“Skunk” Baxter has had an interesting career. The Washington, D.C.-born musician was one of Steely Dan’s founding members in the early 1970s, and played on some of their most iconic numbers, like Can’t Buy a Thrill’s’ “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Do It Again,” or Pretzel Logic’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” Then, he moved on to join the Doobie Brothers, from roughly 1974 to 1979, where he fatefully invited Michael McDonald into the band. After that stint, he became a go-to session player for artists like Rod Stewart, Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton, and Donna Summer, and a touring performer for Elton John and Linda Ronstadt, among others.

That was just the beginning. Baxter’s interest and background in electronics, science, and recording technology gained him a position in the U.S. defense industry. Turns out, a lot of digital music gear shared similar principles with emergent defense tech. “Basically, a radar is just an electric guitar on steroids,” says Baxter, noting the same four fundamental forces at work over everything in our universe.

Wong and Baxter trades notes on how to navigate studio sessions (“Just shut the hell up,” offers Baxter), early conversions of pitch into digital signals, and how Baxter cut his solo on Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” on a $25 guitar. And can mediating between artists and producers feel like high-stakes hostage negotiations? Sometimes.

Visit Skunk Baxter: https://www.jeffskunkbaxter.com/

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Produced by Jason Shadrick and Cory Wong

Additional Editing by Shawn Persinger

Presented by DistroKid

What's happening?

Welcome to Wong Notes podcast.

I'm your host, Cory Wong.

I'm stoked today.

I'm stoked today for a lot of reasons.

Number one, we got Skunk Baxter on the podcast.

Absolute Ledge of Legends, Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers, many more.

Also now, like working some government job, some like secret thing he had to like get on a different computer because like the government wouldn't let him do this podcast on whatever, you know, app we're trying to do it on.

So it must be some sort of important job.

Look it up.

I don't know.

Anyway, Skunk's a dope guitar player, incredible tones, legendary solos, infamously many one take solos that are some of the top solos we've ever heard.

Why else am I stoked?

I'm on tour right now.

First week of tour, it's going great.

If you're on the east coast or in the Midwest, you gotta come check it out.

Got a 10 piece band.

Got my friend Mark Lethierry joining us on guitar too.

It's a nice guitar tour.

Got the band couch opening up.

We're having some fun out here.

Okay, come check it out.

Come say hi to us.

We'll see you out there.

Hey, let's get to it.

Skunk Baxter.

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All right, let's hit this episode.

Well, Skunk, thank you so much for being on the show.

It is a pleasure to have you with us.

Well, thank you for your hospitality.

Yes.

I've been a big fan for a long time.

I have lots of questions, lots of things that I'm wondering, and many of our podcast fans are wondering, and I assume you have some wisdom to impart on us.

So I'm just going to start by asking.

You have played with a lot of other guitar players and you've played nice with a lot of other guitar players.

Many people have a problem playing next to another guitar player.

I want you to impart some wisdom on those folks.

What do we got to do here, folks, to play nice with other guitar players?

Well, let's see.

I mean, I guess surgeons have figured out how to do that.

Now we're talking.

Pilots have figured out how to do this.

Police officers figured out how to do this.

I'm not quite sure what the problem is.

For me, having been a studio musician for, my God, 60 years now, playing with other guitar players is kind of the way it all works.

So I never really.

I've never felt the angst, I guess.

Yeah.

So I would have a hard time explaining.

I think there's something that I call guitar etiquette, where you always know when you go into the studio and there's four chairs and the fourth chair is empty, and the new guy comes in and sits down and starts noodling away.

And as soon as there's a solo section, he'll jump in and play.

And he's not listening to everybody else.

And we have a word for that.

In the south, they call it bless your heart.

In the studio, we call it, hey, man, I really dig what you're trying to do.

I like that.

So I would posit that the whole idea of music, unless you are specifically a solo artist on whatever instrument you are, is the delight, the magic, the chemistry of interacting with other musicians.

So why not?

And the other thing is, shut the hell up.

Just stop playing for a second.

Listen to what everybody else is doing.

Because if you want to be a successful studio player, in many cases, it's what you don't play that the producer really wants.

He wants you to listen to the composition itself, to try to do an assessment, and then say, okay, what does this need I mean, that's.

Obviously, you may have something that's written out and you play.

I remember.

But I remember years ago, Gary Katz was producing A Young lady, and he called me up and said, listen, I need you to get down here to the studio.

Bring all your stuff.

So I said, okay.

So I brought everything and said, I need you to listen to this record, set up everything, listen to this record and tell me what it needs.

I listened to the record and I said, gary, it's fine.

It doesn't need anything.

And he said, that's why I pay you triple scale.

I like that.

Not getting paid by the note.

