This is Joe Wong. This week's guest on the trap set is John Worcester.

John is best known as the drummer for Superchunk, the Mountain Goats, and Bob Mold. But before his career really took off, he had the opportunity to work with legendary drummer and producer, Steve Jordan.

In this mini episode, John credits Jordan for helping him come into his own as a drummer. At the end,

you'll hear an unreleased track by The Carnies with John on drums and Jordan producing.

You can hear our full conversation with John at the trapset.net.

The right profile, we made a record or half a record with Jim Dickinson, who I think we were the album he did after Pleased to Meet Me by the Replacements. And we got halfway into it,

and it was just, it was in that time of the, of the 80s where

he thought it needed to be more, uh, computerized than it actually needed to be.

I think he, he was kind of second guessing that the record label that it needed to really be

kind of a computerized roots radio friendly, yes needed to really be kind of... A computerized Roots rock band.

Radio-friendly, yes.

This was pre-pro tools, but it was this thing called the Fairlight.

Right.

And so it's like a very early version of Pro Tools where everything is kind of lined up,

and it just ended up sounding really stiff.

And he was so great to work with,

but it just didn't pan out for this.

And so then Steve leaves the band,

leaves the right profile,

and we become this band called The Carnies,

which is basically the same three guys with a new guy.

And we have left Arista by this point.

...