FREEMAN – The Parish, Austin, Texas 10/25/14 (SHOW REVIEW)

You can take Gene Ween out of Ween, but you can’t take the Ween out of Aaron Freeman. This fact was established within the first moments of Aaron Freeman taking the stage at the Parish on Saturday night. With his new band, aptly and perhaps metaphorically named FREEMAN, the former Ween frontman appeared healthy, happy and ready to rock.

In contrast to Ween, who could dig into a hefty catalogue and mix it up every show, FREEMAN’s setlists have remained mostly the same on this tour. This could be due to his young backing band, but is most likely because it makes more sense to focus on the new songs as opposed to spending ninety minutes playing Ween. That would obviously satisfy die-hard fans of the Brown, but would hold Freeman back from moving onto the next stage of his career. Somewhat surprising was that the new songs actually sounded fantastic live, greatly surpassing the studio versions, which have received mixed reviews from fans. “The English and Western Stallion” was a triumphant exploration in power pop while the band slowed down but kept the mood cheerful with “All the Way to China.” Predictably, the first Ween song in the set, “Transitions,” received massive applause and found new life in Chris Boerner’s jazzy, Mark Knopfler-esque guitar solo. The same can be said for “Exactly Where I’m At” off 2000’s White Pepper, which careened into delightful spacey chaos.

One of the biggest responses of the night came during the bizarrely catchy Ween staple “Your Party” when keyboardist Zach Tenorio-Miller may have made himself star of the show after busting out a huge, rollicking organ solo. He continued his streak with sultry tinkering on Ween’s “Demon Sweat,” with Freeman belting out dark, smoky vocals before disappearing into the red haze of the fog machine and letting the band rip it up on the instrumentals.

Seeing Aaron Freeman’s trademark silly facial contortions while singing Ween classics like “Happy Colored Marbles” and “Freedom of 76” was certainly enjoyable to fans, but it was equally if not more special to see this performer embracing his new band and songs. Though he has talked in interviews about dealing with the judgments and expectations of longtime fans (http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/07/aaron-freeman-life-after-gene-ween/), Freeman was fully in his element when presenting new songs like “Give Me One More” with balls out rock and roll bravado, and the reflective, spiritual “Golden Monkey,” the latter of which saw the band offering up a tripped out, creepy intro that included a subtle “Spinal Meningitis” tease.

The band left the stage after closing appropriately with the confessional “(For a While) I Couldn’t Play My Guitar Like a Man,” a song that sees Freeman coming to terms with a darker time in his life and conquering the demons while bearing the distinctive Gene Ween sound. As he has done for other stops on this tour, Freeman took requests for the first encore. He eventually settled on the darkly hilarious Ween tune “Baby Bitch,” leading the audience on a sing-a-long before wrapping up an outstanding night of music with a rousing cover of  Prince’s “I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man.”