When news broke in 2012 that Aaron Freeman, better known as Gene Ween, was leaving experimental rock band Ween after 25 years, Boognish-worshiping fans around the world (myself included) were crushed.

The band, which Freeman and guitar player Mickey Melchiondo (aka Dean Ween) started when they were middle school goof-offs in New Hope, Pennsylvania, had amassed a large and cultish fanbase over the decades with a head-spinning catalogue of bizarre, funny and brilliantly unclassifiable music and killer live shows. Though Ween’s music never topped charts, it was a mainstay of music festivals and a sell-out touring band whose fans yelled back every word.

Freeman, who has gotten sober since the breakup and just put out his second solo project, hasn’t indicated a reunion any time soon. But the good news for Ween fans is that Melchiondo is continuing to, as the band tagline goes, paint the town brown.

Melchiondo and (Ween keyboarder) Glenn McClelland will come to the Animas City Theatre tonight for a show with Colorado band Brothers Keeper. The group will play Melchiondo’s favorite Ween songs, Brothers Keeper songs from their upcoming release and a handful of new Dean Ween Group tunes.

The Durango gig is part of a summer tour through Colorado with Brothers Keeper – a Vail and Roaring Fork Valley band that has played with a cast of rotating musicians like John Popper and John Oates.

Melchiondo played gigs with Scott Rednor of Brothers Keeper in New Jersey and Pennsylvania back when they both lived there. After Rednor moved West, opened the Shakedown Bar in Vail and started playing with Brothers Keeper, he invited Melchiondo out to Colorado to play some music. That resulted in four sold-out shows in Vail last winter.

“He kept telling me I had to come out because it was such a great scene, so I did, and it was,” Melchiondo wrote in an email interview. “We decided to take it out of Vail this time and travel with it because we have great chemistry, and the band is killer. We all get along really well and have the same East Coast cynical, sarcastic sense of humor ... Also, having Glenn from Ween on keyboards makes it feel like home.”

Along with Rednor on guitar, Brothers Keeper is Michael Jude on bass and John Michel on drums. The band is a throwback rock ’n’ roll outfit that has found its way into musical collaborations with Jason Crosby of Phil Lesh & Friends, DJ Logic and McClelland.

This summer tour is only one of the projects Melchiondo is working on in the wake of Ween. The Dean Ween Group features Melchiondo and a handful of musicians he’s been playing with for about a year. The band has about 80 percent of a new record in the can, Melchiondo said.

“It’s a great rock band, two guitars really loud and in your face all the time,” Melchiondo wrote. “I’ve got Dave from Ween playing bass, and at the end of every show, I’ve definitely ‘gotten mine’ as we say. There is a hell of a lot of guitar soloing.”

Melchiondo said the fan reception to the Dean Ween Group has been fantastic.

“Which is awesome, because I was scared at first, having been in only one band my whole life,” he wrote. “Never underestimate the fans, that’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years. I’ve found that if I like the music, they generally do as well. So I trust in that, and it’s always worked out, even when we made an all country-western album in 1995.”

Melchiondo is also continuing to make music with his longtime side project The Moistboyz, which features singer Guy Heller (also the lead singer of the Dean Ween Group).

“The Moistboyz, as we say, never retire,” Melchiondo wrote, adding that Heller recently moved back to New Hope after six years in Austin, Texas.

“I’m someone who needs another person to collaborate with when I’m writing, at least that’s when I think I do my best work, when I have someone to bounce ideas off of and go back and forth,” he wrote.

And after several years of working as a boat captain in his own sport-fishing venture, Melchiondo said, he is back doing music full-time.

“I’m focusing solely on music right now,” he wrote. “I spent six years being a full-time boat captain, and the hours were killing me, especially when I had gigs on the weekend!”

kklingsporn@durangoherald.com

If you go

Dean Ween, with Brothers Keeper, will play a show at 10 p.m. today at the Animas City Theatre, 128 E. College Drive. Tickets for the Durango Massive Productions show are $20 for general admission and $30 for VIP. Visit www.animascitytheatre.com for more information.