Ween : Live In Toronto Canada

In November of 1995, we went to Nashville to record our 5th album,

12 Golden Country Greats, with an all-star lineup of veteran

Nashville session players. With the help of our producer and

longtime friend Ben Vaughn, we put together a backing band of the

best players from the golden age of country music to record 10

country flavored tunes we had written that year.



This posed a problem upon the release of the record in the summer of

the next year. Most of that band had long since retired from touring

and we ruled out the possibility of playing shows to support the

release of the album. Instead, we planned on playing two shows in

one night at Tramps on July 17, 1996 in New York City and tried to see

if the musicians would make the trip for a long weekend.



The person who seemed the most interested in the project from the

beginning was Bobby Ogdin, who played piano on most of the record.

He assured us that he could put together an incredible nashville band

for the shows, so he became our musical directo so to speak. I sent

him CDs of all of our records and he wrote charts for the band.

We had only two days to rehearse for the gig and I was completely

terrified...I don't think I slept a minute the night before.

As it turns out, the shows were a great success; the music was

completely over the top and the crowd basically freaked out.

Everyone in the band wanted to do more so we decided on a 3 week

American tour starting in october that same year. It turned out to be

the most rewarding experience of our musical career. I don't think

we played a bad show the whole tour-the 8 piece band sounded like a

747 landing on your house.



The music on this record was recorded on October 23rd in Toronto at

The Phoenix, the last night of a hard run of 5 shows in a row. The thing

I remember the most about this night is that the World Series was

taking place, and the band was split between Yankee fans (us) and

Braves fans (the Nashville guys) and the game was on a TV at the bar

in the back of the club, 100 yds. away from the stage. This was the

night that Jim Leyritz hit a late inning home run that turned the

series in the yanks favor and doomed the Braves to 5 more years of

underachieving and mediocrity.



This concert was recorded on cassette by our longtime soundman

Kirk Miller and pretty much captures the drunken essence of what

this band sounded like on a good night. I hope you enjoy listening to

it as much as we did making it.



Dean Ween



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