The new Moistboyz album is finished being mixed and it is an excellent album even by our lofty and biased standards. It will be out very soon, we are planning on touring before the year is out in support of it. We have total control (!) of our Facebook page (not as easy to get back as you think) as well as moistboyz.com (which we haven’t done anything with it just yet. Check out the facebook page for all sorts of nuggets and archival material for now though.
Schnitzel Records released the new limited edition vinyl of the Moistboyz “Paperboy” today. The song is from the forthcoming album “Moistboyz V Medusa” which will be released this summer. The video was produced by my good friend Zak Pine….dig it!
………and I provide the soundtrack for his work. Check out this commercial I just did for Wilson Baseball Gloves. i played all the instruments and recorded this at my studio not less than 72 hours ago! Quick turnaround.
I didn’t bring a laptop with me (on purpose) for the month of February when I went to Austin to finish the Moistboyz fifth album, which is titled “Moistboyz V-Medusa”. The album is being mixed as we speak and should be out this June or July. We are planning on doing summer tourdates but we haven’t started booking them as of yet. I think it’s the best Moistboyz record ever, hands down. The lyrics, playing, singing, production all far exceed anything that I had in mind when we set out writing it last fall. A hell of a lot of work went into it and you can hear it. I’m not only a close friend of Guy Heller but a big fan too and I don’t mind saying that lyrically and vocally, this is him at his best. I can’t wait to take it to the stage.
From Austin I went to Fort Lauderdale, FL to do a week of charters, followed by three days of filming a pilot episode of a new fishing show with Les Claypool. We had some issues with bad weather but we did get some fishing in and shot some great footage of us hanging out on the boat jamming as well. Les is an avid fisherman and a great guy and I had a great time jamming with him, we hit a groove immediately and he is one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever played with. The charters that I ran from 2/17 to 2/24 were some of the best I ever did. We caught Sailfish and Mahi on EVERY TRIP. Anyone who has ever fished before should appreciate how unlikely that is—there are no guarantees in any kind of fishing, especially when targeting Billfish though and in very tough conditions to boot. We even hooked a Blue Marlin on our Tuesday charter and gave it everything we had. Here are some pics from the trip. Special thanks to my buddy Capt. Phil Dunn and his brother Greg—we all worked our asses off despite 16 hour work days to make this happen and were rewarded with a lot of beautiful fish.
I have sorta lost interest in this website the past couple of months……….I’m gonna leave it here and resume answering questions if and when I feel like it since I already paid for the domain name and server space. I just don’t feel like answering any questions about the band right now.
-Mickey
Question::
Dear Mr. Dean Ween. What is your favorite type of cheese. My friend
and I are a big fan and we both love mild chedar!
A- I could eat nothing but cheese all of the time if it didn’t kill me. I like sharp provolone that smells like stinky feet, I like hot pepper jack cheese on burgers, I love Stilton Blue cheese, I love Alpine Lace Swiss on a chicken breast sandwich, I like all cheeses actually. What a dumb website this is.
Question::
Hi. Is there any food you cant eat? I was raised on real italian food.
Home made macaroni, gnocci, scarole soup, hell i was even scraping
artichoke leaves w my teeth and digging into the stuffed squid on xmas
eve when i was a kid w my grandmom. Seems my tastes evolved quickly at
an early age. I truly like it all but cant do the beets. F-beets even!
Do you have something that youd rather have in your garbage can?
—-eddie
A- We like the same kinda foods first of all. I could eat nothing but Italian food every day for the rest of my life and be happy. I should probably live in Italy actually. I’m not a big fan of pork related foods–pork chops, ham, pork loin, that kinda thing. I do love bacon though, man do I love bacon–and pork roll too.
Question::
I dont know if you even remember making this album at all, but what
was it like working with the Boredoms for the Z-Rock Hawaii album? I
saw Boredoms in 2008, front row, and I can honestly say that Yamataka
Eye was probably the most intense person I’ve ever seen in person. I
know the album seems to have been done quickly but I love it anyway.
