Gene Ween at the Lovin' Cup. Photo by Andrew Blake. Click for full gallery.

Front row at the Lovin’ Cup in suburban Rochester last week, I scoured the internet on my day-old smart phone for something that might make sense of what was happening in front of me. I had already streamlined my Twitter, Facebook, and God knows what else down to one handy app, all available at the touch of a button. I had pre-programmed directions back to Buffalo into the device’s GPS and even found out where we could get a late-night omelet in Western New York. Now, I thought, if only someone could develop an application that could explain the algorithm that is Gene Ween.

Gene, half of the pseudo-brother duo turned rock and roll quintet Ween, is about as much of an enigma as his namesake. 40 years old, overweight, chubby-cheeked and adorned with a fluffy tuft of graying hair, he walked onto the shabby stage at the strip-mall coffee shop and took a seat. Ween the band has created a niche in indie rock that allows them to be too over-the-top for mainstream yet too spot-on fantastic to be overlooked. If you strip away the dick jokes and try to forget the back catalog ripe with hours of gibberish and distortion, it’s almost too accessible for the public. Alone at the Lovin’ Cup though, Gene, the centerpiece of the New Hope based group, was not just a derivative of his band, slated to play Bonnaroo for the second time this June. Live, Gene becomes an entity all to himself. Sure, he was going to play Ween songs, and yes, he is that guy from Ween.  Nevertheless, there is still something bizarre about it. Live and without his band, it’s almost Ween but without the “umph.”

But then there is the line about the poisoned chicken and you know damn well who you’re seeing.

When the five members of Ween play, marathon performances are not out of the question—two and a half hours long should be a minimum expectation. Live, there is no elaborate stage set up or pyrotechnics galore. Two fake-brothers named Gene and Dean and three of the best musicians you’ll ever hear crank out rock and roll at the same time, unbelievably not gasping for air behind the densest cloud of artificial smoke you could imagine this side of a haunted house.

In Rochester last week though, Geen Ween perched atop a barstool, crooning out Ween classics and rare gems was humbling, if nothing else.

Lacking the grandiose of live Ween that is so flawlessly perfected by Dean Ween (guitar), Claude Coleman (drums), Dave Dreiwitz (bass) and Glen McClelland (keyboard), Gene relied on his unmistakable voice to harmonize along with a brightly resonating Martin acoustic. Gene can flaunt his voice from a crooning whisper to a falsetto shriek at the drop of the hat, and somewhere in between lies a range—and a hell of a large one—that he’ll meander about in effort of creating some of the most bizarre vocal melodies in modern rock. It’s not that the vocal lines are really that off the wall—it’s the inflection in Gene’s voice that really lends the singer a sound of his own. He launched into the set’s opener “She Wanted to Leave” showcasing a soft, velvety bellow and two songs later morphed his voice to an elfish squeal for Ween b-side “Now I’m Freaking Out.”

As much as Gene varied his timbre and contorted his murmurs from intone warbles to all-out yelps that teeter-totter on near-psychotic, the arrangements and variety of the tunes he played, much like at a full-on Ween show, were anything but uniform. Inserted in the beginning of his set, “So Long Jerry,” another Ween b-side from 1996’s 12 Golden Country Greats, is a heartfelt ballad of gratitude for the late Grateful Dead front man, straight out of a folk-classic songbook. Later in the show, Gene’s arrangement of “I Don’t Want It” from 2003’s Quebec yielded a remark from the guy behind me that it sounded all too close to “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls. Though I think it was surely meant as a half-insult, the pop simplicities and easy-on-the-ears performance from Gene Ween certainly didn’t stagger all that far from adult-contemporary in the best of ways.

At times, at least.

“Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy),” a live Ween go-to favorite originally off of 1992’s Pure Guava, blended acoustic alt-rock sensibilities with seeming supernatural crowd manipulation as the first ten rows of the crowd chimed in seamlessly for the hallmark chorus in what is only comparable to an aural séance with indie cred. Clutching latte, a few dozen attendees glimmered up at Gene from the floor of the Lovin’ Cup, serenading in such chaotic disharmony that it was almost angelic.

Don’t get too close to my fantasy / Don’t be afraid to clutch the hand of your creator / Stare into the lion’s eyes and if you taste the candy / you’ll get to the surprise.

Other songs performed, such as “Tender Situation” and “Polkadot Tail,” are almost too nonsensical to sing-along too, yet, somehow, both the classic recordings and Gene’s own unique solo arrangements have helped develop a cult following for even the oddest of these alt rock numbers.

Songs that aren’t even that imposing, like “Tried and True,” another cut off of Quebec, gets an added flair when performed live by Gene. He effortlessly carries his voice across octaves, becoming a Mariah Carey of the indie underground. As he shifts effortless from low to high notes, Gene Ween alternates between rubbing his nose on the microphone and inching back cautiously, contrasting and convulsing the muscles in his face and neck alike to channel the notes from within his body. What is unleashed is an remarkable infliction of pitch and tonality that lends a little bit of beauty to such demented ditties.

Gene Ween with his band at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn, summer 2008. Photo by Andrew Blake.

While an added accessibility is granted to the Ween tunes when performed by a lone Gene Ween, the lack of a backing band is anything but unforgotten. Live Ween is certainly a sight—and sound—to behold. The absence of Dean Ween lends an unavoidable gap to so many tunes adopted by Gene that would be otherwise light years away in musicianship if his brother in arms was there to lend his trademark licks, puffing a cigarette and hunched over a cherry red Strat. And without Coleman behind the kit, the beat behind Gene’s strange songs is without the characteristic showmanship of the famed Ween drummer, known to keep the beat for never-ending jams on Ween tunes live—which can easily stretch to 40 minutes.

While the intimacy of Gene alone is a treat nonetheless, a Ween fan will cherish such an intimate performance as this but, at the same time, long for a full-blown Ween show. They’ll get there wish when the full band rolls into Bonnaroo this summer. If we’re lucky maybe they’ll get an extra Gene Ween solo show during the week. Or maybe that’s just too close to my own fantasy.

-Andrew Blake

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Photos from the Lovin’ Cup

While a few of the artists on the bill have been leaked for a few days now, a few artists came right out of left field. If you’ve been following the minute-by-minute updates and speculation on the Inforoo board a lot of today’s announcements weren’t as much surprises as completely expected confirmations. Even those not on the boards got wind of the Flaming Lips’ appearance last week, and slots for Dave Matthews Band and Steve Wonder seemed all but set in stone until this afternoon. Not all of us got what we wanted today (where’s my Pavement?! Paul Simon?) but there sure were a few nice surprises. Which acts caught you off guard?