Ween’s Country Classic Turns 30

In 1996, Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman, known to fans as “Dean and Gene Ween,” traveled to the legendary Bradley’s Barn recording studio just outside Nashville, Tennessee, to record their fifth studio album: a dedicated country record, the only time in their career they’d confine themselves to a single genre for an entire album, cut with a team of Nashville veterans who’d played behind Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, and Elvis Presley.

It was a sharp turn for a band known for genre-bending, deliberately unpolished music they’d come to call “brown,” their own term for the inexplicable sound that is pure Ween. 12 Golden Country Greats would test what happened when that brownness collided with a genre built on discipline and tradition, and a room full of Nashville’s most respected session players.

Three decades later, Rhino Records is reopening the vault with a 30th anniversary deluxe edition that doesn’t just remaster the original ten songs; it offers a thirty-six-track, three-disc release including twelve demos and fourteen tracks previously left on the cutting room floor.

Producer Ben Vaughn’s approach was almost counterintuitive for a band as hands-on as Ween: he pitched himself to Dean and Gene as the villain of the story, the producer who’d tell them they weren’t good enough to play on their own record, bringing in Nashville’s A-Team instead. They loved the idea.

Dean and Gene were sidelined from playing their instruments entirely, save for a Dean guitar solo on “I Don’t Wanna Leave You on the Farm” and a Gene solo on “Fluffy,” while session legends like pianist Hargus “Pig” Robbins, fiddler Buddy Spicher, harmonica and banjo player Charlie McCoy, and Elvis Presley’s old backing vocalists, The Jordanaires, did the rest, the group of musicians later dubbed The Shit Creek Boys in true Ween fashion.

Not every musician they approached said yes; a couple of Nashville veterans passed, reportedly put off by the material’s vulgarity. The ones who stayed leaned in anyway, playing it completely straight underneath lyrics that were anything but.

Despite the title, twelve songs were recorded during the Bradley’s Barn sessions, but only ten made the final cut. “I’ve Got No Darkside” and the Jerry Garcia tribute “So Long Jerry” were both left off, with the latter surfacing instead as a B-side. Rather than fix the math, Ween simply shifted the story: the “twelve” greats, as the lore goes, were never meant to be songs at all, but the twelve legendary Nashville musicians who played on the record.

Disc one is the original album, remastered but otherwise untouched: “I’m Holding You” opens things on a note of real sincerity, “You Were the Fool” remains a standout favorite, and “Piss Up a Rope,” the fan-favorite hit, which Dean Ween has said he wrote for his wife, pairs genuine country twang with the kind of crude, quotable lyrics that made it a live staple.

Disc two is a chance to hear the songs still finding their footing before Nashville’s polish set in, rougher and occasionally worse than the finished versions, but full of the small choices that eventually hardened into the familiar takes. It’s not essential listening so much as fun listening, and for a band that rarely takes anything too seriously, that feels like exactly the right way to include it.

Disc three is where the reissue earns its keep. “I’ve Got No Darkside” is a genuine country banger that would have fit seamlessly on the original album.

“So Long Jerry” is genuinely beautiful, sincere without irony, but it could have landed on nearly any Ween record.

“Bad Day in Brownsville” does something neither of those songs does: built on a honky-tonk backbone with rock muscle, it’s a true amalgamation of Ween and country, “brown” and twang colliding into something that could only exist on this particular record.

There’s a particular kind of joy in an album like this getting the deluxe treatment: the original ten remastered and returned to their full, occasionally crude glory, two discs of demos and rarities offering a rare look at how Ween worked, one idea and one honky-tonk detour at a time. With the band in an indefinite hiatus and no word on when, or if, they’ll return to the road, there’s something fitting about the timing. “Baby, I’m holdin’ you,” Gene sings on the album’s opening track, comparing the feeling of holding to something more precious than fine ore. So, while this deluxe box set isn’t a new album, it’s something for fans to hold onto.

-Jennifer Rivera

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