Jon Wurster

Much like I say in the Matt Douglas section, I feel a lot of warmth for the current Mountain Goats lineup, and especially for their material from 2017's Goths onward, and for the sheer joy of seeing them as a live act in the past decade. Jon Wurster's work on the drum kit at those live shows is the real prize for waiting and getting a spot up front. You want that bass drum going right into your sternum.

That said! JW's drumming isn't my #1 area of interest. What I find cool is the recall & knowledge base he brings to interviews, and to his work in music writing. So rather than dedicate a page to his 100+ album credits and the innumerable live lineups he's played in, this will be a page collecting his music writing and some interviews.

FIRST PRIORITY: Jon has started to contribute occasional brilliant coverage at Flagging Down The Double E's, Ray Padgett's online outpost covering the history of Bob Dylan live. Many posts are behind the Substack paywall, but they're doing great work over there, so throw 'em something and check out Jon on Dylan.

There are also some interviews here about his work with Tom Scharpling, which I'll have more on later this year.

Indy Week 2001-2005 as available online, most recent to oldest:

Driveway to Driveway A sort of travel diary	July 27th, 2005
Floating away The ups and downs of Philly's Marah	November 5th, 2003
Bandway	August 7th, 2002
Blackest of the Black? Punk pioneer and horror-metal maven Glenn Danzig reluctantly speaks. Guess what? He hates everything--and his local show is canceled.	June 19th, 2002
Mould-ulate After a stint as a creative consultant for the WFW, Bob Mould's back with a release, Modulate, that'll make you question everything you thought you knew about the former Husker Du/Sugar frontman	April 17th, 2002
Langley Schools Music Project Our critics' picks in new releases	December 5th, 2001
Fear Not The Yayhoos Is Rock 'n' Roll dead? Tell it to The Yayhoos, an Americana supergroup that just may be the best rock 'n' roll band in the USA	September 26th, 2001
Fall-ternative: Classic Rock	September 12th, 2001
What's My Line? Improv comedy fans take heart--there's plenty of yucks to be had here in the Triangle thanks to Transactors improv group and the Village Idiots	September 5th, 2001
Babylon by Bus Seminal hardcore-Rasta group the Soul Brains, formerly the Bad Brains, on music and keeping a PMA (Positive Mental Attitude)	June 6th, 2001
See Band Run "Bands on the Run," VH1's reality-TV music series, has made Dallas' popsters Flickerstick into stars	June 27th, 2001
Beauty and the Beat Reuniting for their first studio album in 17 years, the Go-Go's gear up for another go 'round	May 16th, 2001
Punk 101 Manic pop geniuses the Ramones accidentally invent punk rock and change music history	May 9th, 2001

Magnet Magazine feature on touring with A.C. Newman:

May 18 "This is the final leg of A.C. Newman’s Get Guilty tour..."	Part 1
May 19 "My early-to-bed routine has served me well."	Part 2
May 21 "Today we travel further north to the land that gave us haggis, golf and the Exploited."	Part 3
May 23 "Turns out staying in was the proper thing to do, because the others didn’t get back until 4:30 in the morning."	Part 4
May 24 "One more to go, folks."	Part 5

Modern Drummer (most require a subscription, but it's only $5/mo, it's basically a Patreon pledge. Hop in!)

Features: Jon Wurster (This isn't an example of JW's own work, it's just a nice long bio piece on him by Adam Budofsky. Worth your $5 on its own, in my opinion.)	September 2013
Remembering Sara Romweber The Let’s Active drummer left an indelible mark on southern alternative rock—and was taken much too soon.	September 2019
Alex Van Halen: Of Sound And Vision You know who it is the second you hear the crack of that snare drum. Like a musical fingerprint, Alex Van Halen’s sound and style are singularly his own.	June 2012
Rat Scabies He hasn’t been a member of THE DAMNED for twenty years. But the impression he made on fans of the legendary British punk band was indelible. With a current documentary hipping legions of younger listeners to the wild and wonderful world of their new favorite group, the time is right for the explosive sticksman to reflect on a life spent making records and breaking rules. Superchunk/Bob Mould drummer JON WURSTER asks all the right questions.	March 2017
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Van Originally ran in the October 2005 issue of Modern Drummer magazine.	October 2005
Back Through The Stack: Bill Rieflin JW-penned feature on Bill Rieflin:	October 2011
Encore: Topper Headon on the Clash’s London Calling JW-penned feature on Topper Headon:	September 2011
Bruce Gary: Controlled Bombast with the Knack "This piece includes portions written by Superchunk/Mountain Goats drummer Jon Wurster."	September 2011
Chris Wilson of Ted Leo And The Pharmacists JW-penned feature on Chris Wilson:	January 2008
John Convertino of Calexico JW-penned feature on John Convertino:	April 2007

