Liberty Lunch
Tuesday, October 8 “I’d feel like a bastard answering that question,” says Dean Ween when pressed
to explain the country songwriting process. “I’m no way an authority. It would
be like saying I’ve mastered the Renaissance arts style.” No less authorities
than Rolling Stone, SPIN, Entertainment Weekly, and
Details agreed by brutally panning Ween’s new 12 Golden Country
Greats — a collection of 10 country songs (yes, only 10) with backing from
real Nashville session veterans.
What the big boys overlooked, however, is that parody project or not, 12
Golden Country Greats is not only Ween’s first truly cohesive record, it’s
also centered on the same bedroom studio songwriting approach that’s brought
Dean and Gene Ween an undeniably hip following for gibberish mixes of New Wave,
funk, metal, and soul.
“A lot of the stuff we went to Nashville with didn’t really sound like
country music, but you start slapping pedal steel and fiddles on it and
immediately it takes on that flavor regardless of the original source,” says
Dean of the sessions that their label didn’t learn about until the masters were
turned in. “And the cool thing about country music is that alcoholism is so
conducive to good country writing and playing. We’ve found it’s really fun to
get completely drunk and play it, or write, or write about it. That’s been our
primary observation. With country, you can start drinking, and get worse, and
worse and worse and it’s still mostly okay.”
Advance word on Ween’s touring version of their country hangover project,
complete with more Nashville veterans, has the shows as much better than okay,
and yet something just short of what Ween describes “as one of the best bands
out there, right now, or anytime.” A proposed cover of Montell Jordan’s “That’s
The Way We Like It” also sounds promising enough, although Ween says he’s
having more fun just reworking old Ween songs to better fit their new gig.
“It’s so visually funny to start, but we’re really kicking when we play the
really heinous older Ween stuff,” he says. “We figured we’d dare ourselves to
play it and the kids ended up going berserk. Not just because it’s old, but
because the idea of playing `Reggae Junkie Jew’ with nine old guys from
Nashville is so hilarious in itself. For the first time we’re not limited
because of the tape deck, or that nature of our speeding up and slowing down
the vocals on the records. But I’m sure that after 30 days on tour somebody’s
going to spit on me, throw something or say something. I’ll learn then, I
suppose.”
— Andy Langer
This article appears in October 4 • 1996 and October 4 • 1996 (Cover).