Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween) solo album Marvelous Clouds

Performing under his hebraic name Aaron Freeman for the first time the Golden Jew himself will perhaps quizzically release an album of material entirely written by a woebegone and suitably obscure songwriting iconoclast Rod McKuen.

McKuen it turns out is nearly as prolific a songwriter as Prince having penned some 1500 songs for artists ranging from Perry Como and Petula Clark to Waylon Jennings, Chet Baker, Johnny Cash, Andy Williams, Pete Fountain, the Kingston Trio, Percy Faith, Dusty Springfield, Johnny Mathis, Al Hirt, Greta Keller, The Boston Pops, the London Philharmonic and the Chairman of the Board himself Mr. Frank Sinatra. 

Having been a poet travelling in similar circles to Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac he would later travel abroad to France where he encountered the Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel.  McKuen is well known as the translator of the chansons of Jacques Brel and in turn introduced him to the American market.  While his collections of poetry have sold broadly, with two Oscar and one Pullitzer nominations for his serious musical compositions from his later period, he is widely reviled if not seriously shat upon by cultural critics.  The appeal then to Freeman, performing under his own name for the first time but giving voice to the songs of a passed over and by most accounts shmaltzy legend, becomes self-evident for anyone familiar with the ground from country to glam that Ween traipses back and forth across like the children of Springfield and Shelbyville do about their town lines.

At the height of his popularity in 1969 McKuen was named by Newsweek magazine 'The King of Kitsch' elsewhere his purplish poetry is variously crititically and vituperatively described as 'tailor made for the sixties', 'treacle', 'schmaltzy', 'smarmy', 'sweet kitsch', 'superficial platidinous and silly'.  In short adjectives that describe a good measure of Ween's back catalogue.

Marvelous Clouds (produced by Ben Vaughan of Ween's 12 Golden Country Greats yore), a collection of 13 songs written by McKuen, is due out April 10 on Partison Records

‘Marvelous Clouds' track list:

1. As I Love My Own
2. Jean
3. Marvelous Clouds
4. A Man Alone
5. The Beautiful Strangers
6. Doesn’t Anybody Know My Name
7. One By One
8. Pushing The Clouds
9. The Lovers
10. Mr. Kelly
11. Love’s Been Good To Me
12. Lonesome Cities
13. The World I Used To Know