Well, it's.

The idea is use your judgment, experience, put your ego aside, except for the fact that you use it to make you confident and do the gig, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

I think a lot of people are.

The ego is more about their insecurity rather than ego and confidence.

I think you have a valid point.

Yes.

And all of us, no matter how confident we are, all have our insecurities.

But again, park it.

Yeah, well.

And what's interesting is that once you know what you bring to the table as well, you're able to better suggest the things that you do or not do.

I know for myself, I'm like, I'm really good at these things.

I think these are the things that I can nail every time.

There's the things where I feel like I have good instincts.

I feel like you're better in this department.

Why don't you take this?

I'll take this.

And then it's a.

It's a symbiotic relationship where it's like, you do this thing better, I do this thing better.

The whole thing's just going to be, well, yeah.

I mean, if I'm.

When I was in sessions with Tommy Tedesco, for instance, or Tim May.

Yeah, those guys are unreal readers.

And when all of a sudden I noticed that there's a huge cluster of hemi semi demiquavers and fly shit, I'm looking at Tim and say, hey, man, take this.

And then when it says in their 16 bars of insane Solo, Tim would look at me and go, take that.

You're right.

But communication, I guess that's the conclusion that we're drawing, is that communication is the most important thing.

It's communicating with your peers and with your partners in crime.

Well, one player in particular that you're playing compliments each other so much is Denny Diaz.

All the stuff that you guys did together, how did you decide who was going to do what Parts.

Part of it was what we felt most comfortable with.

Sometimes Walter O'Donnell wanted, you know, or an ass to say, do you try this or you try this?

And because Denny is one of those guitar players that listens.

Yeah.

Again, it's not, hey, man, I really dig what you're trying to do.

It's hey, let's listen to each other.

And not only is that kind of the point of it all, but maybe we'll discover some other cool things.

Which we did.

Yeah.

So for you, what do you think you bring to the table that other guitar players didn't?

Or what was your kind of your X factor at the sessions?

Well, I would posit also that there are probably like certain problems in quantum physics, certainly when you're dealing with things like singularities or the connection between different electrons in different parts of the universe, where there are a number of solutions.

I think there's probably a number of great solos that could be played, for instance, on any song.

And the question is, is the one that you're doing the one that everybody likes?

And the everybody is the artist and the producer at that time?

Yeah.

And it may be that they have.

I've had situations where they've had something in mind.

And you go, okay, I will follow your direction.

And then afterwards, I'd say, so if you got a minute, let me try another approach to this.

And again, not to sound disingenuous, but more times than not, they'll go, whoa, okay.

Never.

Never looked at it that way.

And that's one of the things that you should bring with you is your wealth of experience, your storehouse of memories, and use all of that focus, like a laser beam, focus all of that to try to complete the task at hand.

Well, is there something that you find.

So, I mean, you're a smart guy, both on and off the field in music.

Oh, you're very kind.

You got a job that's very high demand that you have.

A lot of people put a lot of trust in you in your current day job and the same thing in the studio.

And I think the amount of trust that people will put in you, it's one of the reasons would be you're probably paying attention to a lot of things that other people aren't paying attention to.

Do you think there's something in life, just some general principle?

I mean, obviously I'm steering this more towards music, cause it's a guitar podcast.

But do you feel like there's certain things in life that you're paying attention to that others aren't Well, I think.

Having a fairly deep knowledge of audio and sound reproduction, audio, understanding the physics of it, I think, gives me a little bit of an edge.

For instance, when you're playing guitar behind someone, especially pedal steel, because that is an instrument that is, in a lot of ways, designed for call and response.

But if you're playing behind someone, you listen to their voice, you deconstruct it frequency wise, you say, what is the best guitar setting that I can use that won't step on the vocal, that will complement it, will be able to make the statement, but will not take away from or be detrimental to the vocal performance.

So you go through all the different experiences you've had, and you try to choose a sound that is specific for that.

In the opposite.

If you want to be heard on a record with a million other guitar players, first thing you do is grab a guitar where your two pickups are wired out of phase, because for some reason, that always cuts through.

That's an old trick, but it works very well.

So knowing your instrument, knowing enough about audio and how the human perceives it and how the machines record it, I think is a definite advantage.

Well, you've also recorded with insane amount of artists.

I mean, incredible.

From the Dan to the Doobies, Bryan Adams, Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Joanie, Dolly Parton, all these insane people.

Is there something insane as in, like, really?

Yes, I was going to say you might want to modify that.

Right.

Questioning their mental competence, maybe?

I don't mean.

Yeah, I mean it in the way that I say, oh, my gosh, this is great.

Of course.

Is there something you think some of these artists are paying attention to that the average artist isn't?

