Deaner's Tour Diary
12/1/2007 continued...
Tour Overview/Vital stats:
Ween Tour 2007 was intense for me, only because it had been a long time since we have done a proper tour, and not just a little one week trip based around some festival or an outdoor gig. I forgot what it was like to play 6 nights a week for a couple of months, it has it upsides and it's downsides. The upside is purely musical, the band members become telepathic and your playing gets sharp as a razor. The downsides are obvious, fatigue, bad food, a lot of waiting around, etc. One observation I did make was that because we've sort of moved up in venues to mostly theaters now, I've really noticed the impact of playing a seated venue, which we did a lot of. I simply don't like it. It's not really right for Ween - it's bad enough that people aren't allowed to smoke in clubs anymore, it's another thing to make them stay in an assigned seat for 2 ½ hours while we stand up there and try and raise the energy level gradually (and chain smoke our lungs out). Any of the gigs that I felt were a little flat happened in the seated venues, but like I said, that's just my opinion. Some of my personal favorite shows were in Chicago, Burlington, New York, Northampton, Ventura, Montreal, Hampton Beach, San Francisco and Portland. Here are some other vital stats:
Best catered meal of the tour:
Detroit-The Fillmore. We have some vegans in our road crew and normally I don't like to eat before a gig, but the dude who cooks at the Fillmore made us the best meal I've had in a long time, restaurants included. Little things like this mean a lot on tour. Nice one dude.
Amount of times Aaron sang the words to "Mister Richard Smoker" correctly:
None. He doesn't know the words and never has. We joke about it but it sort of bothers me after playing it for the last 12 years.
Puking
Twice for me, don't know about anyone else. Once outside of Mary's in Portland right on the sidewalk and once right before we went onstage at the Tower in Philly. Yes, we still get nervous from time to time, a hometown gig will usually get my attention pretty good.
Singular most over the top onstage moment:
Claude Coleman's drum solo in Pittsburgh, PA at Mister Smalls. We carried him off the stage on our shoulders.
Aaron's best rap:
Cleveland, House of Blues. The whole House of Blues thing is pretty cheesy you have to admit. They basically take some bar and make it look like an old roadhouse honky tonk. It's very phony and corporate, but in all fairness they always have great production there and the food isn't half bad. Aaron has a particular hatred for the places though and he almost never fails to mention it onstage when we play one. I forget exactly what he said onstage but it was something like, "You know people, there's a lot of mojo in the air tonight, there's a full moon outside, and hell, you factor in all the mojo that the House of Blues has to offer, and, basically that's a lot of mojo." Maybe you had to be there or something, but the sarcasm was killing me, even by Aaron Freeman standards.
Singular lowest moment of the tour:
Madison, Wisconsin at the Orpheum. This was an amazing show and I didn't want it to end. A great crowd and a fun gig. We were coming back onstage for the encore and some idiot threw something really hard and it hit Glenn in the temple, just to the left of his eye. He had a swollen eye and was bleeding. We didn't start the encore for about ten minutes, we just stood onstage confused about what to do. I'd love to have caught the asshole who threw it at him. I dunno why we didn't just walk back offstage.
My favorite gig:
Montreal, hands down. I don't think we can do it any better. The next night in New Hampshire was almost as good, plus we got to watch the final episode of the Sopranos.
Most bizarre situation:
After the Toronto show Dave Dreiwitz and I wanted to go out, but the club was nowhere near civilization. The Docks is a massive complex and there was a whole other club upstairs and they were hosting a costume party/rave for Russian people only. The promoter of the concert managed to get Dave and I upstairs where there were like 3 thousand Russians getting down to the lamest music I've ever heard. The women were so fucking beautiful that it was almost too much to bear. We were drenched in sweat and still wearing our stage clothes and stood out like a couple of scumbags. Every time I tried to make conversation with a girl it turned into a disaster. After 45 minutes I realized that there was starting to be enormous potential for us getting our asses kicked (or killed) so we bailed out.
Most bizarre venue:
Calgary. This was the most bizarre venue I think I ever played, like ever. It was a sports bar dedicated exclusively to the Calgary Flames.
Greatest venue:
The Aragon ballroom in Chicago is the nicest venue we've ever played (except for Red Rocks, but outdoors doesn't count). I'd be lying if I told you that we don't favor one city over another, it's like, secretly every parent has that one child that they love a little more than the others. Chicago is that way for me. This date had been glaring at me from our calendar since it was first booked. I knew that the room was gigantic, and the venue was loaded with history dating back to the early '20's. Intimidating even after 17 years of touring. When we got there I was in awe of the beauty of this place, then I was told that we were sold out, 4500 advance pre-sales. The gig was stellar, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the Chicago crowds are the best crowds in the world for Ween. The crowd just gave us everything and we tried our best to give it all back. I was so happy after this show that I had to celebrate by hitting the town with some friends. Chicago is still a real city, one of the last few big cities that has everything intact, from the old to the new and everyone takes some pride in it's history. We were privileged enough to see the catacombs beneath the Aragon, where Al Capone had his secret tunnels that lead to some other clubs around town. We also got to see an indescribable room 5 floors beneath the venue, an old speakeasy that had been converted into a virtual playground with a giant pipe organ (which filled the room), the original stage piano (which everyone in the world played on, from Duke Ellington on down), and multi-tiered model train tracks complete with steam and whistles circling the room. It was the most intense thing I've ever seen on tour, and that's saying something. All of this was shown to us by the legendary Jolly Roger, the production manager, who I've been friends with since the mid '90's when he was tour managing Pigface with whom I did a brief stint on guitar. Thank you to all the people at the Aragon and all of the killer fans in Chicago for one of the most rewarding nights of our career.