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May 7-13, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
• High and dry
Gene Ween is on his first solo tour… and he might be sober
by Adam Perry
• Prairie fire
Other Lives brings the rock to acoustic music
by Dave Kirby
 High and dry
Gene Ween is on his first solo tour… and he might be sober
by Adam Perry
When I first heard that Gene Ween was playing two solo acoustic shows at The b.side Lounge (three blocks from my house) this spring, I felt two distinct emotions: excitement and the contemplation that comes with feeling fuckin’ old.
The two venues where I first saw Ween play (i.e. explode) as a young college student in Pittsburgh are both long gone, as are my salad days of making drinking games with friends out of Ween songs like “Booze Me Up and Get Me High” when we’d see the darkly hilarious and immensely talented Philadelphia-area band energizing rooms full of hipsters and frat boys. Some things have changed about Ween since then — their performances have become a lot more jam-laden; Phish’s love for Ween has attracted many hippies to Ween shows, which is ironic considering how often Ween songs (see: “Reggae Junkie Jew”) make fun of hippies; and singer/guitarist Gene Ween has gone at least relatively sober.
Approaching 40, both Dean Ween and Gene Ween have struggled with personal demons (from divorce to drugs) during Ween’s nearly 25 years (and 10 studio albums) as a band, but in hindsight Ween has far outlasted its early-’90s musical peers and, in my opinion, become worthy of an eventual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. They’re still writing 40-50 songs before recording an album of one-third that many tunes (cherry-picking the best ones) and repeatedly touring the world (they’re huge in Australia), but Ween’s salad days of “doing coke off of fat girls’ asses” are over too.
Some of what’s interesting about this story (and this year’s local concert season) is that three of the hugely successful, exceptionally original rock bands who gained fame in the ’90s and are triumphantly headlining Red Rocks this summer — Phish, Wilco and Ween — have more in common than you think. Yes, Phish’s Trey Anastasio and Ween’s Mickey Melchiondo (aka Dean Ween) played hockey against each other as teenagers in New Jersey, plus Phish has regularly covered Ween’s “Roses Are Free” since 1997, but what I’m getting at is that the iconic frontmen of these bands — Anastasio, Jeff Tweedy and Aaron Freeman (aka Gene Ween) — have all had serious drug problems and subsequent rehab stints which helped cause hiatuses that distressed their bandmates and fans.
While Tweedy has blatantly written songs that either glorify or detail his trials and tribulations with drug use (like “Red-Eyed and Blue” and “Handshake Drugs”) and Anastasio has been arrested for driving while intoxicated and holding drugs (and is shown snorting something onstage in Phish’s new Coventry documentary), the problem with taking Gene Ween’s drug abuse seriously through the years may have been his band’s weird, nonsensical (but brilliant) music.
Classic Ween tracks like “I Drink A Lot,” “Put the Coke On My Dick” and “Bananas and Blow” generally seemed more like Frank Zappa-type satire (juxtaposing oddball genius music with laugh-out-loud lyrics) than disturbing semi-autobiographical tales of debauchery… at least until you finally saw Ween in concert and witnessed the nightly occurrence of “Gener” downing an entire bottle of Jack Daniel’s before drunkenly leaving the stage so the rest of the band could finish the show by jamming on something like “L.M.L.Y.P.” (Let Me Lick Your Pussy) while dozens of young women luridly danced onstage and tried to make out with the rhythm section.
In hindsight, songs like “Happy Colored Marbles” and “Zoloft” (from 2003’s Quebec) could be interpreted in part as cries for help, and Freeman’s recent statements that he in fact doesn’t remember any of the Quebec tour are a pretty good indicator.
These days, Freeman is happy and healthy enough to not only tour a few times a year with a rejuvenated version of Ween (sans onstage depravity, other than the topless dancing female audience members) but also embark on his first-ever national solo tour, which amazingly hits our own little b.side Lounge on Sunday.
Dates on Freeman’s current tour alternate cover-and-rarity-filled concerts with the Gene Ween Band (including guitarist Scott Metzger, drummer Joe Russo and Ween bassist Dave Driewitz) and solo acoustic shows, which is what Boulder is about to be blessed with. According to Greg Frey, Ween’s manager “…he might throw a cover or two in there if the spirit strikes him, but at these upcoming solo shows, Aaron is doing Ween songs almost exclusively.”
“The [solo] tour itself is the result of Aaron’s desire to get out and play his music for Ween fans. And as he likes to say, ‘It’s what I do.’