Well, if somebody like Dolly Parton, for instance, who is a fine musician, and Joni Mitchell, who is a fine musician.

Absolutely.

And I'm not saying that the other folks that you mentioned aren't, but I'm picking them out because of their acuity in terms of music and instrumentation.

I think they listen very carefully to what you are doing as a player.

And although I've never had that experience, actually, that's not true.

I'm trying to think back.

There have been a few sessions where people will say, I like what you're playing, but I'm not sure about the tone.

You go, okay, absolutely.

Let's.

Now let me bring out my tone palette and we'll go through a few things and you tell me what sits well with you.

Sure, sure.

If you're gonna.

I mean, I'm talking as a studio musician.

Live is a Very different animal.

Sure.

And you may be asking this question in terms of live performance and I'm answering it in terms of the studio music.

So I apologize if I'm going down the wrong road here.

But you really have to want to satisfy please might be an interesting term, the artist.

That's what you're there for.

You're not there to noodle around and stroke your ego.

Here's a question then.

If the artist and the producer are at odds with each other, one likes one thing you did, the other likes something else and they're battling and they're asking you who do you.

I mean, obviously you're just going to give your honest opinion.

I would think, I would hope.

But if it's going with the artist's decision or the producer's decision, who you going with?

Well, it may be that it's time for you, me to draw on my experience with hostage negotiations or whatever, you know, other experiences I've had in the past and say, okay, what's your goal, gentlemen?

Well, I, the producer, the goal may be I want this record to be radio friendly, meaning to have a familiarity that when people listen to it, they're comfortable with it and they don't.

They're not fighting it intellectually or emotionally.

The artist may say, I have a message.

You know, I have this lyric and I want something that complements that lyric.

And then you sit down and you say, okay, here's what I'll do.

I'm going to open this solo with something that's very radio friendly.

An example might be Ricky, don't lose that number.

The opening part of the solo is straight ahead blues.

You know, your basic guitar playing stuff.

But then, because the lyric of the song and the meaning of the song and the attitude and the atmosphere of the song is not just a kind of a three chord blues, the question is, okay, how do you complement that?

Well, okay, I'm going to look at the chord structure.

I'm going to start looking at using scales that are chord substitutions, which widen the spectrum, the audio spectrum, widen the ability of that particular listener to interpret this in a number of different ways, make them take a deep breath and then you explain, okay, here's what I would do to help you accomplish what you both want.

Not to say that every negotiation ends up in, you know, in a, in a resolution.

But you call on your experience because you say to the artist, I know what you want to do, so I'm going to help you with that.

I know what the producer wants and I'm I'm going to help you with that as well.

I think that there's a solution in between.

And then I'll end up with something at the end which wraps it up.

Let me play it.

Tell me what you think.

And I would say that.

And the majority of cases, everyone ends up agreeing.

Number one, because you've taken the effort.

Yeah.

And number two, because you've actually thought it through and applied your experience and your treasure house, your toolbox to make it work.

I dig that.

Oh, by the way.

And also, sometimes you say, hey, wait a minute.

Why do you want electric guitar on this?

Let me grab this acoustic and play a solo on that.

Tell me what you think.

Yeah.

And you go completely different direction.

Which, since they're focused, they haven't given themselves the opportunity to widen their horizon.

And they go, whoa, wow.

Yeah.

Or pedal steel.

Yeah.

I would have never thought that this song would sound good with pedal steel, but wow.

Okay.

So again, bringing your experience and bringing your love of music and wanting to focus on satisfying the artist or the client.

I know that sounds terribly business like, but.

Yeah, no, that's.

Yeah.

At the end of the day, some of that is real.

And that also goes back to the confidence side of ego, which is.

I'm confident enough to tell you, like, I think acoustic guitar would be another option.

And I can provide a version of that that I think is great.

Pedal steel.

A version of that that I think will be great for this.

That's correct.

So you brought up Ricky.

I'm curious.

On those steely dance sessions, what was a typical session?

Like, how much did they tell you about the tune before you went in to track it?

Did you.

Was there much rehearsal?

Was it a lot of reading?

Was it a lot of just learning on the spot?

Can you talk a little bit about what those sessions were like?

I think it was kind of everything.

The fact, though, that a lot of people maybe don't consider is for the first.

Pretty much the first three Steely Dan albums, it was a band.

Yeah.

As opposed to a two songwriters, very successful songwriters, who were now crafting using what they felt as best available talent in pursuit of something.

Having a band means that you have a certain amount of trust and confidence that the expertise that each person in that band has on their instrument brings constructive ideas to the project.

Yeah.

And so most of the time, it was, what do you got?

And then you just kind of worked it out there.

Yeah.

I mean, I think an interesting example would be East St.

