presence felt at The Met.

The Dean Ween Group will be taking the stage on January 18 with Mike Dillon opening things up. Ahead of the show, I had a chat with Deaner about the artistic differences between this project and others, having his own studio, the downer of a year that was 2016, making adjustments and what his plans are for the rest of the year.

Rob Duguay: With The Dean Ween Group what are the artistic differences this project has versus what you’ve done with Moistboyz and Ween? Did you have a specific vision when The Dean Ween Group was starting out or was it purely creative and improvisational?

Dean Ween: It’s evolving constantly. Both bands are very free, we do whatever the hell we want musically. Most people expect the unexpected from what I’m involved with and as a matter of fact they want that. When Ween was making a country record it wasn’t that big of a deal because people liked it and then we followed that up with The Mollusk. It’s very liberating and it’s very free. With The Dean Ween group, we mix up the setlist every night and it’s really about us and the crowd coming along for the ride.

It’s a little bit more loose in that I write every single day and the other guys are local so I could cut a song one night and we’ll be playing it later that same evening if we have a gig. It might disappear for a while and then I might remember it and then we’ll come back to it another night. It’s a massive amount of material that’s very, very, very musical, I will say that. With Aaron {Freeman} and I, it’s very much the two of us writing the songs and recording them together and usually with nobody else in the room. Then we’ll give it to the band to adapt it for the stage.

The Dean Ween Group is more meant for an ensemble, the concept of it is that it’s an ever-changing lineup from show to show and from session to session. It’s a collective of about 25 guys and they’re all amazing. Everyone from Kidd Funkadelic from P-Funk, Curt Kirkwood from the Meat Puppets have been involved. I play to the strengths of who is on stage that night. If I have Kidd Funkadelic with me then I’ll make it a lot more groove oriented to get the most out of the music.

Ween has thousands of songs in our catalog and there are a couple hundred that we’ve played live, at least a couple hundred. We’ve played them but they might have been recorded by Aaron and I with a drum machine or a Casio keyboard in 1986 and now we’re playing It as a five piece rock band. With The Dean Ween Group, that’s the biggest difference. It’s ensemble music for sure, even the songs. I’m not talking about jammin’, I’m talking about the songs.

RD: There’s a lot of variety that The Deaner Album has that came out in October of last year. It’s very guitar heavy with this ‘70s classic rock vibe mixed with a bit of quirkiness.

DW: I don’t really have a musical template that I’m trying to work from. I was very surprised to find out that people felt that my role in Ween was as a guitar player and not a songwriter. Ween is as much of a songwriting combo as any band ever was, probably more than Simon & Garfunkel even. We write everything together. Are there a lot of songs Aaron wrote by himself? Yes. Are there a lot of songs that I wrote by myself? Yes, but Aaron might sing those songs that I wrote.

When I put out The Deaner Album, there was a part of me that felt that it should be a guitar featured thing. I found that people love the songs the most. It’s about 50/50 between instrumentals and songs with choruses and bridges. There was a little bit of a learning curve and I’ve been doing this for 35 years. If I modeled my band on anything it would be a combination of Miles Davis’ lineup from ’67 to ’73 and The Beatles or something (laughs). There’s a lot of singing and there’s a lot of playing with top of the top caliber musicians.

RD: You summed it up in a unique and interesting way. Did you make the album in the studio that you built or did you make it somewhere else?

DW: I started it in one studio about four years ago, this is how I ended up with two or three records finished. I started it in this studio that was an antique store about four or five years ago and I got in there to do my Dean Ween record. I also wanted to do a Moistboyz record there so we were doing both at the same time and it wasn’t working, I didn’t know how to focus on two things at once. When I make a record I become a shut-in, a recluse and a studio rat. I made the decision that the Moistboyz record needed to be done there so we just put our best foot forward and we made an amazing record and we went on tour for it.

In the meantime, I moved out of that studio and I started to build this one from scratch. Then I came in there and I finished The Deaner Album after we got it sounding amazing and put all the equipment where we wanted in the studio. From that point our momentum was coming toward the apex and we didn’t stop. We kept going and we’re still going. I drew a line in the sand when we finished that album around 9 months ago so we’ve been writing every single day and every single night since.

My next record is going to have to be four albums at least or I’m going to have to keep putting them out. You have to tour in support of that and there’s Ween also so it’s the greatest problem to have while sitting on a goldmine of great material. I think its heads above the first album, I love that one but the second album coming up is going to serve notice to everybody because it’s got all that in there. It’s so fearless and there’s stuff on there that sounds like Miles Davis; Earth, Wind & Fire; and The Beatles and everything I love in music. There’s so much jamming and there’s so many great songs and there’s no sign of it ending.

