The year was 2011.
Someone showed me “Piss Up a Rope” by New Hope, Pennsylvania, rock band Ween, and my life would never be the same. Aside from countless hours pinballing through their discography, I’ve seen them live a number of times, including thrice in one week: twice at The Ryman in Nashville and again in Atlanta at The Tabernacle in 2018.
But enough about my Ween fandom history.
For many years, Ben Vaughn has been a notable singer, songwriter, producer, and TV/film composer among other titles. He formed The Ben Vaughn Combo in the 80s before going solo in the latter part of the decade, and in the dawn of the 90s, he soon began producing select records for Elektra.
As the millennium neared, he had composed music for shows like 3rd Rock From the Sun and That 70s Show among others. But it was 1995 and 1996 when he would go into Bradley’s Barn in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, to produce the iconic Ween album, 12 Golden Country Greats, to which the legendary track “Piss Up a Rope” sits third on the track list. Ripe with legendary Nashville session musicians, the album just had its 30th anniversary re-release this July with a number of added demos and long lost tracks much to the delight of the Boognish faithful.
Flash-forward to present day, when just this past Friday October 30th, Vaughn released his latest album, Magnetic East: The Deer Tick Sessions, with the multi-genre rock band Deer Tick. In most unique fashion, Vaughn wrote and sung the songs with Deer Tick providing all of the instrumentation. He also relinquished any and all control of how the songs turned out sonically, and let the band come up with their own interpretations, springing it on him in the Rhode Island studio to which they recorded it in.
Aside from Ween’s 30th anniversary of 12 Golden Country Greats, Vaughn was also gearing up to celebrate that same anniversary for a local favorite road house of his, Palms Restaurant. “My record release is at a place where you can’t find me,” he said with a laugh.
The epic adventure that is his new album, Magnetic East, was cut in just two days, and he had ample praise for Deer Tick and the work and vision they put forth.
With much delight, we got to chat with Vaughn about his time with Ween, recording his new album with Deer Tick, and more.
Can you talk about how this collaboration with Deer Tick came to be? Have you worked with them before?
So John McCauley contacted me out of the blue via email, and told me he had a band called Deer Tick, and they had been playing two of my songs. He wanted to introduce himself, and wanted to invite me to open for them for a tour they had, I’m guessing eight or nine years ago now. I wasn’t able to do that tour, but we became friends and eventually did play shows together. We did enough of those cameos where we thought it would be really cool to record together.
They had just built a studio on John’s property in a converted mule barn in Warwick, Rhode Island, so in the middle of winter, we went up there and road tested this brand new studio. We were the guinea pig project.
You’ve been in the game producing for a while now. Was there anything new and exciting you wanted to try on this album, whether it was in the creative process or the recording process?
I wanted to give up control. Deer Tick has two really great guitar players, so I decided not to play guitar at all, and I’m a lead guitar player. I wanted to hear their interpretation of what they think my songs are. I gave them no direction at all. The way we recorded was basically live with only a few overdubs.
I sat in the control room with the speakers muted while they worked out arrangements for my songs, and they would knock on the glass when it was time to record, and I’d be hearing their arrangements for the first time while singing the song. It’s an incredible experience, because in the world of music, it’s hard to have an innocent musical experience. They’re harder to find.
And as a producer, you set up the environment and atmosphere so the best music can happen. In this case, I set up an environment of not knowing what the hell they were going to do. So I had to bend to their vision of my music. I was in the mood to take a risk like that, and they were the right band to do it with. It was the best result I could get for an experiment of letting go.
How do you know when a song is finished? Do you find yourself wanting to keep tinkering and re-recording tracks?
I’m a pretty immediate creative person. I did twelve years as a Hollywood composer for TV, and they yank the work out of your hands for millions of people to hear whether you like what you did or not. Your first few ideas have to be your only ideas. Coming out of that, it beat all my neurosis and writers block out of of me. This is the idea, we are recording it, we are done. On to the next. That really helped me as a creative person.
Maybe when I’m writing a song, though. Some take a while because I feel responsibility to serve the original idea. A lot of subtraction more than anything in the writing to use only the words that you need.
You said you loved the arrangements they put together from the jump, but were there any songs you might’ve had a few notes or ideas on?
They threw a curveball on me with a song called “Rock Bottom.” They said they wanted me to start the song off on harmonica, and that they’d kick in. I almost stopped and waved my hand and said ‘what the hell are you thinking?’ What I heard made no sense to me, but I had the good sense to sing it to the end, and hoped I understood it later. And now, it’s like my favorite tune on the album.
I noticed some awesome stylistic changes throughout these tracks. “Look What The Cat Dragged” has almost a Ska like energy to it, followed by “Rain Songs” with the mandolin bringing things to a more rootsy vibe. How intentional were you in these changes, and do you have a particular rhyme and reason when ordering them for the album?
So I sequenced the record by myself, and I did that viscerally, really. I would shuffle the deck out at my desert house in the middle of nowhere where I can listen to stuff really loud. It just landed where each song that comes after the one before sounds like the right style change. Deer Tick are amazing because you can’t really define their music. It drives the marketing people nuts. It gets labeled all these genres, but really it’s just Deer Tick music. Our careers are based on ‘you’re never really sure what’s coming next.’
Were there one or two songs that you just loved right off the bat?
“When Love Returns” — I wrote that song for Englebert Humperdinck. Not that he ever heard it, [laughs] but I wrote it because I love him. There’s one song of his, “Love Was Here Before The Stars,” and I love his voice and those arrangements, so when I wrote this song, I thought of him.