Louis toodaloo, which is a Duke Ellington song.

Yeah.

And we are all huge Duke Ellington fans.

Yeah.

And when I wasn't sure if it was Fagan or Becker who came up with the idea of, let's do this song.

Let's cover this song, but let's do it with each of us picking an instrument to recreate the solo of one of the instruments in the original.

Yeah, well, for slide trombone, I thought the obvious instrument would be pedal steel, because I can slide notes.

Yeah.

And I can slide notes in a much more sophisticated manner, quarterly structured on pedal steel than I can just playing slide on guitar.

So I said, okay, I'm gonna pick that.

Walter picked the talk box to do the original saxophone part.

And that was left up to everybody.

I mean.

Yeah, what do you want to do?

Well, that's what I want to do.

Okay, then go do it.

I mean, obviously, if I picked tuba, that would probably be a less than enthusiastic response.

But again, you got to go with what you go with.

Well, it's interesting because that sounds way different than kind of the documentary versions of what some of the dance sessions were like.

But like you're saying at that point, the entire vision of the band was very different.

Yeah, I think they were hiring, and I was still a studio music, so I was certainly open to anything.

Yeah, totally.

But I think that with the success of the band, they felt that it was an opportunity for them to, I guess, be able to define more specifically and definitively what they were hearing for their music.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, totally.

Now, when you go from playing, I mean, you have some of these iconic solos both on those albums and with other albums that you've played on, when it comes to playing those songs live, or if you've been a live guitar player playing on something where somebody else recorded the solo and it feels iconic to you and whoever.

What's your approach to playing solos live or even parts live on.

On pieces of music that.

That feel pretty iconic?

Well, and I don't think I'm alone in this, but for the most part, I've always felt that a guitar solo is a composition in and of itself.

It should have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It should have a direction, a vector, and should be an adjunct to, but complementary for a piece of music.

So if people feel that a particular solo which is a composition is part of.

Is a subset of the original composition, that makes perfect sense to me.

Yeah, I got no problem with that at all.

Again, it's like if somebody puts a piece of music in front of me and says, play that, okay, fine.

And if it says 16 bars of, you know, go crazy, that's fine too.

Yeah.

So I, I don't really.

Again, it keeps going back to what's best for the song, what's best for the music live.

If people want to hear a particular solo, fine, that's great.

That means that they really liked what that other guitar player played.

Yeah, fine with me.

I dig it.

Yeah.

Actually, I took some lessons when I was younger from John Harrington, who's guitar player and Steely Dan for the last couple decades or something, and he said, oh, yeah, my approach is that I'm going to pay homage to the original.

If there's some iconic lines or things that kind of ground and checkpoint the solo, I'm going to play those.

But I'll also just kind of play other stuff that's in the same spirit of it.

I thought that was an interesting approach as well.

Just kind of an in between.

Well, I think it's logical and it also makes some sense because, I mean, I've had situations where in Japan, for instance, there are some folks that are very focused, shall we say.

Yeah, why did you play a B flat in transitioning to the C sharp instead of a B in that solo?

So some.

There are a few folks that are obsessed.

Yeah, totally.

It's like they'll come up and say, this picture of your Baxter Caster has this switch.

What does this switch do?

Okay.

Oh, sure.

And that's.

Yeah, I take it all as a compliment, but I think his attitude is correct.

It also means that the music.

And I think what he's thinking is music is supposed to be living being in a lot of sense.

Now, when you hear Beethoven's 6th Symphony played directed by Otto Klemperer, or you hear it with the Detroit Strings, Detroit Symphony Orchestra with our strings, it's different.

It's the same, but it's different.

So it's still.

Even though they're playing the notes, it's a living, breathing entity.

So maybe I would suggest that what he's saying is he wants to find the perfect place between the two.

I dig that.

So can you talk to me a little bit about how you ended up from one of the most in demand guitar players?

I mean, still are, but ended up from going there to your current day job.

And can you tell us a little bit, what are the similarities that you find in the two jobs?

Well, also, to be fair, I haven't given up music.

I keep reading that I've changed careers.

Just because Brian May got his PhD in astrophysics doesn't mean he's given up music.

Yeah, but to me, going back to what we were talking about before, the physics of music, I mean, basically a radar is just an electric guitar on steroids.

If you understand the physics of frequency, vibration, the four forces that hold together the universe, the weak force, the strong force, electromagnetic force, and gravity.

If you understand enough about that, you see the similarities all the time.

Even Dr.

Edward Teller, when I was working with him at Lawrence Livermore, the father of the hydrogen bomb, he was a concert pianist.

We were going to do a concert together on Mozart because he was a big Mozart fan.

And we were going to do piano and classical guitar.

