Dan and Jay's Comedy Hour. The Podcast. · Jason Klamm

Episode 294 – Two STUs, with Mike Worden

·1 hr 6 min·2 clips

Dan and Jay start with an apology and a heads up about the sound quality. They say the hardware issue is still hanging around, and they point listeners to the week's sponsors, the Michigan Renaissance Festival and CustomBrandShop.com, before getting on with the episode. Mike Warden joins them and the conversation settles into the kind of loose, history rich talk they do well. A logo file becomes the first rabbit hole. It is old, tiny, and apparently made in a weird 3D program, Simply 3D, from years ago. That detail sends the group back into the band's origin story. Mike says the band formed around 1999 or 2000. It started as a cover band. He explains that he kind of worked his way in after the original singer was not really committed full time. He was doing a musical when the band saw him and asked if he wanted to join a rock group. He said yes. The early sets were small and familiar. They played 10 or 15 songs at a time. They were covering songs like a Man at Work tune and wanted to include the flute solo. That led them to bring in Jessica Schmidt, who could play flute and saxophone. Once she was in, the set started to expand. One guest slot led to another musician stepping in when she could not make a show, including a trombonist who could also play flute. The shape of the band kept changing by accident and by opportunity. The talk keeps circling around these old choices and makes them feel funny instead of grand. Dan and Jay keep asking questions that open new doors instead of closing them. Mike keeps answering with details that feel half practical, half sentimental. The episode leans on memory, gear, old archives, and the easy chemistry of people who know each other's references. The result is more hangout than formal interview. It is interested in the texture of how a thing got made. It also stays aware that the recording itself is a little beat up, which gives the whole thing a more lived in feel. By the end, the episode has turned a damaged file and a few old band stories into a solid portrait of how the show's own history keeps itself alive.

As heard by us

A loose, memory-heavy hang that keeps circling old band lore.

Dan and Jay drift through old band history, a logo file, and a VHS digitization story, with Mike Warden fitting the loose back-and-forth well.

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Why you'd press play

Play this if you like friends digging through old VHS files into a scrappy guest chat with Mike Warden.

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