This studio oozes inspiration and we built the ultimate comfortable workspace for musicians. People that play walk in here for the first time and they’re like, “Oh my god, you nailed it.” Everywhere you look there’s something that you want to play or play through. I’m looking at the keyboard set up right now and it’s a rack of the five greatest keyboards ever made. A Fender rhodes, a Hohner clavinet, a MOOG synthesizer, an ARP soloist and a Wurlitzer piano. For a keyboard player, it’s a wet dream.

Looking around at the old Fender twin reverbs, the Marshall stacks and there’s a full PA in here that’s huge. There’s a ’59 Ludwig drum set and they’re all mic’d up. You can walk in, turn the shit on and hit record. I spent….I don’t even want to tell you how much I spent. I bought an API console, which is one of the top mixing consoles you could get. I took all the Ween money I made rather than pay off my debt and I got the nicest console in the business (laughs).

It’s really nice, it’s not covered in empties and loaded ashtrays. We take good care of it, it’s clean. It’s not a party hang. We work long hours here, into the mornings a lot of the time, but we still coil up all the cables and hang them up and throw away all the trash. It’s really somethin’, I’m enjoying one of the best periods of my life personally, professionally and creatively right now.

RD: That’s awesome.

DW: I don’t mind saying it. 2016 was an awful year in any other way but my life is good and I don’t know why, I must have survivor’s guilt.

RD: I had a good year as well, but the whole world is going to shit.

DW: I have a friend who went through the worst marriage, it went all wrong and he ended up a mess with the divorce and his kid. He ended up meeting the nicest, most beautiful woman in 2016. I’m glad some good things are happening because the rest of 2016 can suck my ass.

RD: I hear that.

DW: Everybody died! Everybody that I loved died, some of my friends and all my heroes too. We lost Carrie Fisher and George Michael right before the year ended. What the hell is going on? Who’s next? I don’t even want to put anybody on the list. I don’t even want to say names.

RD: You don’t have to. Going back to you being really prolific and going by a learning curve, do you feel that they’re mutually one in the same? Do you always have a drive to learn new chords and sounds on your guitar or even on different instruments and that’s the reason why you’ve written so many songs?

DW: I’m always learning. Having the studio set up here is so beneficial. We’ve been renting since 1990 with Ween. I can say around two dozen places at least with houses and apartments. We would force equipment in there and we wouldn’t really be able to get set up the way we wanted because the people we were renting from didn’t know that they were getting a problem (laughs). There was never really time to get dug in before the noise became a problem during the late hours.

With this place, my friend’s father has a lot of property in the woods that’s really close to my house and there’s nobody around and we built it from a plot of land. Everything I’ve ever owned is finally here. Those keyboards I talked about earlier, I never moved them into any of those rentals. It’s like going into a hotel room and moving in when you have to leave the next morning. With this studio, I have the benefit of keeping all my stuff in one spot. It’s made my drumming way better, I’ve played drums on all the Ween records.

I started as a drummer but now my drumming is as good as anybody else’s. My son will come into the studio and now he’s playing all the time. Keyboards, drums, bass and we jammed. It’s just made everybody better. Anybody who wants to record that’s a friend of mine can come in and make a studio quality recording. It’s benefiting everybody and it’s really, really great.

It’s really fucking awesome and if they want to stay here for the night then no problem. They can stay the week. It’s all labeled on the mixing board and all you have to do is come in and play. There’s a tons of stuff to work with here.

RD: I can totally imagine and it’s great that you’re so excited about having your own studio.

DW: The possibilities are endless. We’ve been doing some webcasts recently too that have been posted on Facebook. It’s all in HD going through the mixing console.

RD: You talked about putting out another Deaner album this year, but what other plans do you have for 2017 after this current tour?

DW: A lot of road work and studio work. Ween doesn’t have any plans to release any new material at the moment but Ween has a bunch of gigs happening this year, same with The Dean Ween Group. I’ll be on the road a lot but I will take time to finish the next Deaner record. I’m looking to have the next one out in the fall like the last one and by the time that’s released I probably will have written twice as many songs as I have. I’m loving being on the road right now, being home is cool too, but when I’m home I’m working in the studio so it’s just music, music, music.

Buy tickets to The Dean Ween Group @ The Met on January 18 here: etix.com/ticket/p/3049186/dean-ween-group-winter-tour-2017-pawtucket-the-met?cobrand=themetri; The Dean Ween Group’s Website: thedeanweengroup.com