Unfortunately, he had a stroke, so we were unable to do that.

But a number of physicists that I work for are all musicians.

They totally understand it.

And some of them even understand the biology behind the effects of certain frequencies on the creation and the secretion of certain neurotransmitters in your brain that are responsible for creating your emotional state.

People say, well, that's nuts.

Well, are you familiar with the Devil's interval?

The tritone?

If you play the dominant note and the raised and the flat 5, that was called the Devil's interval by the Catholic Church for 300 years.

They could do horrible things to you if you included that into a musical composition.

It's all odd harmonics.

You can't listen to it for long.

Very upsetting.

And the cocktail of neurotransmitters that it forces your brain to secrete are unpleasant.

So when Bach's Toccata and Fugue was first performed, they probably should have waited till the end of the church service, because when they played it in the beginning, they burned the church to the ground.

And then Stravinsky said, whoa, yeah, kind of like that.

So he included it in his opening theme to the Rite of Spring.

And they looted eight blocks of downtown Paris after the performance.

So it's hard to argue with the facts.

And the fact is that music has a tremendous effect, as everyone knows, because they know it viscerally.

That interests me.

And the physics of taking a vibrating string and translating it through a lot of different.

A lot of different harmonics, like a little different electronics, a lot of different methodologies.

And seeing what comes out of the other is always fascinating.

Yeah, always.

I love that because I think it also makes you a better musician.

We go back before.

Oh, I want to be.

There's 12 guitar players on this track and I want somebody to hear what I'm saying.

Because I know it's going to come through the truck no matter what they do, simply because of the physics.

Yeah.

We were talking about some producers and kind of how you do that sort of thing or how you worked with other producers.

You have also produced some albums yourself.

One in particular, I'm curious about the Stray Cats album.

Original.

Cool.

What was it that you brought to the table that they were looking for?

What did they ask of you for that album?

Because Brian is also an incredible guitar player.

I think so I would absolutely second that emotion.

Yeah.

Part of it was we were all friends and I actually gone on tour with them a few times playing pedal steel kind of in the Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

Yeah.

Genre.

Playing a lot of swing.

Because I'd been playing pedal steel in country bands since forever.

Sure.

And we were friends.

So they looked at me maybe as a link to their past.

They had listened to everybody from Link Ray to Dwayne Eddie to Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and all those folks.

And I'm somewhere either in between or connected to that era.

Yeah.

And they thought maybe, hey, let's.

Let's take a couple of scoops of that ice cream.

Yeah.

And see what happens.

How long did that album take to make?

Not long, because we were really.

We rehearsed to the point where everybody pretty much knew what we were going to do.

Yeah.

It was more about getting the performance than exploring the music.

Music was pretty straight ahead because I guess I think it was called Original.

Cool.

Yeah.

And the idea was we're going to do.

Pay homage to some classic pieces of music.

Yeah, that's great.

So it went pretty well.

And I mastered it in two ways.

One, as I mastered it, you know, normally in stereo, you know, to.

It was all magnetic tape, though.

It was 24 track tape and to two track.

And then I mastered the whole thing to a Roland 555 tape echo in mono.

Because I wanted to hear or see if I could put myself in the headspace of what Sam Phillips was doing.

Yeah.

And it was.

It was interesting.

There was a discussion about which one they wanted to release.

Yeah.

Because obviously from a record company executive point of view, but from the band, when they heard it back, they went, wow, that.

I love the way that sounds.

Because they were again, I guess, thinking about the flavor of back in the day when everything was in mono and there was one big knob.

Yeah.

That's pretty great.

I love that.

Actually.

I've mixed some of my things in mono and Thought this kind of gives it a certain thing, but it's, I don't know, less palatable for a modern audience or something.

I don't know.

I get in my head about that sort of thing.

Well, I think you have a point.

Because we hear in stereo, even if we're listening to mono.

Yeah.

Because we hear the reflections.

Yeah.

And we hear the, the, the personality of the acoustic environment that we're in, even if it's mono.

It seems to be two schools of thought.

One is, if you're going to.

If your music is going to end up being played through earbuds on a cell phone on a beach, are you really.

Should you really concentrate on the reverb tails from the string section?

There's another school of thought of which I am still a member.

I said I don't care where it ends up.

What I'm going to deliver is going to be the absolute best.

Yeah.

No matter what.

If someone decides to play it through a tuba with a speaker on one end and phone on the other, that's.

That's their business.

But I'm going to deliver the goods.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, even the mono stereo thing.

I sometimes get in this weird debate with myself about the current trends of things where, you know, right now, even just in videos, so much video content that comes out is vertical, but our eyes are horizontal.

It's like, this is not.

It doesn't seem natural to me.

