For most musicians a side project equals a solo album or getting together with friends and starting another band. For Mickey Melchiondo (a.k.a. Dean Ween of Ween) it meant he followed his obsession with fishing.
His interest began as a child growing up on the Delaware River. The urge to cast a line into a body of water stayed with him as an adult and eventually led to entries chronicling that passion on Ween’s website. From there he started the internet program Brownie Troop Fishing Show, which featured footage of his excursions.
Not satisfied, he took the next step and became a certified fishing guide, with Mickey’s Guide Service, Home of Arcangel Sportfishing. Operating out of Belmar, New Jersey, he takes clients along the Delaware River as well as for trips on the Atlantic Ocean.
On my first attempt to contact Mickey I get his voice mail. A short time later, he calls me back and we proceed to discuss his interest in fishing, how it blossomed from a hobby to a second career and the influence it has made on his ‘day job’ in Ween.
MM: It’s Mickey. Sorry, I was just taking a shower.
JPG: That’s okay. I thought maybe you were still fishing.
MM: Nah. I get done really early.
JPG: Did you start really early?
MM: Five in the morning every day.
JPG: That’s crazy early for me. That used to be my bedtime.
MM: Me, too.
JPG: The change of hours. Is it a major adjustment or you condition yourself to do it?
MM: No. I get so excited for it, sometimes, I don’t even sleep. I try and go to bed when…I have a 10 year old son. Good for me. I go to bed when he goes to bed.
Coming off tour, it’s a big adjustment. We usually go to bed like eight o’clock in the morning when we’re on tour. So, I have to transition like in one day.
JPG: How did you discover fishing?
MM: Through my Father. We had a house down the shore. We always had boats on the ocean. I’ve always lived on the Delaware River. We moved like three or four times in my life but it was always within the Delaware River Valley. We’ve always lived like, literally, right on the river. Still, to this day, I’m in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
JPG: Do you know what part of Italy your ancestors are from?
MM: Foggia, southern Italy, but it’s not Sicily. My grandmother is from Abruzzi and my grandfather is from Foggia.
JPG: The reason I bring that up is I wondered if there is a family history of being on the water or a history as fishermen.
MM: My Italian family is a horse family, actually. They came through Ellis Island and, funny enough, they got a job with the New Jersey State Police taking care of the horses in the stables in West Trenton, which is still where they live. Right by the barracks. My grandmother’s still alive. My grandfather’s not alive.
JPG: Then, the fishing interest is completely based from your dad to you? Are you getting your son into fishing?
MM: I take him out a lot. It’s funny. I’m really into fishing and really into guitar playing and I don’t try to cram either thing down his throat because I’m pretty over the top about both things. He’s a music lover and he’s been fishing with me a million times. So, I just hope…whatever direction he wants to go is fine by me.
JPG: Sometimes it skips a generation.
MM: The Mussolini fascist in me wants to force him to play guitar. (laughs) I don’t do that because he’s only 10.
JPG: Now, because of the crazy life of a touring and recording musician, is the attraction the calmness of fishing, kind of like musicians and athletes getting away from it all by playing golf?
MM: Absolutely 100 per cent dead on balls accurate correct. I think just the turgid lifestyle of that. I feel like as Ween has gone on it was always my, lines are still blurry between whether it’s my hobby or whether it’s my job. I get paid for it. Pays for my mortgage, so, it’s obviously a job in that way but I always used to get up…my wife would go to work in the morning before my son was born and I would get up and record all day and it wasn’t out of a sense of having to work or anything like that. It was just what I wanted to do it. I carved my fishing thing the same way, sort of like I don’t ever want it to become a drag. I’m doing it full time now, definitely. It’s more of a full-time job than Ween has ever been, actually. I’m fishing five days a week.
Bonnaroo 2010 – photo by John Patrick Gatta
JPG: How did it go from being a hobby to a job?
MM: It kind of revealed itself. There was a point that I realized that I loved it so much that I should step up my game. I just wanted to get my captain’s license. I really wanted to be doing it all the time at every opportunity without knowing where it would go or anything like that.
JPG: To get your license was it a lot of study or…?
MM: Yeah, it was an entire winter. We came off the tour for La Cucaracha and we’d been out for like 18 months, not consecutively, but 18 solid months of a world tour. We had planned a really long break, and the whole time on tour I was thinking about fishing, thinking about what I was missing, reading the fishing forums back in New Jersey. I came back and I just dedicated myself to it. I need to be involved with something else.
