100205 Ween, Burlington, VT

On October 2nd, 2005 I drove down for the first night (only) of a two-night run of the great Ween at Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont.  The show was fantastic.

The next morning my friend Bradm and I got up early-ish to trek back to Ottawa.  I left Bradm to do the checking out while I headed out to the parking lot to bring the car around.  As I left the hotel I could see Deaner (AKA Dean Ween, AKA Mickey Melchiondo, AKA the guitarist from Ween) standing outside, dressed nice and goofy and obviously waiting for an early round of golf (as a huge Ween fan I know that Deaner likes to go golfing whenever he can when they are on tour).

As I walked by I called out, “Hey Deaner, what kind of strings do you use?”  It was a reference to a song the band had debuted at the previous night’s show, a song called Leave Deaner Alone! that included lines like, “Don’t come up and hand me your demo tape”, and “Don’t ask me what kind of strings I use.”

Deaner looked up at me with a it’s-too-early kind of confusion, and then quickly got the joke and gave me a wave and a chuckle as I continued on.  I found the car, pulled it around to the front of the hotel and waited for Bradm to finish checking out.  As I sat there in my own sleepy daze a knock came on my window.  I turned and there was Dean Ween motioning for me to roll down my window.

“Hey, you’re from Canada, huh?” he asked, noticing my plates.  “Yeah,” I answered.  Then he went on to tell me that he was half-Canadian as his mom was from Manitoba (or was it Saskatchewan?), a fact that surprised me.  He asked if I was coming to the show that night – I wasn’t ‘cuz I had to work – and we just generally chatted for two or three minutes.

He asked if I was hitting any more of their shows on the tour and I said no, that I wanted to go to Rochester but the show was sold out.  “Oh, I’ll put you on the guest list,” he said.

“Nah,” I replied.

“Why not?” he asked me.

Now, I had been in the rock and roll business for a little while at this point, long enough to know from experience that a guitar player can promise a lot of things early in the morning that he’ll soon forget were promised.  And I told him so.

“Nah, I’ll end up driving all the way to Rochester and you’ll forget to put me on the list,” I said dismissively.  

“No, I’ll remember,” he insisted.

“No, you won’t,” I insisted right back.  

Just then his ride arrived.  “See that guy,” Mickey asked me.  “That’s our tour manager, I’m going to give him your name right now and he’ll remember.”

Okay, I had to admit that a tour manager would remember.  They (we) remember everything.  That’s their (our) job.

Anyways, I thanked him and off he went for his golf.  Bradm soon joined me and was a little miffed that he had missed the whole encounter.

In the end I didn’t go to Rochester and man, do I regret it.  A friend was driving down and I could have gone with him, but I was still worried that somehow, some way I would end up in the parking lot without a ticket so out of a overwhelming amount of prudence I stayed home.  Then I found out after the fact that my friend had an extra ticket after all, so even if Mickey and his manager had forgotten (and I doubt they would have, between the two of them) I still would have gotten into the show.

In my mind the ticket Mickey left for me came with a backstage pass where we would have become fast friends and maybe even jammed.  And then when Ween broke up three years later I would’ve been the first guy Mickey called.  We would have started writing together and started our own band, Ween II (or something even more clever).  Oh, the music we would have made!

So yeah, I regret not going to Rochester.  Lesson learned.