[Aaron] likes the challenge of playing solo shows and how it contrasts with performing in the rock band setting.”
Seeing the frontman of an American rock-music institution such as Ween play a solo show at a small club is a big deal, and the b.side Lounge appears to be just as thrilled about Gene Ween’s appearance as his fans are.
“It’s rare to experience something like this in such in intimate venue, and Boulder fans have responded with enormous support,”
b.side’s Molly Cherington told me. “The first show sold out so quickly we added a second show... We’re excited for what could very well be two of the year’s best nights of live music in Boulder.”
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On the Bill
Geen Ween performs at 9 p.m. on Sunday, May 10, and Monday, May 11, at The b.side Lounge, 2017 13th St., Boulder, 303-473-9463.
 Prairie fire
Other Lives brings the rock to acoustic music
by Dave Kirby
Draped in melancholy and sketched in shades of gray like the weathered stoop of an abandoned prairie farmhouse, Other Lives’ latest CD sways and waltzes through a litany of fleeting references — chamber-folk arrangements built around keys and strings and unidentifiable tones (like the proggy “End Of The Year”), shorter pieces infused with Beatles-esque melodies (“E Minor”), travel-scape soundtracking (“Matador”), and all mostly subtitled narco-drowsy vocals conjuring a sort of exhausted, mournful resolve teetering atop gently propelled slow-burn instrumental figures.
Windham Hill meets Wilco meets Coldplay?
Whatever… since it’s palpably unfair to tag these guys as clever or self-conscious larcenists. The influences are there, audible if you’re listening hard enough, but take a few steps back and the whole presents itself as unique and unforced.
After a January gig in Denver, the band returns to the area for a few local dates before the festival season kicks in, and we caught up to vocalist/pianist Jesse Tabish for a quick chat last week.
Veteran producer Joey Waronker’s name showed up in the credits, and we wondered, given our assumption that the band pays a lot of attention to their arrangements, how an outsider, even an experienced one, influenced the final product here.
“We had started working on these songs probably about two years ago, and we had worked out of a lot of the arrangements beforehand. Joey came into the picture and really kind of tightened up our rhythm section. It was the missing piece that we really needed.
“So when we went to do the album, it was really simple, just getting the right vibe. Y’know, it wasn’t a stuffy experience. We had done our last record at home, which was an experience we all liked, so we were a little worried. But the way he worked with us was real nice. We didn’t gut everything that we were doing; he just took what we were doing and kind of cleaned it up.
“And… we probably talked just as much about the arrangement as we actually worked on it. And yeah, arrangement for us is really key. We work on things at home, try out new things… and now we’re getting more into string arrangements and theory and everything. We definitely geek out on this stuff sometimes.”
The band’s current incarnation — all five members native to Stillwater, Okla. — grew from a more experimental, largely instrumental outfit called Kunek that used to play the Stillwater area. Tabish says the ground they were plying with that band — a trio including him on piano, cellist Jenny Hsu and drummer Colby Owens — set the boundaries for what Other Lives is doing now.
“It was very... progessive, like three-part, 40-minute pieces. No lyrics or anything.”
Like an acoustic power trio…
“With no power, yeah. But it really set the tone for what we wanted to do. There’s a whole different discipline in writing very condensed, three-minute songs versus doing these long, proggy type things. But we liked having that kind of idealism, and we wanted to keep it.”
We also noted that Other Lives plans to bring these sensibilities — a devotion to acoustic instruments, carefully evolved multi-part suites, even a mellotron — into the world of Lollapalooza later this spring. Hey, we’re all for it. People should hear this stuff… but will it really be the same? Massive festivals like these have a way of rushing sets, compressing timings, floating the upbeat numbers to the top and amping up the stage presentation — these gigs are not particularly known for their…
“… subtlety. Right. We went out on tour a few months ago, our first tour really, with Delta Spirit, who’s a more up-tempo rock band. And it was interesting because there was a little bit of a change in the way we performed the songs. I mean, I think it definitely affected the way we perform these songs. In some ways, we’re turning into more of a rock band, which is OK with me… for now.
“But how the songs will translate to a bigger audience, like a festival audience, I can’t say. It’ll be interesting to find out.”
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On the Bill
Other Lives performs with Elvis Perkins in Dearland at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 9, at the b.side Lounge, 2017 13th St., Boulder, 303-473-9463.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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