Dean Ween Fishes for the Answer to Inner Peace – Every Chance He Gets
NEW HOPE, PA: On Ween’s MySpace site, among the other amazing ditties there, you will find a deep song of longing called “Ocean Man”. This is not just another Ween rock abstraction. No, this is the purest story ever told of band co-founder Dean Ween’s life. Dig upon the lyrics:
Dean Ween: The one in the jacket.
“Ocean man, take me by the hand, lead me to the land that you understand,/ Ocean Man, the voyage to the corner of the globe is a real trip/Ocean Man, the crust of a tan man imbibed by the sand/Soaking up the thirst of the land…”
Get the gist? Even if you thought nothing could beat recording and touring the planet in Ween – whose frenetic/drug-soaked/classic pop music experiments have made them legends in their own time since 1984 – Dean AKA Mickey Melchiondo has another think coming. His alternate life as a USCG certified ship captain for his company, Archangel Sportfishing, is actually what keeps him motivated and fresh creatively.
When Melchiondo and his angler charges hits the waves in one of his two boats coming out of Belmar, NJ, he never looks back – not until they’ve landed a mess of Bluefin Tuna that is. And while it may seem like just another bit of fun ‘n’ games to hear Dean Ween, — who along with Gene Ween gave birth to legendary genre-spanning albums like The Pod, Pure Guava, 12 Golden Country Greats, and The Mollusk – pontificate on pontoons, the fact is that Melchiondo’s love for fishing is all about balance.
Are you cultivating another head? According to Dean Ween, nourishing a serious hobby may be the best career move you can make.
I haven’t fished since my Dad and I sat on a dock in Algonquin Park, Canada when I was four years old. Tell me and others like me what I’m missing, if I haven’t gone on a boat and fished charter style. In other words, what’s so great about it?
Well, I take the guesswork out of it for people. Because I’ve been doing it my whole life, I have all the things I’ve learned, and the people I network with that share info. I can put people closer to the trophy fish of a lifetime, if they hire me. And I’m easy to hang out with.
I love what I do. I get the same excitement out of putting people on fish as I do landing a fish myself. I’m up at 3:30 in the morning during the season, and I love it. It’s a really good honest, healthy lifestyle. When I’m out there, I don’t have anything else on my mind except the moment.
It’s a lot like playing guitar: You’re in the moment the whole time, you lose yourself in it and it’s very healthy. That’s why I do it. It’s a real contrast for me. Out of all the work that Ween has done over 27 years, very little of it is playing music. I’m on the phone all day, I’m proofing T-shirt artwork. The real rewarding part of it is the actual music: on stage or in the studio, writing songs or playing it back. Or that post-orgasmic feeling after the show.
It’s very much a contrast to the fishing thing which is not tumultuous in any way. I’m more suited to standing on a beach at 2 AM. It gets me through a lot of long tours, knowing in three days I’ll be on the shore by myself alone.
Sounds great. So are you booking a lot of trips?
Can you spot the happier creature in this picture?
I’ve been blessed enough to use the one thing from Ween to enable me to have a lot of trips booked. I have a lot of fans who charter me. But some people come from local tackle shops, that I never even mentioned to them I’m in a band. I get hired a lot to do bachelor and birthday parties and interact with fans directly. My home phone number is on the website: They talk to me, I write them down and meet them at the boat.
How has being a member of Ween prepared you for the fishing life?
I don’t know if one has any bearing on the other, except that it gives me a lot of advantages over a lot of my friends chartering locally. A lot of being a captain is getting repeat customers, and after three years I have a lot of repeat customers. You’ll fish with them forever if you can put them on fish. You create monsters and that’s the goal. They’re hooked for life — literally.
What’s more satisfying – catching a 100 pound bluefin tuna, or mastering a masterpiece like The Mollusk? Why?
They’re both gratifying in their own way. Right now I would rather go out and go after tuna.
I’ve made a lot of records. We’re fortunate enough in our band that we’ve had some level of success. Music stays forever and ever, and I would always rather make a good record than tour. It’s shame, because now in the industry records are not as important as they used to be, because of the iPod media players. Vinyl was cool, and CD’s at least had artwork, but now an album is a lost art, and Ween is very much an album band. We never had a hit single, and never tried to.
It’s a frustrating period for us, because not a lot of people are doing it like that. The MP3 format has cheapened the product, the finished piece of art. It’s like looking at a painting through a pair of binoculars — not the way it was meant to be experienced. I enjoy both things very, very much, but it’s getting hard to get motivated to make the best album we haven’t made yet — which I think we haven’t. But The Mollusk is as close as they come.
So which is the bigger money pit: A fishing trawler or a recording studio?
Fishing by far. I thought golf was expensive, but fishing definitely blows it away. You never have a big enough boat, you never have as much horsepower as you want, and being a charter captain, I have to buy six of everything: six rod-and-reel combos, six lines for bait, for tuna, for small mouth bass. I put a lot of money into it, but I think I’m pretty much dialed in. My boat’s paid for.
In Ween, you wear your musical influences on your sleeve. What fisherpeople have inspired you?
Always aquatically inspired.
There’s not a lot of them. People say, “Can you make a lot of money on that?” and I say, “Tell me the world’s most famous fisherman.” It’s a labor of love. If you can do anything with fishing and get paid for it, then you’ve been blessed, whether it’s running a tackle shop or a charter.
Why do you think having a parallel career track is important, for you and for any music professional?
For a lot of years, I identified myself with Ween. My quality of life was identified with how good the music we were writing at the time was. As your confidence builds, you need something else to separate, so it’s not just work.
My wife used to wake up all through the ‘90’s and go to work at 6:30 in the morning. I’d have a cup of coffee and record all day. Obviously, you can’t do that your whole life, especially as you get busier with the other stuff that has nothing to do with music, like spending time on the phone with your manager. So at a certain point, I made a conscious effort to pull back – make the music sacred, enjoyable and fun so I would want to do it.
Fishing has enabled me to do that. That’s very important, because you can’t just have work in your life. If you’re a creative person and love what you do, it’s important for it to not become a drag. When I go on tour, I can’t wait to play a show if I know the fishing is waiting for me at home. It’s cheesy to say it, but I’ve never been happier and more settled than these last five years.
Last question: What’s your take on that classic fishing story, The Old Man and the Sea?
Ernest Hemmingway is my hero. Islands in the Stream is a great book for watermen — it’ll make you want to move to Key West. Except for the suicide part of it, I’d love to model my life after him.
Yes, you CAN book a fishing trip with Dean Ween. Visit Mickeysfishing.com. In the meantime, get a taste of the experience right here. .
— David Weiss
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