Quebec (album)

The album was the band's first record since 1991's The Pod to be released on an independent label, as Ween's contract with Elektra Records expired following 2000's White Pepper. The three-year gap between albums was the longest for the band up to this point. The album was originally titled Caesar. It was changed to Quebec because, according to Dean Ween, "Our vision is like this rainy, colder than Paris, Parisian place. The vibe of our record is like romantic and rainy without being as classy as Paris. That was why we called it Quebec, it's like this B-version of Leonard Cohen." ==Themes==

The recording of Quebec saw the band deal with many struggles in their professional and personal lives. Gene Ween was going through a divorce from his first wife, Dean Ween was dealing with drug issues and "partying way too hard", Claude Coleman was recovering from a life-threatening car crash that left him unable to perform on the record (with drumming instead being primarily handled by Josh Freese), and the band was moving from Elektra to a smaller, independent label. As a result, many of the songs on the album deal with drug abuse, mental health issues, and failing relationships. Gene Ween has admitted to taking inspiration from his divorce, saying to PopMatters: “I wrote most of these songs right before the end. A lot of these songs are about that. Even if it’s not direct, you can feel the beginning of the end of the breakup in these songs.”. Reflecting on these themes in 2007, Dean Ween said to The A.V. Club: "With Quebec, I like it as a record, but it's very negative. It's one of our darker records, I think. I don't listen to any of our records, but I have never listened to that one." ==Reception==

The album received generally positive reviews from music critics. Mark Prindle named Quebec the best album of the 2000s in an interview on Fox News Channel's Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Mojo named it the No. 39 best album of 2003. CMJ named it the No. 8 best album of 2003. == Track listing ==

All tracks written by Ween. == Soundtrack appearances and covers==

The song "It's Gonna Be a Long Night" is featured in the video games ''Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and ATV Offroad Fury 3, as downloadable content in the Rock Band franchise, and in the TV show The Shield''. The song "If You Could Save Yourself (You'd Save Us All)" was featured in episode 7 of The Morning Show. "Tried and True" and "Transdermal Celebration" appeared in the second season of Superman & Lois with the former being featured in the sixth episode of the same name. Devin Townsend covered "Transdermal Celebration" for his album Transcendence in 2016. Water from Your Eyes covered "If You Could Save Yourself (You'd Save Us All)" in 2024. == The Caesar Demos ==

On August 11, 2011, Dean Ween quietly released a two-disc, MP3-only collection of songs, The Caesar Demos, named after the band's original working title for Quebec, to friends on his Facebook page. In his comment, he stated the songs were all recorded between 2001 and 2003 while drummer Claude Coleman, Jr. was recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident, and that many of the tracks featured only himself and Gene. In addition to a handful of recordings that eventually made the album, the demos feature several alternate takes as well as a number of songs that have remained unreleased. well what can i say about this here, lemme see. the first thing that comes to mind is that all the while we were doing this we still had claude coleman on drums, he eventually got into a major car wreck and wasn't around when it finally came time to make the "real" record. instead the drum duties fell on me, josh freese, and sim cain for a couple of tunes. almost all of this was recorded at our beach house in holgate, nj onto 16 track tape. a tiny bit of it was recorded in the garage behind aaron's house in pt. pleasant, pa. some of it was recorded in the spare bedroom of my house in new hope. most of the tunes are just me and aaron, with the two of us playing everything, with me on drums. the songs with claude, dave, and glenn are pretty obvious. on just a few tunes we took what you hear here and cleaned them up and had andrew weiss mix them for the record after some overdubs. dave sings on "it's gonna be a long night", this was days before he had surgery to remove polyps in his throat and his voice was really rough so we figured he was the guy for the job. This isn't even all of the tunes that we ended up choosing from, just the ones i happened to burn to cd before we drove home from the beach every week. hope you dig it for what it is. A few of the songs on the Caesar Demos would end up on later records by the band. "Someday" and "I Fell In Love Today" would later be featured on the B-sides compilation Shinola, Vol. 1, while a slightly rewritten version of "Don't Let The Moon Catch You Crying" would end up on Dean Ween's second solo album rock2. == Personnel ==

Ween: • Gene Ween – Vocals (ext 1, 12), Bass guitar (track 2, 9, 11), Keyboards (tracks 2, 5, 7, 13), Omnichord (tracks 2, 8, 9), Acoustic guitar (track 4), Synthesizers (tracks 4, 12), Drum Machine (tracks 5, 7), Electric guitar (tracks 7, 9, 11, 13, 14), Effects (track 12) • Dean Ween - Electric guitar; Vocals (track 1), Bass guitar (tracks 1, 3-8, 12, 14, 15), Keyboards (track 2), Drum Machine (tracks 2, 8), Electric Sitar (tracks 3, 6), Drums (tracks 5, 11, 12), Vocoder (track 5), Acoustic guitar (tracks 6, 10, 15), Synthesizers (track 12), The Waste (track 13) • Glenn McClelland - Organ (tracks 1, 15), Keyboards (tracks 3, 10, 14), Piano (tracks 14, 15), Accordion (track 15) • Dave Dreiwitz - Bass guitar (track 10) Additional Musicians: • Sim Cain - Drums (track 1) • Andrew Weiss - Keyboards (tracks 2, 3, 6, 11), Fretless Bass guitar & Percussion (track 2), The Waste (track 4, 13), Additional drums (track 6), Synthesizers & Strings (tracks 9, 15) • Josh Freese - Drums (tracks 3, 7, 9, 10, 14, 15) Production: • Ween – arranger • Andrew Weiss – producer, arranger, mixing • Christopher Shaw – mixing • Ted Young – mixing assistant • Howie Weinberg – mastering == Charts ==