Ween’s ongoing archival campaign is getting considerably more, well, brown. Following this year’s deluxe reissue of 12 Golden Country Greats and the 2024 expansion of Chocolate and Cheese, the band is digging even deeper into its ’90s vaults with Boognish Provides, a sprawling new collection of live recordings from the tour in support of the latter album.
Due Oct. 16 via Rhino, the set collects seven complete, previously unreleased concerts recorded between October 1994 and June 1995 — the period when Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween) and Mickey Melchiondo (Dean Ween) were taking the manic genre-hopping of their records onto the road with a full backing band for the first time. It’s also named after the “demon god” Freeman claims appeared to him as a teenager and instructed him to hang out with Melchiondo.
The deluxe version sprawls across 14 CDs, while a 2LP edition distills the seven shows down to 19 performances. The concerts were recorded at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, Ca., the Metro in Chicago, First Avenue in Minneapolis, Athens, Ga.’s 40 Watt Club, Hof Ter Lo in Antwerp, Boulder, Co.’s Fox Theatre and Philadelphia’s Trocadero Theatre.
Chocolate and Cheese marked a major transition for Ween as its first professional studio album after years of four-track experimentation and the seven shows find the band digging into 12 of the album’s 16 tracks across the collection. There are multiple takes of “I Can’t Put My Finger on It,” “Take Me Away” and “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down), along with a rare acoustic “Voodoo Lady” and what’s billed as the live debut of “A Tear for Eddie.”
But, naturally, Ween isn’t content to stay in one era. The set reaches back to GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, The Pod and Pure Guava with “Fat Lenny,” “Doctor Rock” and “Push Th’ Little Daisies,” while also offering early live versions of songs that wouldn’t officially appear until later albums — including “Piss Up a Rope” from 12 Golden Country Greats, “The Blarney Stone” from The Mollusk and “Flutes of Chi” from White Pepper.
The 2LP sampler is highlighted by a 24-minute version of “Vallejo” recorded in Athens and out digitally now. According to tour sound engineer Kirk Miller, the performance was especially wild, ending with Melchiondo diving over the drum kit into drummer Claude Coleman and the pair then rolling down stairs into the dressing room.
Ween took a five-year break from the road between 2011-2016 but performed with some regularity until 2024, when it announced it would “step away from the stage for the foreseeable future.” At the time, the decision was attributed to concerns about Melchiondo’s mental health. No further updates have been provided about whether the group will return to activity onstage or in the studio.