Do they speak English? Did you guys jam a lot? Do you like their
records? Anyway just wondering as I can’t think of any musicians who
would try to seek out the freakin’ Boredoms.
A- I get asked this so often that I figured it’s time to answer it. Way, way, back (like in 1993) Andrew Weiss took me to see Boredoms first in Philadelphia, and then again in Hoboken a day or two later. They were the heaviest band I had ever seen since the Butthole Surfers, but on a similar level of psychedelic transcendence with a Japanese point of reference that was unlike anything before or since. Last time I saw them a few years ago they were just as heavy and still evolving. At the time not a lot of people knew their music stateside, but the singer of the the band Yamatsuka Eye had released a solo album full of samples of “The Pod” so we knew he was a fan. After meeting at these 2 shows we arranged for him to come to our studio (we were working on “Chocolate and Cheese” in Pennington, NJ) and he stayed with me and my family for about a week. His English was minimal at best and he spent the whole time at my house roughhousing with my border collie Jimmy, which I loved. He couldn’t get enough of Jimmy, throwing the ball, chasing the stick, it was incredible to see and Jimmy loved it, being a Border Collie and all. Not being able to really communicate in the studio was an advantage, we tried anything and everything. He spent time inventing contraptions to sing through, like an Evian bottle as a megaphone taped to a snare head with the other side mic’ed up with vibrating snares, shit like that. He was an animal on the microphone. One night he and I were driving home at 3am and a deer jumped in front of my little Nissan. I totalled the car and the deer lay dead, steaming in the road. Eye was going batshit, I dunno if he’d ever seen a deer in person and I was laughing my ass off, it’s pretty typical around here to run into deer and I hated the car. Anyway, after he left he went back to Japan and the Boredoms wrote the second half of the album and mailed it over to us. We overdubbed our tracks and that was that. Eye named the band “Z-Rock Hawaii” which was the most perfect name in the world for the record. In the studio it was just me, Aaron, and Andrew Weiss and Eye. I think Claude may have played some drums on there too actually. We did some 4-tracking at my house which I’ve never been able to find for some reason.
Question::
This may seem off topic, then again I guess there is no set topic
here. What do you think about video games as they currently exist? Do
you think any genre of video games could be considered art? Better
yet, do you play them? I’m interested to see your take on it.
A- I have a great concept for a game, “Call of Doody”. You’re dropped into any of 300 random levels and you have to take a shit (there is a pressure meter on the top of the screen). Say you’re at like Macy’s, you have 3 minutes to find a bathroom and it might be out of order, the seat might be covered in vomit, etc. Or at a bus station in Gary, Indiana–the possibilities are endless and everyone would love this game. I have copyrighted this idea. if anyone knows how to write the code I will personally commission the project.
Question::
A couple of buddies and I are planning on holing up for a weekend in
my house (on LBI) sometime soon in hopes of getting a bunch of
recording done of the dozens of songs we’ve written over the past
couple years. Besides beer and gear, what else do we need to get the
most out of the session(s)?
Cheers!
A- I love it! Yeah, you need some surf rods and fishing gear! It is the perfect way to relax and get inspired when you get tired of recording or uninspired. You can also make day trips to A.C. to gamble, I brought my golf clubs and played golf in Manahawkin sometimes if that’s your thing. Cool stuff though, I loved my time there writing and recording.
Question::
What microphones would you recommend to a poor dude trying to get a
decent sound recording acoustic guitar and vocals?
A- For a poor guy? You should be able to get every single sound you need out of a Shure 57 or 58, Beta or otherwise. I pretty much use them for everything except kick drum where I use an SM 67.
Question::
Do you like the music of Tom Waits?
A- I have very weird relationship with the music of Tom Waits. He’s obviously a super talented songwriter, but his “thing” really rubs me the wrong way a lot of the time. I loved “Rain Dogs” when it came out and I have a few of his other albums as well. I like his songwriting very much but he’s not on my a-list, sometimes that same grating drunken singing voice thing he does really rubs me the wrong way.
Question::
Merry Christmas, Deaner. What’s the best gift you’ve ever been given
and why?
