Dean on Ween

On their new album Quebec, Gene and Dean Ween (singer Aaron Freeman and guitarist Mickey Melchiondo) once again revel in grand rock gestures and willfully outlandish lyrical themes. But even if Ween sounds refreshingly close to its 1994 landmark, Chocolate and Cheese, the band is in a far different place emotionally, having dealt with substance abuse and the fallout of Freeman's recent divorce. In addition, they received press coverage earlier this year when Pizza Hut nixed an ad campaign centered around the band's "Where'd the Cheese Go?" Melchiondo recently spoke to Creative Loafing about the band's finances, life on the road, and its long-term career goals.

Creative Loafing: You both have kids, you both own houses. Does that kind of comfort level affect the songwriting process when you guys get together?

Mickey Melchiondo: Not really, no. The comfort level thing is definitely not there. We haven't done anything in a few years, haven't made a record or done a significant amount of touring. So it hasn't changed at all, really. It's not like I'm sitting on a pile of cash. [But] we've done a lot better since we've been off Elektra [Records]. That opened us up to putting out records on our website, which is how we paid for this new album: We [raised] something like $100,000. It's ironic that we were on Elektra for eight or nine years, however long it was, and sold maybe a million records, and we owe them all this money. But we go on our website, we sell 10,000 records, 15,000, whatever, and raise enough to make our own expensive record.

For a band so fond of creating in the studio, Ween has gained quite a reputation as a live act. What aspect of playing live do you enjoy the most?

Actually, it's the inverse for me. Ween is a great, great live band, but ... I wouldn't say that it's killed my creative side, but it's taken away from it. When you first start doing it, being on tour is inspiring, because you've never been anywhere. We were 18 years old, just out of high school, and we were touring Europe for the first time and getting laid. Now, we've toured Europe 13 times, and we've toured America 650,000 times. When we get down and write a good song, it's like a total fucking recharging of the batteries. At the end of the night, after a great gig, a bunch of people say, "That was great!" And then you're sitting back in your hotel room a half-hour later, and that feeling is over. Whereas when you make a great record, it's around forever.

Has fan reaction to Quebec been mixed? I know in the past that fans have accused Ween of "selling out." Has there been anything like that with the new record?

No. Fuck no. Not with this record. Anybody who thinks this is the kind of record we'd make to make a lot of money and get on the radio is deaf. This record is definitely fucked, and I don't mean that in a negative way. I want Ween to be judged by our entire catalog someday. The artists that I really love the most are generally people with huge, sprawling bodies of work: Neil Young, Prince, P-Funk, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington. I'm not putting Ween next to these people; they're my heroes. [But] I want to make 20, 30, 50 studio records.

The big secret about Ween is, we don't know what the fuck we're doing. We don't have a plan. We don't sit down and calculate it, like, 'the record has to be like this.' The biggest crime in the world, I think, is to be phony, to try and imitate something you already did. We just write about our lives. The last three years were really intense for us on a number of levels, and that's reflected in the songwriting. A lot of these songs are about divorce and drug addiction and alcoholism. That's just where we've been the last few years. It's not a very uplifting record.


Ween plays the Tabernacle, Fri., Sept. 13 at 9 p.m. $21. Tabernacle, 152 Luckie St. 404-659-9022. www.atlantaconcerts.com.