Article and Photos by: Melanie Allen
One half of Ween has taken his personal project on a short and sweet tour, and The Dean Ween Group hit Austin on Friday, February 3rd.
The night’s opening act, Amandla, is the project of Ween’s original drummer, Claude Coleman Jr. The five-member group plays groovy soul-rock which is entirely recorded and written by Coleman Jr, though Amandla’s live performance sufficiently lived up to the quality of the record. Amandla has a handful of albums out, and their next, Laughing Hearts, is to be released on Valentine’s Day of this year.
The bulk of the crowd trickled in closer to 10pm, around when Deaner himself was scheduled to hit the stage. Much of the audience seemed to be Ween fans from around the time they were popular but there were a number of younger fans as well. The Deaner Album was released near the end of last year and explores many genres, parallel to the methods of Ween. The group shredded through the tracks off of The Deaner Album as well as performing a couple of Ween covers, such as “Pandy Fackler,” “I Got To Put The Hammer Down,” and the track that started off their set, “It’s Gonna Be A Long Night,” which sure riled up the viewers. Before the band’s encore, they improvised a few-minute long jam-session, switching instruments, creating loud and hard new beats. The headliner played an hour and a half set, and went a bit over their scheduled end time, which nobody minded in the slightest.