I want, like, we watch movies on a screen that are wide because our eyes are also set that way.

My eyes aren't on top of each other.

And right now it feels like a lot of the way that videos, the aspect ratio of videos that are being made, it's vertical.

Just because that's the way the phone is.

But as soon as we get rid of the phone, as soon as we're all on VR or whatever we're going to be doing, I feel like we're going to go back to going wide.

And then the same thing is with.

Well, okay, let's.

Let's just start there and then we'll get back to audio.

No, I think you have a point because that is the way that your eyes are set, although your retinas around.

So you can make an argument both ways.

That when you actually look at anything, you're seeing a constantly defining picture of both the vertical and the horizontal.

But you're absolutely right that that's the way that your vision physically is set up.

Yeah.

And with a lot of the Atmos mixes that I hear now, you Know, they'll make these remixes of old classic hits.

And I sometimes feel like I catch myself feeling like, oh my gosh, am I just this grumpy old man?

Like, oh, it was meant to be in stereo.

But then I'm like, no, you know what?

I listened to this atmos mix, this 11 speaker stereo mix of Miles Davis Kind of Blue, and it just feels.

It felt so disjointed.

Like, I feel like we're in a really interesting era of surround sound when it comes to albums where it's like, oh, yes, we can make the trumpet spin around your head while it's soloing.

I'm like, did Miles really intend that?

I don't think so.

I've never seen a band live where I've been like, you know what I'd love?

The trumpet player running in circles around my head while they're playing the trumpet solo.

So with some of this technology that we have, mono to stereo and now stereo to this 12 speaker Atmos or whatever, I'm just kind of like, are we doing it because it's artistic or are we doing it because we can?

I would posit that it has that both answers are correct.

Yeah.

That there are some people that feel in their heart that this is an artistic interpretation of someone, Andy Warhol, taking a Campbell Soup can and making an image of it.

Yeah, it's a Campbell Soup can, for Christ's sake.

But somewhere in his mind there's something more to it.

And he was striving to figure out what that was and explore that.

Fine.

On the other hand, we are.

How shall I say this without sounding completely disingenuous.

There are a number of people for whom the technology is everything.

They may not have the creative spark to write something, to perform something, but they feel since they have control of the technology, that's the way they're going to assert their is insert themselves into the mix, so to speak.

Sure.

Okay.

That doesn't mean it's right, as you say.

But I got to admit, when I have heard stereo remixes of supposedly mono records where things were maybe recorded and then either added later on with another mono track, there were all kinds of tricks that people use to try to figure out a way around this.

Sometimes harmonically, the physics of what's happening make the Monomix more attractive simply by the way it processes things.

For instance, when we used to mix for the radio, I would sit outside Cherokee in my truck and we'd run cable from Studio one to my radio in my truck in mono.

And we run it through the broadcast limiters that we had.

Yeah.

I wanted to find out what this is really going to sound like.

Yeah.

So I would compensate.

There are ways to harmonically, structurally, and tonally and electronically compensate for all of that.

How to make things sound louder than they really are.

Ways that you can affect the vocals in a mono mix where you can hear more track.

Just, you know, I'm open.

Yeah, I'm open.

But I agree with you.

Doing something for something's sake.

But remember, any wall on the soup can.

I mean, you don't know.

Yeah, but I really like your perspective on that because you're also saying this person saw something there and it was a genuine artistic statement of something and.

Or at least it was a valid, sincere attempt.

Okay.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And that does exist in this world as well.

But the part of it that also exists is, hey, we could probably make a lot of money on this if we xyz.

And that's to me, where it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Like, yes, but is it the right.

Does it feel like it honors the original art or not?

Right.

And I'm telling you from my years of experience that this interpretation is important.

Maybe.

Well, I'll give it a maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we'll see.

We'll see.

I mean, I'm excited for what the possibilities are, but I do think we have to be careful with some of that stuff.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Another band that you're a part of, which.

Help me get this straight with the Doobies, the Doobie brothers.

You joined in 74.

Ish.

Somewhere around there.

Ish.

And did I hear that you're the one that brought Michael McDonald into the band?

That is correct, yes.

So what's the story there?

How did you know Michael and what was the nature of the band that.

Why did Michael need to be brought in and how did you know him before that?

Well, Michael had gone out with us in Steely Dan on tour, adding a second keyboard and of course, fantastic vocals.

Of course.

Yeah.

Everything that we did.

And so I was sort of in.

After I joined the Doobies officially, I was kind of in both bands for a while.

Sure.

But after I joined officially, we were out on tour and Tom Johnson, you know, a founding rock of the band.

I mean, a very, you know, important part of that band was having health problems to the point that one night, I think it was at Louisiana State University in their big field house, you know, thousands of people.

