When Lutefisk founder Don Burnet broke up...

When Lutefisk founder Don Burnet broke up his previous band, 3D Picnic, his luck soon turned. First came an offer to play bass in Thelonious Monster, the creatively fertile but internally turbulent L.A. band. That experience taught Burnet, heretofore a commander in chief, lessons about band dynamics that he could only learn in a foot soldier’s shoes. Burnet also hooked up with a struggling folk singer named Beck Hansen, whom he encountered one night in a Pasadena club.

“I thought he was really great, and there was hardly anybody there. He said, ‘Does anybody play drums? I want to play a rap song.’ I felt sorry for him, so I went up there and played. I think the song was ‘Loser.’ ”

Burnet, who mainly plays guitar but learned drums as a boy, backed Beck on duo performances around L.A. during 1993 as he went from an unknown to the verge of his breakthrough as an alt-rock boy wonder.

As Beck landed a major-label deal and got ready to tour, Burnet had to decide whether to be a sideman for a rising star or get back to his own music. He already had formed Lutefisk, recruiting two old buddies from 3D Picnic.

A wild New Year’s Eve gig at a warehouse in East L.A. helped Burnet, whose plaid slacks and trademark baseball cap can be taken as a nod to Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen, decide at the start of 1994 to concentrate on Lutefisk.

“There was fire, smoke, naked people, fights and huge pieces of couch flying all over, and I suddenly realized that, although I was disconcerted at being the ringleader of a three-ring circus of doom, I really enjoyed it too.”