What do you call a band whose debut album didn't show up to its own release party, whose record label went bankrupt and took their records with them, and whose guitarist eventually left to form a band called God Johnson — and who somehow kept playing through all of it with humor, grace, and one of the best dual-guitar grooves in Midwest jam history? You call them The Big Wu, Minnesota's most lovably disaster-prone and genuinely excellent jam band, and this episode is their long-overdue moment in the spotlight.

In this episode, Schecky traces how a group of St. Olaf College students named their band after a Tom Hanks volcano on the spot at their very first gig, built the Wu Family — 2,500 devoted fans gathering every Memorial Day weekend in a Minnesota field — and made Spring Reverb, their best album, as an act of s ...