It quickly became a serious song after that initial spark, though the initial spark came from more of a comical or kitschy place. I heard it as more of a swinging song, but those guys kind of turned it into a “Gentle On My Mind” type track. They took it into a folk-rock space, and it sounds so great what they did.
Part II
I do want to switch gears and talk some Ween lore, namely behind their iconic album ’12 Golden Country Greats’ album which you produced. What can you tell me about your memories working on it with those guys?
At least one person every week thanks me for recording that record [laughs]. It’s really funny too because the Ween fans before that record did not like it when it came out, because it was in tune.
The record label hated it, the press hated it, country fans hated it, and again Ween fans were confused. The great thing about Ween — and not so great thing — is their self-sabotage. Things were going really well with Elektra: ‘Push th’ Little Daises’ was big, Chocolate and Cheese was doing really well, and everything was groovy. And then Ween said ‘let’s do a country album.’
It’s really amusing to me how now over thirty years later it has become an accepted classic, but that was not the case when it came out. Those guys were always ahead of their time. They are musical geniuses.
Can you talk about how you managed to wrangle such iconic Nashville session players to pair with them and how that all came to be?
I’ve known the Ween guys since they were teenagers. So we were friends, and we played a lot of the same clubs together in South Jersey and Philly. I was doing some recording with Mickey and seeing them play, so that was already a thing. In the early 90s, I was in Nashville a lot. BMI hooked me up with a bunch of co-writers on Music Row. They saw me as a potential co-writer for country hits, and it was discovered pretty early on that I was too weird for the gig. But while I spent time in Nashville, I sought out all of the old players, because I’m just a huge fan of old country music.
The same players kept showing up: Pig Robbins, Charlie McCoy, Buddy Harmon. I kept thinking, these players are only a few years away from retirement. And when you retire from the musician’s union, you’re not allowed to do sessions anymore. You’re not allowed to collect any new revenue. It’s very, very strict. So strict, that the union used to have spies who would go around town and see if a particular person’s car was in the parking lot.
Since these guys were all about to retire, I thought, ‘someone’s gotta celebrate these guys and make a really cool record.’ Kind of shine a light on the fact that they’re still working. So when Ween asked me to produce their country album, the first thing I said was well we’ve gotta go to Nashville and use The A-Team from the old days.
I hired Charlie McCoy as the session leader, who’s all over everything, and Pig Robbins too who’s on a zillion records. A lot of those records would not be hits without Pig on piano. And I actually just saw Charlie for the first time earlier this year since we did the Ween record. I was backstage at the Opry and I introduced myself, and he goes ‘oh Ween? I keep getting questions about that record — why?’ And I said ‘because it’s one of those records that will never die.’ Generation after generation — I don’t know why, but there are people who are now 10-years-old who will be singing every word to ‘Piss Up a Rope’ in ten years [laughs].
“So that’s just Mickey twiddling the knobs like crazy during that solo. It sounds like somebody torturing a synthesizer and beating it to death.”
Do you have a favorite song from the album?
Well the one I really dig is ‘You Were The Fool.’ I remember turning the bass up on that one — well actually the guitar solo on ‘Piss Up a Rope.’ That’s probably the highlight of that record.
Was that Mickey playing the solo?
No, so we had Pete Wade, who was in Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys for years and was a session player. It was a six-string bass solo by him that was really cool but normal. It was already in an octave that was different than you’d expect, and as we’re mixing it, Mickey and I are like ‘this is really polite. This song is not polite.’ The solo was too respectful or something.
So Mickey had this gym bag with him, and he reached in and pulled out this Moogerfooger, which is this oscillator made by Electro Harmonix. We plugged it into the board, and Mickey said ‘open up a track and send that signal directly into this, I’m gonna try something.’ So that’s just Mickey twiddling the knobs like crazy during that solo. It sounds like somebody torturing a synthesizer and beating it to death.
What about working with both Mickey and Aaron individually? What were they like?
[After briefly discussing the recording of “I’m Holding You”] Aaron’s a real artist, like floating in the ether artist. Mickey’s the meat and potatoes guy who likes to get the work done.
All of these reissues with new demos and cuts are definitely amazing, and kind of helps us forget that they’re not touring (for good reason). What are your thoughts on all of these releases and their current state?
Like you and everyone else, I would love more music from them. And the reissue stuff is pretty awesome, like Shinola Volume 2 coming out soon.
That’s the whole thing about Ween is that they were always recording, constantly. All of the four-track stuff — there are hundreds of titles. I’ll never forget hearing The Pod for the first time, before it came out. And they’re like ‘dude what do you think?’ And I was like ‘uh, wow’ [laughs]. And there’s that one song, “Sorry Charlie,” that you have to buy on vinyl, and speed it up from 33 to 45 to hear it correctly.
Switching gears from Ween tales of yore and looking ahead, what might you have planned post Magnetic East release and into the new year?
I don’t have any exact days just yet, but 2027 looks like I’m going to be on stage quite a bit. By myself, with my own band, or with Deer Tick. Playing some shows on the east coast before the year ends in New York City and Philly. It’s going to be great. But this new Deer Tick record — my life is exciting all of a sudden. A lot of people really like this record, and offers are coming in, so it’s really cool.
Upcoming Appearances:
- November 7 – LOS ANGELES – In-Store Performance & Signing, Record Surplus
- November 14 – LOS ANGELES – Palmeri House Concert
- November 20 – PHILADELPHIA – With Low Cut Connie, Union Transfer
- November 21 – BROOKLYN – The Ben Vaughn Quintet at Union Pool
- November 27 – PHILADELPHIA – WXPN Free At Noon, World Cafe Live
Featured photo: Shana Cassidy
