The Boognish was clearly present last Friday in Royal Oak as the sold-out crowd arrived at the city’s famed music theatre to celebrate and revel in their love for Ween, the alt-rock comedy favorites now rapidly approaching their 40th anniversary. After expanding from a duo to a five-piece band in the mid-‘90s (much like their “cleaner” new wave counterparts, They Might Be Giants), Ween built a strong cult following among the jam band community as well, and while not all of their songs are psychedelic (and many are just downright silly, sophomoric, or both), it is hard to find a more passionate and devoted fan base, many of whom show up to see the band every time they stop through to perform at the same venues every two to four years or so, including Royal Oak Music Theatre. Unlike other cities, such as Las Vegas, Port Chester, and Chicago, who recently got two or three nights of Ween in a row, the Royal Oak concert was Ween’s only Michigan date this time around, so the size and expectations of the overflowing, sold-out crowd were very high (as were many of the members of the audience).
Most patrons waited for nearly an hour or more in line outside, in sporadic rain, just to get into the venue. As Ween continues to tour without an opening act, the music began about an hour after doors opened, and the band made the long wait worthwhile by laying down two hours and 55 minutes of smoking licks and joyful singalongs, their longest show of the year so far. Co-founding bandleaders, Dean and Gene Ween, commanded the stage and the band with confident experience and ease as unplanned songs were added to the set on the fly or were moved to a different position in the show, and they even worked in a few requests shouted from the crowd. The group hasn’t issued any new material in well over a decade, but their vast catalog supplies more than enough to choose from and to rotate into the set from year to year, and they generally keep a balance of fan-favorites and deep cuts though they’ve been dipping into the more obscure tracks recently than in the past, much to the delight of the hardcore fans.
The show kicked off with a spirited run through “Piss Up a Rope” from Ween’s satirical country album and then alternated between accessible songs, such as “The Golden Eel,” and “Roses Are Free,” and B-sides like “How High Can You Fly?” and “Light Me Up.” Longtime drummer, Claude ColemanJr., with the band since 1992, and versatile bassist, Dave Dreiwitz, held down the rhythms consistently all night between the more and less-known songs alike, and Dreiwitz took lead vocals during a cover of Instant Death’s “The Enabler” about halfway through the concert. Keyboard whiz, Glenn McClelland, continues to be Ween’s secret weapon on stage as his keyboards seamlessly filled in the sounds of other instruments that were present on the studio recordings but not played live, most notably horns, strings, and accordion, and often many of the backing vocals, though everyone in the band had a mic nearby.
After a well-received rendition of The Mollusk’s “Buckingham Green,” Dean Ween introduced a trio of songs “about diseases” and ran through “The HIV Song” and “Spinal Meningitis,” two fan-favorites from the band’s strongest LP, Chocolate and Cheese, followed by “Mononucleosis,” the far less-known and less-accessible sludge rocker from The Pod which claims to be an autobiographical account of an experience with the illness that Dean and Gene credit for allowing the project to continue to exist at one point much less to get to the point it has now. While the show took place one day after Gene Ween’s birthday (March 17th), the band did not include his ballad, “Birthday Boy,” or the seasonal sea chantey, “The Blarney Stone,” but they did include their ode to the music of Irish rock legends, Thin Lizzy, by performing their original song, “Gabrielle,” with green, orange, and white lights accompanying.
As the show went on, the band’s famously overpowered fog machines mixed with the heavy amounts of smoke already in the air, and at times the action on the stage was literally invisible. An extended psychedelic jam with blistering guitar solos from Dean Ween during “Woman and Man” gave way to singalongs like “Mutilated Lips” and White Pepper’s “Exactly Where I’m At” before a longer stretch of darker, experimental, and rare tracks such as “Frank” (which also contained a lengthy jam), “Don’t Sweat It,” “I Wuz Nothin’,” and the even longer instrumental jams on “Ice Castles” and “The Final Alarm,” balanced only briefly by Quebec’s heartbreaking ballad, “I Don’t Want It.”
The last portion of the show picked up again with “Nan” from the band’s 1990 debut LP and fan-favorite, “Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?,” and then after one more extended jam on the rarity, “Transitions,” the main set ended with the lesser known but still up-tempo numbers, “Vallejo” and “Boys Club,” which got a particularly strong response from a group near the front of the stage. Returning after a short encore break, Ween thanked the audience for another great night and showed their appreciation with two more crowd-pleasers from The Mollusk and one of their own favorites, “Your Party,” before taking their final bows and mentioning they looked forward to seeing some of the audience again the next night in Chicago. While Ween may now be making up for time lost to the pandemic performance and touring restrictions or to their own years of inactivity due to various personal issues, it’s clear their devoted audience has remained as loyal as ever and continues to grow even after almost four decades of their creative ridiculousness, and yet, that unique blend of talent and humor is the primary reason why.
Ween set list:
Piss Up a Rope
The Golden Eel
How High Can You Fly?
Light Me Up
She Fucks Me
Roses Are Free
Tried and True
Buckingham Green
The HIV Song
Spinal Meningitis
Mononucleosis
I Saw Gener Cryin’ in His Sleep
Up on the Hill
Transdermal Celebration
Gabrielle
Shamemaker
Touch My Tooter
Woman and Man
The Enabler (Instant Death)
Mutilated Lips
Exactly Where I’m At
Frank
Don’t Sweat It
I Don’t Want It
I Wuz Nothin'
Ice Castles
The Final Alarm
Help Me Scrape the Mucus Off My Brain
The Stallion (pt.1)
Nan
Mister, Would You Please Help My Pony?
Transitions
Take Me Down to the Bristles (tease)
Boys Club
Vallejo
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She Wanted to Leave
The Mollusk
Your Party
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(The Beach Boys-“In My Room” outro tape)
Watch a fan-shot bootleg of the full show here, mang!
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