You might have picked up on the fact that we’re big Ween fans around these parts in the last few months. We’re hopeful that one day the band will get back together and we’re happy to hear that the first step towards a potential reconciliation between Dean and Gene Ween has taken place, as per a new NJ.com interview.

There was a long period of time when Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo and Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman weren’t communicating after Freeman broke up the band without consulting Melchiondo. In the interview, Deaner tells NJ.com that they have started communicating again, “It’s text messages, e-mails. It’s mostly goofy s—. We send each other funny YouTube videos or, ‘You wouldn’t believe this just happened.’ Whatever the process is of Ween, whether Ween gets back together or not, it hasn’t come to the point yet where something is about to happen. If we get back together or when we get back together, I would like to think that we both will want to do it really badly and it won’t be something like money that makes it happen again. Right now, it hasn’t been so long where I don’t remember exactly what it was like and I feel like if we had to do a show tonight, I’m ready for it. I know exactly how the day would play out. I can imagine talking to Aaron, seeing Aaron, getting picked up in a van, going to the gig, doing the sound check.” We’re ready for that day too! Unfortunately, it seems the pair have yet to actually talk in person or on the phone.

Melchiondo goes on to discuss what circumstances would lead to a reunion, “It can’t happen without it being right and joyous. Ween is a happy, joyous thing. It makes people happy. It makes people smile. It makes people laugh. It makes people rock out. If we’re up there and we’re not happy then the whole thing is a catastrophe and it was trending towards that and it wasn’t my decision to stop it but I’m not dumb enough not to see that it was wounded. It wasn’t where it should be. It wasn’t fun all the time.” Deaner feels that Gener announcing a permanent end to Ween wasn’t the right move, “We should have taken a couple of years off. We were at that point. It was 28 years with nothing but Ween. It was time to take a break. That’s what we should have done. You can ask Aaron what he thinks and I bet in his heart of hearts, that’s maybe what he wishes he had done, just ask for three to five years off. But I get it. He needed to take charge of his situation and take control of his life. I wasn’t that empathetic at first. If we’re not back together in six months, I’ll probably even have more perspective on it.”

Melchiondo talks more about Ween, his Dean Ween & Friends gig, Les Claypool and more in the fantastic interview.