The Dean Ween Group

The Dean Ween Group marked Mickey Melchiondo's initial venture once Ween entered a four-year hiatus throughout much of the 2010s. As a teenager in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Melchiondo began using the Dean Ween alias, the same period when he and Aaron Freeman—who went by Gene Ween—started the band at age 14, never expecting those nicknames to define them permanently. Emerging as a post-punk act fixated on Prince, Ween evolved into a cult favorite during the 1990s, building momentum through shifts from independent labels to major ones while cultivating a fierce reputation for live performances. Throughout that decade Melchiondo also pursued outside work, most consistently with the hardcore outfit Moistboyz yet also contributing to releases by Yoko Ono, Ben Vaughn, Pigface, and Queens of the Stone Age. Ween continued until Freeman's departure in 2012. Several years later Melchiondo assembled the Dean Ween Band, whose debut album appeared in fall 2016, only months after he and Freeman resumed joint concerts. Around the same time he began captaining a fishing boat off the Jersey Shore under the name Mickey's Guide Service, an enterprise that occupied him while he considered his next steps after Ween. He also appeared on Low Cut Connie's Hi Honey, issued in 2015. For the Dean Ween Group he enlisted longtime Ween touring musicians Claude Coleman, Glenn McClelland, and Dave Dreiwitz, first for a series of New Hope residencies and subsequently to record The Deaner Album, which surfaced in October 2016, again several months after Ween's live reunion dates with Freeman.