Tommy just couldn't make it out of the dressing room and he's having some serious gastrointestinal problem and I'm not going to get into stuff, but.

But so we couldn't go out, and I went out on stage and I said, we got two choices here, folks.

We can give you your money back, or if you give us 10 days, we will come back and put on a show for you.

Nobody turned their tickets in, so that's when I went back.

Because a lot of people were feeling very, very discouraged.

And I understand, like, where are we going to go?

You know, what's going to happen with the ban?

And I don't know.

I guess I can relate to it in my day job, too, but sometimes you got to make a command decision.

Yeah.

So I said, I'm going to call my friend Mike McDonald and get him out here and we'll rehearse for like seven, eight days.

And I know this is going to work.

Yeah.

And he probably relates to it in his book of just saying, here's a one way ticket, come on out.

And at least for a certain period of time, play with the Doobie Brothers.

Yeah.

And so he came out, we did the show.

We rehearsed 10 hours a day for eight days, went out and did the show, got five encores.

Wow.

And I thought to myself, okay, sometimes you get the elevator and sometimes you get to shout.

So this time we got the elevator.

Yeah.

And this is going to work out.

And then after a while, everyone really saw what Michael could bring to the band.

Yeah.

Which it's not so much better or worse.

It's like Fleetwood Mac.

I mean, you can make an argument either way.

Sure.

But it was an opportunity for the musical talents of every member of that band to develop and blossom even more.

And I think everybody saw that.

Plus he brought some very good songwriting capability as well.

Different.

Having a keyboard in any band makes things different anyway.

Yeah.

It changes the harmonic personality of things and it focuses people more on, I guess, more on the harmonic structure than guitar.

Total guitars, we love guitars.

Yeah.

But because guitars are based.

Based on a logarithmic scale, you can never really get the thing in tune.

I know.

It's mathematically physically impossible.

We get close sometimes.

Yeah, but.

Yeah, but at least in this universe, I mean, you can't have two logarithms be the same.

Yeah.

That's mathematically, at least in this universe, not happening.

So having a keyboard in the band really changes things.

Yep.

And probably writing things in G flat and B flat, which we're not really going to do.

No.

Well, it depends.

It depends.

I think I think Jimi Hendrix wrote Purple Haze in F sharp.

Well, also, depending if you have your guitar tuned down a half step or something.

I'm actually curious because you're bringing up the physics of something.

I do think that certain keys just have different emotions to them.

Absolutely.

What is your.

What's your physics take on that?

And how do you.

Because you know the physics side of things and you also understand the emotional and just musical side of things.

I've always felt there's certain keys that just carry a depth of emotion or that carry different types of emotion.

I mean, the one that people always talk about is D minor is the saddest of all keys, Whatever.

But I feel like E flat's got this special kind of nostalgia.

It's got this depth.

It's got this thing that just.

That's, I don't know, rooted in generational something like.

There's a depth and a love to the key of E flat that I just can't explain.

And there's other keys that just do different things for me.

What's your take on this?

I absolutely agree, referring to our conversation before, about how certain combinations of harmonics stimulate the brain to secrete varying cocktails of neurotransmitters which basically define your emotions.

I mean, I know that we're all romanticists and that all of this is very special from the universe.

Yeah.

Okay.

Meanwhile, your brain's pumping out oxytocin, vasopressin, adrenaline, serotonin, and a number of different neurotransmitters was all combined in different ways.

Make you pissed off, happy, upset, crazy.

You know, that's how it works.

Sorry.

So what you're referring to is, I believe, a particular key that, as you say, playing in a particular, you know, where the dominant, say, E flat, and the key feeling is E flat.

Yeah.

There's absolutely no doubt about it.

As a matter of fact, if you really want to get to try something interesting, I'm assuming you do a lot of recording digitally.

So next time you record something, transpose the whole composition to a 432.

It'll blow your mind.

Are you.

Are you a Die Hard?

A 432?

I'm not a Die Hard, no.

Although that was in Europe for many years, was the center of classical tuning.

Not only.

Well, again, you said that E flat for you has a certain emotional flavor and personality for you.

Yeah, I would say.

Since you are sensitive to that, try lowering your track from a 440 to a 432.

I think you'll notice a very interesting Difference in the way that your brain, or you, of course, you are your brain.

Your brain is you feel about the music.

I've seen a lot of videos about this.

I've seen people do studies and they'll do side by side certain things from like, yeah, that feels different.

But I would love to be the one playing it and listening back both in 440 and 432.

I should sit down and do some of this because, you know, if this is what my life's work is, music.

Well, that's what I'm suggesting.

Take a track that you recorded yourself.

Yeah, as a matter of fact.

Although what would be probably more interesting, Record an acoustic guitar track tuned to a 440.