It was cool. I liked the whole process of it. I went to the library every day with my charts, taught myself how to navigate with a compass and a ruler, all that. It was neat. I didn’t know where it was going to go. Sort of let it ride…
JPG: Were you doing the Brownie Troop Fishing Show before you started getting really serious about matters?
MM: I don’t remember at this point. The fishing show was already dead. Kind of folded that up. The way the whole thing started was I had a…I used to run the Ween website for, I don’t know I want to say like 15 years or something like that, from my house. We had sections of the page like tour dates, the gallery, mp3s, videos, whatever and then I had this little section, which was like my blog and I started putting fishing reports on it. This is how this whole thing came about and I started getting all these messages from Ween fans that were fishermen. Turned into my own little kind of fishing report page. I felt like I should kind of move this off the website. I was more into updating my fishing report than updating ticketing information on it. I couldn’t keep up with the one thing. So, I moved it to the other site and I started putting up video. Then, it became a TV show. I don’t know where the guide service came about. I can’t remember now. (slight laugh) A natural sort of progression of the whole thing.
JPG: Makes sense because you’re doing now kind of what you were doing with the show, bringing someone on a guided fishing tour.
MM: Yeah.
JPG: Now, the people who initially used Arcangel Sportfishing, were a lot of them Ween fans who just wanted to hang out with you and now you’re getting a combination of them and serious fishermen?
MM: Yeah, it has totally unfolded like that. It’s kind of neat now. It started off, obviously, as Ween fans traveling in — I still get a lot of them. I get a lot of repeat customers now and I get a lot of people that maybe fished with me, they were Ween fans and they brought their pictures of their fish or whatever and showed them to relatives.
It’s slowly started to branch out where it’s almost 50/50, where I’m getting calls from tackle shops, where I left business cards or repeat business or maybe you have three guys on the boat and one guy is really into it and he comes back with relatives or friends or even without him or just the friends. It’s all over the place, kind of exactly like Ween’s fans. Our fans are all over the place. We have old people, hippies, college age frat boys, stoner dudes, Brooklyn kind of jerk faces (laughs). It’s yet to completely reveal itself but it’s starting to be really diverse, now. I’ve had marine biologists on my boat. I had a guy that’s a fish buyer for all of the restaurants in New York city like the top-rated restaurants.
It’s kind of like looking off the stage into this crowd of Ween fans, like what my clientele is. All over the place.
JPG: From the description you’re giving me, it sounds like a band building its audience. Get a couple here, get a couple there. Then, they tell somebody and they come back with a couple more.
MM: Yeah, ‘cause I never had a job job in my lifetime, I mean not since Ween started to get legs or whatever. But this is a job, you know. It’s great for me. I love it! I get up 3:30, 4 o’clock in the morning. I go to the boat. Keeps me out of the bar for the most part.
To me watching it develop, it definitely has taken on a life of its own. It’s the only other thing in my life other than the band that I’ve ever hooked on with that kind of intensity and passion — a lot of love into it, a lot of work. I take it very seriously. I take a lot of pride into it. It’s neat watching it grow and I’m actually starting to make money at it, which is a little blessing.
JPG: Does it all happen out of Belmar, NJ or does that vary by client?
MM: The first year I did it was all on the river, which is what I know the best. Grew up on this river and I know every inch of it like the back of my hand. Started off by doing that, and then I moved to the ocean and this is way more compelling, the ocean fishing. There’s a lot more fish in play. There’s a lot bigger fish in play. Anything can happen. Yesterday we had a mayday call over the radio and I watched this boat go down on the jetty…but we see whales, tunas, sharks, porpoises. It’s way more compelling stuff. I focus more on that now. I do like two weeks of river fishing a year and the rest is all on the ocean now in Belmar.
I do a lot of striped bass fishing. That’s like my bread and butter. Striped bass…anything that’s out there, but really striped bass, bluefish, flounder, sea bass, cod, pollock, albacore bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna.
JPG: Do you cook it as well or do you just catch ‘em?
MM: I’m not a big fish eater ‘cause I handle so many fish every single day. I’ll kill a few fish per season and eat them. In the summer, we eat a lot of fish. We eat a lot of flounder and sea bass. It’s really up to my charters.
JPG: I didn’t know if you had become a cooking gourmet of different types of fish or if you just catch and release and it’s just the thrill of the hunt?
