It’s a year of celebration for the iconic alt-rock weirdos of Ween, who in 2024 are marking 40 years of being a savior to stoners everywhere and 30 years since the release of Chocolate and Cheese. To mark the occasion of the latter, the band led by brothers in Boognish Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman and Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo are reissuing their pivotal fourth album with a trove of previously unreleased material, including a demo of “Voodoo Lady” which the band dropped on Friday. The demo marks the band’s second single in 14 years and follows the previously unreleased “Junkie Boy” which arrived last month.
One of Ween’s trademark songs, “Voodoo Lady” captures several hallmarks of Ween’s utterly unique style. Musical omnivores and genre chameleons, the band adopts a Bayou-style blues sound fitting for this ode to an enchantress of the Caribbean religion. Of course, Ween doesn’t shy away from diving straight into stereotypes and taboos, another calling card of the band’s music that was only possible for two white dudes from New Hope, PA to pull off in the pre-social media era.
All of those elements from the finished version are still present in the newly released demo. The main difference is that the new (old) recording is far less produced than the finished product, a decidedly more pre-Chocolate and Cheese sound. “Voodoo Lady (Demo)” certainly isn’t to the level of Brown as the band’s four-track days of GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, The Pod, or Pure Guava, but it also isn’t anywhere near as polished as The Mollusk or White Pepper—Ween’s closest thing to a “normal” record.
That stylistic middle ground is emblematic of Ween as a whole in 1994 surrounding Chocolate and Cheese, as Dean and Gene finally recorded in a professional studio for the first time and brought in drummer Claude Coleman Jr., who remains with the band to this day. While Ween’s commitment to a crude, harsh tone earned the band a cult following in its early days, Chocolate and Cheese heard the band ascend out of the basement to take a seat at the table—maybe still a little glassy-eyed—as one of the most quietly influential alt-rock acts of the ’90s.
Listen to the new old “Voodoo Lady” demo by Ween below or on your preferred platform. Ween’s expanded Chocolate and Cheese 30th-anniversary reissue is out on August 2nd, but vinyl copies are currently sold out on the band’s website. Ween is due to return to the stage that same day for a sold-out show in Bonner, MT. The band previously canceled a multi-state run of April tour dates so Dean Ween could focus on his “mental and spiritual well being.” Tickets for Ween’s 40th-anniversary summer tour are on sale here. Get well soon, Deaner.
Ween — “Voodoo Lady (Demo)”
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