Ween

Ween is an American alternative rock band formed in 1984 in New Hope, Pennsylvania by Aaron Freeman (also known as Gene Ween) and Mickey Melchiondo (Dean Ween).

Origins

• Dean and Gene Ween had both been separately making home recordings by the time they met each other at age 14. Deaner had been making homemade recordings using a drum kit and a cheap used guitar his father had bought him from a pawn shop. Meanwhile, Gener had been making his own recordings using the built-in beats on a Casio keyboard. As Deaner explained:

I hate to just make Ween sound so simple but, I mean, at first I was like the punk rock nut . . . . I was looking for the most abrasive, hardest music that was out there, no matter what it was, and he was into the weirdest stuff out there, no matter what it was. And there was stuff where we met on common ground: we both loved Devo very much, we both loved Laurie Anderson['s] "O Superman", we both loved The Dr. Demento Show. His father was a hippie, his father was at Woodstock, okay? My father was probably the guy that would fuckin' throw rocks at hippies, you know? . . . Aaron's dad didn't have a lot of records either, but between the cool ones that I had and the cool ones he had, it was — that's kinda what Ween is. He had everything from Nina Simone, to the first two Velvet Underground records, Ritchie Havens' Alarm Clock, to . . . [Captain] Beefheart, and so, those influences together, that's kinda like what [Ween is].

• Gene Ween:

We had both just been in the school district for about a year, so we were both kind of new. And we didn't like each other, typically. He was more of a jock, and I was more of a trenchcoat-wearing guy. And we met in typing class. We sat next to each other and both realized we were into music. And it started out as me telling him about the Devo records I was listening to and Laurie Anderson and Prince. And he hated Prince, thought Prince was a big fag. He gave me some Dead Kennedys records and some stuff like that to listen to, and I gave him some of my stuff and we just traded music and introduced each other to different sides of early '80s music. And we just started getting together at his house after school and we both loved to hear ourselves on tape: I think that was the common unity. We started recording immediately, and we named ourselves Ween and that was it.

• Ween's earliest material used only drums and guitar – "It didn't matter how many strings were even on it," Dean later said. Deaner would tune the guitar to an open chord and play with his thumb across all the frets. "A year or two" later, they got a bass guitar from a pawn shop. Dean recalls that "You Fucked Up" may have been the first structured song they ever wrote with a verse and a chorus.

The "GodWeenSatan" Era

In 1989, Ween would be signed to Twin/Tone Records, where they'd record their debut album: GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, releasing it about a year later. Dean Ween describes it as a "greatest hits" album of Ween's first six years, considering a good amount of the songs on the album originated from demo tapes Ween made in the mid-to-late 1980s, the oldest track being "I Gots A Weasel" from 1985's "Ween WAD". GodWeenSatan was recorded in producer and bassist Andrew Weiss's living room studio, the Zion House of Flesh. Like Ween's other, earlier releases, Dean played the drums, which were recorded at a studio called "Graphic Sound" by someone named Greg Frey.

The "Pod" Days

• Andrew Weiss:

For [The Pod and Pure Guava], Mickey and Aaron recorded on the 4-track at the Pod, which was a shack they lived in on this horse farm outside New Hope. They recorded all this shit and they would just give me, like, a bag of tapes, and I would just sift through it, pick out songs and mix them and sequence the record.

• Dean Ween:

And then we moved, and then the next two records [The Pod and Pure Guava) is when we got the 4-track and we were living in this tiny apartment. We had to get a drum machine because we couldn't even fit a kit in there, and the neighbors would have gone insane. So our sound just completely changed . . . . People started calling us lo-fi, and you know, experimental and all that, but it was just out of necessity.

• Gene Ween has described Brookridge Farms in New Hope: it was a large house with about 5 bedrooms and they had a "revolving door of freaks coming in and out". The living room was used as a "jam room" that was commonly used by various friends staying or visiting the house.

Expanding to a full band

• Claude Coleman:

I was in a band Skunk, in the early 90's. Andrew Weiss was our producer, and Andrew was putting out all the early Bird O' Prey Ween tape releases, consequently becoming their/our producer. We did a few shows together, and we all became friends. We had Ween open up for us in our bass player's basement - it was our label showcase for TwinTone- our A&R guy flew in from Minneapolis, and we had Ween open for us. Just us, and the guy who was signing us to TwinTone in a basement in Maplewood, NJ. Times were real different! Ween opened for us, and Dave Ayers signed them pretty much instantly, then and there, he totally got it.

Breakup & Hiatus

• See full article: Breakup