A- Xmas of 1985 most definitely, I had just turned 15 years old. I had a couple of junker guitars and I really wanted a Fender guitar. My dad did some investigating and had one of the mechanics (who was a guitarist) from Keat’s Ford in Trenton pick out a Stratocaster for me. I scoured the house all through December that year and found it hidden under their bed in it’s brand new case. I could only sneak in and play it when no one was home, which I did every minute I had a chance. X-mas day couldn’t come soon enough. I had already written like 5 songs on it by the time X-mas morning rolled around. The first Fishbone e.p. had just been released and I had just seen them at City Gardens in Trenton (hence the cool vintage t-shirt). Nothing will ever beat that gift. I traded it away later the next year for an old Fender Mustang as I became a guitar snob, but I wish like hell I still had it. Why have my best guitars always been red?
Also, here is a funny video from the New Hope High School talent show (which we won this year). I’m playing my Jazzmaster, Aaron is playing Bass, and Chrissy Serino is on drums. That’s my good friend Scott Lowe on vocals performing “Boys” by the Beatles.
It has been one hell of a year for many of us. Your responses to my last post were a reaffirmation of the inherent good in most people. I have received thousands of pages of email from people weighing in with their thoughts and feelings regarding the CT shootings, way too many to post here. Maybe I will try and compile some of the more insightful emails, but first I just wanted to say that the sheer volume of heartfelt responses gives me the tiniest little bit of hope that we are not completely lost just yet. Thank you for that. The media is really pissing me off right now but that doesn’t mean we should forget how we feel right at this moment. We can use this as an opportunity to have a real dialogue and make real changes to the way we handle the mentally ill in our country (for starters). That’s all for now. Pray for peace.
First of all this is not about me, but I feel like if I didn’t express my opinions and outrage over the Connecticut shootings then I wouldn’t be using the opportunity given to be me by being a semi-successful musician who’s opinions people will actually read. This is a picture of me and my son Michael waiting for the bus on his first day of Kindergarten. he is 5 years old in this picture. I have never been more afraid for him and myself as I was on this morning. I picked out those clothes for him, my wife and I went and bought him the backpack and the school supplies. Watching the bus pull away felt wrong in every single cell in my body, we were sending him off into the big bad world and entrusting him to people we hadn’t every really met except during orientation night. Immediately my mind started racing with fear, did another kid offer him a seat, was he making friends, was his teacher nice, is he blending in, is he enjoying himself, etc? All day I counted the minutes until he came home so I could hear about his day, praying that it went well and he was enjoying himself and fitting in with his classmates. Well, as it turns out he was just fine and loved it, he still likes school for now thankfully at age 12. Now all I can think about is how 20 sets of parents must have felt when hearing that their kids were gunned down in an absolutely senseless act of murder that ended with the gunman (as always) taking his own life, what would be the 27th life taken that day. My heart absolutely bleeds for them, I have to stop thinking about it after a few minutes because I feel myself become physically ill. My question is the same one as many people have, couldn’t he have just skipped the other 26 lives and gotten right to the point? Where does mankind go from here and how did this happen, where does the discussion even begin? What can we do IMMEDIATELY to prevent this from happening again. This shit happens all of the time the days and I’m sick and tired of it. The level of grief that I feel for the victims of this tragedy is immeasurable. We are not a civilized people anymore, a 20 year old should have more compassion and empathy for mankind, if he were mentally ill there must have been some early warning signs that something was amiss and someone (or more likely many people) were negligent in their lack of early intervention. This mystery shooter is the product of a very sick and godless society. I don’t want to donate money to the victim’s families, I want to do much, much, more. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Any ideas? Would a ban on handguns be enough? Do we home school our kids now? Do we turn Kindergarten classrooms into maximum security institutions? I’m being serious here, somebody please say something intelligent and bring some ideas and clarity to what just happened and how to prevent it from happening again. I hate when people say this, but if you’re not a parent then you just simply don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t value your ideas and opinions, just please don’t make light of this and don’t dare make jokes right now. You know how to reach me. Thank you for listening.