Standalone pieces:

Wednesday Night in Knoxville 2021-11-10, Knoxville Civic Auditorium, Knoxville, TN (Ray Padgett's Substack, Flagging Down The Double E's)	Nov 12, 2021
Playlist: The Replacements - Annotated Listen to and read our annotated Replacements playlist compiled by Jon Wurster (Superchunk, Bob Mould, Mountain Goats) (Quobuz)	Date Unlisted
Superchunk’s Jon Wurster On R.E.M.’S Final Bow (SPIN Magazine)	September 23, 2011
Drumming Along With The Ramones: Jon Wurster Salutes Tommy Ramone (SPIN Magazine)	July 14, 2014
Drummer Jon Wurster Remembers Grant Hart: ‘The Center of the Sonic Hurricane’ “His drumming alone is enough to secure Grant Hart a place in the alt-rock history books, but that’s only part of his story,” Bob Mould Band drummer writes. (Rolling Stone: subscribers-limited last I checked)	Sep 15, 2017
Jon Wurster Talks One Of His Earliest Musical Loves, The Police The Superchunk and Mountain Goats drummer walks us through the band’s classic albums. The Police recently reissued their entire catalog once again, with every album but their debut (Outlandos D’Amour) getting the heavyweight-vinyl treatment, and every single track put together in a new box set, Every Move You Make: The Studio Recordings. Because we know that the band — and especially drummer Stewart Copeland — were super important to a budding young drummer named Jon Wurster, we asked him to chat us through his thoughts on the band, and on each specific record. (Talkhouse)	November 26, 2019

Interviews

Jon Wurster Stole Bob Dylan's Kleenex The drummer talks about opening for Bob in '91 and other Dylan shows he's seen (Ray Padgett, Substack Flagging Down The Double E's)	May 4th, 2021
Superchunk’s Jon Wurster Hiding in Plain Sight (Matt Fink, Under The Radar)	May 20th, 2011
Jon Wurster - 2003 Jon Wurster isn't just the drummer for Chapel Hill, NC's famed Superchunk band - he's also one of the funniest sons-of-a-gun with whom you're ever going to become acquainted. (Mark Prindle, personal website)	2003
Jon Wurster on why he hates Kiss’ “Room Service" In The A.V. Club’s newest feature, HateSong, we ask our favorite musicians, writers, comedians, actors, and so forth to expound on the one song they hate most in the world. (Marah Eakin, the AV Club)	August 9th, 2012
2012: The Year Of The Wurster Through the heyday of indie rock Jon recorded and toured relentlessly as the drummer of Superchunk to the point where even I refer to him as “Jon Wurster of Superchunk” But this title has become too narrow a moniker for Jon. (Ian, the Best Drummer In The World blog)	January 6th, 2013

And lastly, some Scharpling and Wurster interviews:

Inside Scharpling & Wurster’s ‘Power Pop Pop Pop’ Why the story of a detestable “power pop dictator” may be The Best Show’s quintessential bit (or one of them, at least). (Nathaniel Friedman, Hazlitt)	July 13th, 2015
The Weird, Wonderful World of Scharpling and Wurster Talking with the cult radio stars on the occasion of a new box set. (Dan Jackson, Esquire Magazine)	May 12th, 2015
Celebrating 20 Years of Comedy Duo Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster For two decades, Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster have proven to be one of the most consistently funny and hardworking teams in comedy. (Ian Goldstein, Vulture)	October 11th, 2017
Scharpling & Wurster pick their favorite Best Show Gems Those listening to beloved independent station WFMU probably had a sense that something strange was going on in 1997 when DJ Tom Scharpling interviewed a gentleman named Ronald Thomas Clontle for his show, The Best Show On WFMU. (Nathan Rabin, the AV Club)	January 24th, 2013

I also found a short fun interview but it's hosted by Ticketmaster, so rather than give them a click, I'll give you a screenshot from the very end here and if you want more, you can go look up JW's delightful response here on some kind of ad-blocking browser:

Incredible.

As a final note, you can of course always see Jon Wurster out on tour playing drums with the Mountain Goats a few months of the year, not to mention playing on the records, which are only getting better every year since they became a four-piece outfit permanently. You can always pick up copies of the guys' most recent stuff from the good people at Merge Records.

any images, lyrics, song titles, etc are property of the original artists, where at all possible images are pulled from my own scanned copies and any found/submitted images are noted and credited. this is a fan site without ads, trackers, or even so much as one of those site counters from the late 90's. if you see your intellectual property here and want it removed, email away. i still don't have a good pic for this page yet. not because there are no good photos but because jon wurster is actually extremely photogenic and i have complete choice-paralysis of what photo to use.