Really, the best part about watching the band play for so long was seeing how much fun they still have with it 30+ years on. Most bands would perform this song with their tongues in their cheeks, but Ween managed to keep their version straightforward enough to further stave off any need to see Metallica live. On top of everything, the band dusted off their cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” which they hadn’t played since a single tour in 2001, featuring Gene doing an excellent James Hetfield impression.
The setlists on this tour have been career-spanning and superfan-friendly, and this one was no exception: for every “Roses Are Free” and “The Mollusk,” we got a “Kim Smoltz” and “Puffy Cloud,” the latter of which was performed by just Gene and Dean for their subdued, three-song encore. Though a few of the bigger hits were played the previous night – “Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy),” “Touch My Tooter,” and “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down),” among others – the second night was just as packed with crowd-pleasers and deep cuts alike. The 28 songs they played were a great mix, too. Very little of the 28-song setlist remained in album-length form, which lead to the show lasting a whopping two hours and 40 minutes. At one point, they departed into a mammoth riff on “Voodoo Lady,” one long enough that when Gene Ween finally returned to the mic to continue singing, I laughed involuntarily, having forgotten they were still in a song. Live, they’re a jam band for people who don’t like jam bands, an incredibly tight five-piece that are freakishly adept at super-sizing their songs, stretching their solos into five-minute (or more) showboating. Hearing them on record is a satisfying experience, but watching them perform is totally different. It’s not fair, though, to criticise Ween for the fanbase they’ve accidentally grown. The crowd energy created by the bro-hippies was enough to think twice about my need to see them again. That’s not for me to say, but it’s a worrisome question to ask. This fanbase shift makes it easy to wonder – though it may sound remarkably judgmental – if the people gleefully singing along with the more shocking lyrics of “You Fucked Up” ( “You fucked up, you bitch, you really fucked up/ You fucked up, you fuckin’ nazi whore”) and “With My Own Bare Hands” (“ She’s gonna be my cock professor/ Studying my dick/ She’s gonna get a master’s degree in fucking me”) are laughing because it’s a parody of rock misogyny or if it’s because they find the misogyny funny. I’m a newcomer to the band – I was converted to the cult after seeing their Project Pabst festival show in 2016 – but it’s hard to ignore the fact that the band seems to have been hijacked by, in Eric’s words, “bro-hippies.” You know the type: they’re exactly the same dudes who’ll haunt your local sports bar/Buffalo Wild Wings, but here, they’re wearing tie-dye shirts (with the Boognish face on them, natch) and flip-flops – and maybe have dreadlocks. As a normie, it made me feel entirely out of place, like a dorky interloper who had wandered into the wrong party. It popped a bubble for me: I’d never put together why the band had such an obsessive, Dead-like following – and why there’s so much tie-dye at their shows. On the drive to Ween’s second night at Edgefield Amphitheatre, Enjoy Your Life co-host Eric Mellor pointed out the band’s ties to the jam band circuit, guessing that this was the root of their big crowd draw (we’d both later see a man with a festival shirt listing Phish and Ween on the same top line, followed by My Morning Jacket).
Edgefield Concerts on the Lawn, Troutdale, OR
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