12 GOLDEN COUNTRY GREATS

Ween: Gene Ween, Dean Ween. Additional personnel: The Jordanaires (vocals); Pete Wade (guitar, dobro, 6-string bass); Russ Hicks (pedal steel); Buddy Blackman (banjo); Buddy Spicher (fiddle, mandolin); Denis Solee (clarinet); Hargus "Pig" Robbins, Bobby Ogdin (piano); Charlie McCoy (bass, harmonica, percussion, vibraphone, organ, trumpet, tenor banjo, tuba); Bob Wray, Kip Paxton (bass); Buddy Harman, Gene Chrisman (drums). Recorded at Bradley's Barn, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, on November 2-8, 1995. As the title implies, this is Gene and Dean Ween's Nashville move. And for those familiar with the duo's flexible and comedic musical nature: no, they're not faking the cowboy swagger or shedding counterfeit tears in their beers just for the sake of digging through the one genre their previous records didn't excavate. Backed by a who's who of Music City session players, Ween has produced an authentic update of the late-'60s/early-'70s countrypolitan sound--weepy pedal steel, footloose harmonica, boogie piano, the Jordanaires crooning in the background, pristine production, pretty much all the fixins. But if you're looking for a collection of cornball breakup songs and half-baked cowboy tales, well, as Judas Priest says, you've got another thing coming. Gene and Dean, after all, have their own standards to live up to; and they've never above lowering them. So the breakup song ("Piss Up A Rope") is viciously upbeat; the sinner's repentance is titled "Help Me Scrape The Mucus Off My Brain"; and even the one serious song, the Lennon-esque "You Were The Fool," contains the kind of cosmic couplets country fans would normally have to reach pretty far afield (toward, say, Gram Parsons) to find. Such Ween-foolery allows Gene and Dean to have their country, in a most heartfelt way, and eat it too.