Marvelous Clouds

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 Away
9	The Lovers
10	Mr. Kelly
11	Love's Been Good to Me
12	Lonesome Cities
13	The World I Used to Know

Marvelous Clouds is a solo album by Gene Ween (billed under his real name, Aaron Freeman), which is a tribute to the songwriter Rod McKuen. All of the songs on the album were originally written by McKuen. It was recorded in Venice, California in March 2011 and released in May 2012.

Information/Trivia

Concept

• The concept for the album was conceived by producer Ben Vaughn, who brought the musicians together and picked the songs.
• Gene Ween:

  I wasn't [a Rod McKuen fan] at the time, I mean I knew a couple of his songs, but I'm a little young to have — I didn't live through the Rod McKuen time.

Production and Recording

• Gene Ween:

  I guess the secret ingredient was, after we recorded all the base stuff and I would do scratch vocals while they were singing it, and then I came back to L.A. and did a week's worth of vocals over everything — a lot of layering and stuff like that, I love that stuff. And then we had this guy Shmed [Ryan "Shmedly" Maynes] who's like this secret weapon in L.A. apparently . . . So Shmed comes in, he added all the glitzy — all the little celeste and bells . . . . He's a great musician and so he really added all the finishing touches to the record . . . . It's just very simple how we did it . . . the basic instruments, my vocals, and then Shmed.