Yeah.

Play it back at a 440.

Play it back at a 432 and then retune your guitar using a 432 as the centerpiece.

Yeah.

And then start comparing.

Because the only problem with digital recording is it sucks.

And it just.

No matter how thin you slice an orange, no matter how you try to put it back together, it's not an orange anymore.

Yeah.

It's a close approximation, but it's not an orange.

So there are three different ways to look at this.

Recording it.

Transposing the recording.

Recording it and listening to the non transposed and then playing it with a different tuning.

Yeah.

Be interesting to see.

I'm going to get on it tonight.

You see these acoustic guitars behind me.

I'm going to.

I have a couple duplicates.

I'm going to tune them to different ones that are the exact same.

And the difference shouldn't be horrifyingly problematic for the intonation of the instrument.

I wouldn't think so.

But if you were really going to do this experiment, I guess you'd have to find an old Gibson J200 with a tunematic bridge and go out there and, you know, try to try to intimate it as best you can.

But what are you excited about on the guitar these days?

One of my favorite things has always been the guitar synthesizer.

Because when I first started to work for Roland 50 years ago.

Wow.

You know, I came to them with an idea.

I had put six tape heads, one under each string, and was working on trying to figure out a way to convert pitch to something that a computer could understand.

And Roland was doing the same thing.

A couple of other companies were doing it as well, but Roland was really focused on it.

So that's what started me with them.

Yeah.

And I've been following through with the guitar synth ever since.

And there are Some people who think it's a toy.

Don't tell Bella Fleck that.

Yeah, don't tell Pat Matheny that.

I was just going to say Matheny's could make a pretty good case for you.

And I remember saying, damn it.

I don't want the keyboard players to have all the fun.

You know, I want to.

I want to.

I want to do this, too.

Yeah.

And there have been times where I did a.

You know, you do these tribute albums, and somebody said, well, I want you to play on to sergeant Pepper only Hearts Club Band, but we don't have enough money to hire a horn section.

Fine, let's go to work.

So with a great trombone patch, with great trumpet patches, putting yourself in the headspace of that instrument, there were people that said, that's an amazing horn section.

We would just smile.

So it's a wonderful tool.

And then, of course, when I midied up my pedal steel, I created a thermonuclear musical bomb.

I mean, that is the ultimate instrument.

I mean, imagine the voicings.

Two violas, two cellos, four violins, four voices.

I mean, organ screaming, you know?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I love it.

So what are you.

You're using a rolling system right now.

What are you using on your guitar?

Always.

Yeah, I've always been.

Simply because I'm a rolling guy.

Yeah.

And I believe the technologies that we have are really good.

That's great.

I love it.

Well, Skunk, it has been so great to have you on the podcast.

I just have loved so much of your artistry and respect, so much of what you do.

So I really appreciate you being with us today.

You're very kind.

You're very kind.

And I'll leave it that although I understand the desire to have expensive instruments, I did the solo on Hot Stuff, the Donna Summer record, with a guitar about.

For 25 bucks.

A 25 guitar?

Yeah.

It was a Burns Bison Jr.

It was in a.

In a boxing guitar center and said, buy me 25 bucks.

And I was in a hurry.

I get to the session and have a guitar, and, I don't know, seem to work out okay.

Wow.

So it's really.

Yes, some of it is the instrument.

Some instruments are only good for archery.

I get it.

You know, because the neck is so bowed that it's impossible to play.

But don't use that as a crutch.

I like that.

I like that a lot.

That's good wisdom.

Well, I remember when I was working at Jimmy's music shop on 48th street, back before you were born back on.

Back in the early 60s, you could buy a Fender Stratocaster for $275 with the case.

Yeah.

Now you can buy a Squire Fender Stratocaster.

That's a pretty nice instrument for $275 with the cast.

There's something.

There's some justice in there that I haven't quite figured out yet, but it feels good.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of great, inexpensive instruments out there right now.

So that is.

Yeah, that is absolutely true.

Well, thank you for your hospitality.

Yes, thank you, Skunk.

I'm amazed everybody cares what I have to say.

So thank you.

Well, of course we do.

Of course we do.

You're a total legend, and I love Premier magazine.

I think you guys do an excellent job on all aspects of the instrument.

Well, thank you.

We appreciate it.

Well, thanks, Skunk.

We'll hopefully see you sometime in person soon.

Look forward to it.

Thank you.

Yep.

Peace.

Take care.

Gentlemen.

There you have it.

Skunk Baxter.

Dude, Cat's dope.

Cat's got some depth, dude.

So many records he's been on, dude, insane.

Anyway, thanks for hanging with us today.

Thanks for listening.

We'll see you next time.

Peace.