Once, while I was at the University of Iowa, Oliver Stone came through town on a lecture tour. He spoke in a large auditorium on campus, and afterwards he engaged the audience with a lengthy Q&A session. After fielding a few real questions, one young man, a dreadlocked frat guy wearing a backward white South Carolina baseball cap and tie-dyed Grateful Dead tee, approached the mic. When it was his turn to speak, he confirmed everyone’s suspicions. His question: “Uh Yeah… I heard that on the set of Natural Born Killers that, um, you and Trent Reznor smoked a lot of pot and listened to Ween. Um, so my question for you, Mr. Stone, is do you really like Ween?”

The director’s response was a quick and decisive, “Yes, I like Ween. Next question…”
I was reminded of this scenario when Ween’s publicist hit me back to tell me that I had 10 minutes to talk with Aaron Freeman, A.K.A. Gene Ween.

Ten minutes is not much time at all. But these guys probably deflect stupid questions like this at every turn. The very nature of Ween’s music invites a loose and drug-friendly dialog that teeters from goofy and surreal to dark and personal, and transcends the deranged sense of humor that has become the group’s fingerprint. Dean and Gene are master songwriters. They can tackle any genre, make it their own and make fun if it before they move on.

With the group’s most recent album, La Cucaracha, Dean and Gene rage through Motorhead-style riffs and sultry horns laid down by smooth jazz sensation David Sanborn, and all of these elements come together into an effortless, highly evolved concept album that stands as the pinnacle of Ween’s catalogue.

Dry Ink: The title of your new album, La Cucaracha seems loaded in that it’s like you’re saying here it is, the miracle of evolution, and then you hit us with this gorgeous and complex album that is the culmination of the evolution that takes place if you sit God Ween Satan, Pure Guava etcetera. next to La Cucaracha. Is that where your minds were when you conceived La Cucaracha?

Gene Ween: Well, that’s a great compliment and there is an evolution taking place throughout the albums, but I think it’s mostly because we have been at it for such a long, long time. But really, La Cucaracha was recorded in a very similar was as God Ween Satan. Much like we always do, we got together and recorded, and recorded and recorded, and picked out the songs that we liked. But there wasn’t a conscious effort to come up with some sort of evolved concept album or a theme. When we are recording what comes out is what comes out and we go from there.

DI: But there is an underlying theme at work on La Cucaracha that is all about the tensions and emotions and dramas that surround any relationship between a woman and a man. But nothing is spelled out. It’s as poignant as whatever the listener projects onto the songs. Did you intend to go into this record and put together something like this or did it grow organically?

GW: Well… Yes that actually is a very big part of the album. Ween records are always going to reflect where Dean and I are in our lives at the time. Dealing with people and yes, dealing with relationships is always going to be part of that. Each record is like a diary entry, and that’s very much where we were when we went into this album.

DI: This isn’t John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane,” but a subtle and powerful device in the in the songwriting that sets you up to bring whatever you, the listener, are going to bring to the songs and run with it. How important is it for you to keep things vague when putting together a narrative like this?

GW: Nothing turns me off more than when some one gives away too much of the story or the idea. When you do that people can’t use their imaginations and relate to it in their personal ways. That’s what makes great art and great songs so great.

DI: This presents a post-modern dilemma, and I am taking Ween very seriously in this context. This is a band driven by humor. You have captured the attention of the chin-scratching, virtuoso world, but instead of furrowing your brow and being very serious you poke up your middle finger. This is an important punk aspect of the Ween experience. What keeps you from going down that path of more serious, and austere musicianship?

GW: Right, yes. Punk rock is such a very important part of everything. I mean, yes, it is one thing to really appreciate good art and really get into it. I certainly do. But people who take it too seriously, the ones who furrow their brows, are just pricks and they deserve to be punished for that, and they are who we’re poking up a middle finger at. They make it socially harder for the rest of us and that is precisely why Ween’s music has never fallen into any one genre or been meant for any one kind of person. It’s there for anyone who wants to hear it and enjoy it.

DI: This is as much of a rhetorical question as you would like to make it, but La Cucaracha has been described as a “party album.” What’s being celebrated?

GW: Well, that was Dean’s take on it. I get what he is saying in regards to the party songs at the beginning and the end of the record, but I would say that it’s a celebration in that it is more of a party than Quebec. That wasn’t much of a party album. There were some pretty heavy duty ideas going into those songs and they weren’t much fun at all. La Cucaracha is just a lot more fun than Quebec.

DI: Do you have a favorite Ween album?

GW: Oh, I don’t know. I have to go for the stock answer here and say I like each one for different reasons, you know? The Mollusk was a whole lot of fun, but again I like it for very different reasons than why I like an album like Chocolate and Cheese or 12 Golden Country Greats… . Maybe The Mollusk is my favorite. People ask me that sometimes and I don’t know what to say. Like the other day someone was cutting my hair and they didn’t know Ween and asked me what record to pick up and I couldn’t really answer it. It’s like “huh, I don’t know. I would need to sit down with you for a while and go through each one and tell you about it….” But I think The Mollusk was the most fun to make.

DI: That seems to be the one that is the most critically acclaimed, but for my money, its Chocolate and Cheese all the way, man. It’s just a straight up funny album. When you listen to Pure Guava or Chocolate and Cheese they are so specific to that time. It was the lo-fi, indie rock ’90s. People were partying. You had Nirvana and then Pavement and Sebadoh doing what they did and it was all very heavy and arty. But then you have Pure Guava and Chocolate and Cheese and they reflect so much of that era in their sound qualities. Likewise, the production qualities of The Mollusk are so specific to the era. It sounds like 1996, when you had a band like Garbage on the radio. I like The Mollusk a lot, but I think that Chocolate and Cheese is much more of a jam for the Ween beginner, because it is so funny and catchy.

GW: I can’t really disagree with you about that, and yes, we had a whole lot of fun with that record. Again, there is such a timeline with Ween’s records and they really are like a diary for me.