MM: I am because I have fish coming out of my ears. I see ‘em every day. The irony of, especially the striped bass fishing, is the big ones you want to let go ‘cause they’re breeders. You can make like 30,000 more little babies, striped bass, and the fish are big. So, if I have two guys on my boat, the legal limit is two fish per guy. They’re gonna catch two 30 pounders apiece. You got 120 pounds of meat! Whose gonna fuckin’ possibly eat that? It’s excessive. I’m not a conservationist by any means. People can do whatever is within the law, but I practice catch-and-release. But I handle so many fish, I’d rather eat a cheeseburger. (laughs)
JPG: I was going to say you’d rather eat a steak.
MM: It’s true. That’s what I like. I’m Italian. I like to eat. Fish is good but I don’t want it that much.
JPG: You said you’re not a conservationist, but I saw the video where you were at least interested in fishing from an environmental standpoint when you were like…
MM: Oh yeah, totally, totally. It’s funny. People don’t realize when fishermen and hunters are actually the best measuring stick of the stock. If you’re out there every day and you’re doing it, you kind of have more of a sense and you’re doing it than some scientists somewhere as to the health of a fishery, something like that. So, you see things from year to year go down, go up. You want to release those fish, especially the bigger ones.
I think the smaller fish taste better in most cases. Not in all cases. In a lot of cases. I don’t really have a hard stance to weigh in on that. Like I say, I see ‘em every day. I hold ‘em up. What most people want out of a fishing trip is pictures. Take your picture. Put it in the net. Get it in the boat. Snap your picture and get it back in the water. You’ve got your memories. If you want to take one and eat it, that’s great, about as far as I go.
JPG: Sticking with that, have you noticed anything such as changes that could be related to climate change?
MM: Yeah, over the course of my life, for different fish. It’s different for every fish. When we were kids we would catch weakfish like speckled sea trout and they’re gone now. They’re totally extinct. I see ‘em every so often. They pop up. I watched that. The striped bass totally collapsed in the ‘80s. One of the best fisheries, management success stories. The amount of rebuilding. They put a moratorium on them. They rebuilt the stock until where it is now, we’re catching 35-40 of them a day. Big ass fish. I see it.
To really call yourself a fisherman, you have to be out every day to have your finger on it, and put together patterns and notice that kind of shit.
JPG: Other than the right equipment, what would you say is the most advantageous thing a fisherman should have?
MM: There’s some patience involved, for sure. But I think the most important thing is time. You’re not going to catch fish from your couch. The difference between getting up at four o’clock and getting up at six o’clock is huge. I don’t care what kind of fish it is. You’re gonna catch most of your fish at first light, last light. It’s dedication, patience and you’ve got to put that on your side. You’ve got to sit vanity aside and realize that fishing is like, I don’t know what you can compare it to, It’s a lifetime of learning. You can never learn it all. Keep learning. Keep your ears open. Listen to people. But time is the number one virtue of a fisherman, I think. You have to put in your time. I know it’s a cliché but you have to fish hard. You have to do it often. I’m out there every day, so…
JPG: Do you think in some way that mentality of a fisherman helps you as a musician and vice versa? Those two worlds colliding.
MM: They collide in some ways but not in every way. The similarities are just that you lose yourself. You’re in the moment and that’s…I’m predisposed to anxiety. I’m a very anxious person, in general. You know when the music is great, you’re not thinking, your brain shuts off and you don’t realize that you’re standing in front of a crowd. You’re not aware that anything is going on. Sometimes it freaks you out. You’re onstage and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God. What the fuck?’ I get that way when I fish. I’m completely in the moment. Totally 250% focused on what’s going on. That’s what I get out of it. That’s what I get out of both things. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Like I said, I’m very anxious and to have those two things that do that for me is great.
JPG: I saw Ween play Bonnaroo in 2010 and I was up front taking photos. As far as being in the moment or out of the moment, I always remember the look on your face after you did the first song. It was very hot, humid and sunny and you just looked like, ‘Oh my God, how many more do we have left?’ But, you did it. Played for something like two hours. I felt bad for you.
MM: You can overcome a lot. It’s amazing what that’ll do for your playing, performing. I’ve gone onstage with the flu with a 103 degree fever and done it with no sleep eight million times, obviously. It doesn’t hit you until it’s all over. Just always managed to go into this other person.
JPG: I didn’t want to focus on that but since the subject of Ween has come up, I see shows listed on the band’s website. Are you also working on a new album? Do you work on tunes while you fish?
MM: I don’t know what’s going on with that. I actually started writing some songs in the last few months. We don’t have a studio right now, which sucks. We got rid of our place since the last record, so we don’t have a mutual recording spot. But, I went out to Guitar Center and bought a little 8-track digital recorder and some speakers and headphones and mics. I wrote a few songs and recorded them. I don’t know. There’s nothing really concrete in the works, but that’s kind of how it starts.
