In a new interview with Denver Westworld, Ween drummer Claude Coleman Jr. discusses the band’s much anticipated reunion at the 1STBANK Center in Broomfield, CO this upcoming weekend, February 12-14, and what its been like for him along his way to recovery from a 2002 near-fatal car accident.
When asked if he was more surprised about the upcoming reunion or the Aaron Freeman’s decision to retire from Ween in 2012, he says, “Boognish almightily rose through the smoldering, smoking cracks of subterranean Earth and into the sky, and slapped Gene and Dean upside their heads with 25 feet of flaccid penis and told them to get their shit together. In other words, the universe more or less initiated the return of Ween.”
Coleman characterizes the reunion as a bit of an “inevitability,” explaining, “If you’ve got a business and people are lining up for miles and miles, waiting year after year on the street for you to just open and sell to them, eventually common-fucking-sense trumps ego, and you open the door to…make the world happy while feeding your family in the process. Musicians can be so self-important and uptight. There’s an old joke: ‘How do you make a musician complain? Get him a gig!’”
In terms of the Ween-Colorado marriage, Coleman notes, “Colorado has always had big love for Ween. I would bet we could pull off a residency at Red Rocks. As far as why Denver — well, our last shows as a band were at the Fillmore, so it seems a fitting place to pick back up, I reckon. That, and you have awesome edible medicinals for stress.”
He adds that “the band as players are in the best form of our lives,” and to “expect a bloodletting” for these shows. These echo the sentiments of Michael “Mickey” Melchiondo, Jr. aka Dean Ween who revealed last week that the band plans on playing more than 100 songs over the three-night stand. Certainly not for the faint of heart.
Coleman also opened up in the interview with Westworld about the balancing act that goes into being both being mentally and physically fit, especially for someone who is still dealing with injuries sustained in a car accident more than a decade ago:
“I can’t speak for anyone else’s mental and physical well-being,” he says. “For me, I’ll be in recovery for the rest of my life trying to reclaim feeling on the lost side of my body, working to overcome chronic pain and paralysis. It took a painful while to re-acclimate to playing three-hour Ween shows again, so while I’ve sort of figured it out, I’m still trying to get another .03 percent more control of my body so as not to smash my knuckles open into everything from the loss of sensation. It’s a challenge I’m down for.”
Read the entire interview with Claude Coleman Jr. of Ween over at the Denver Westword, here.