Ex-Steely Dan Guitarist on What Being a Session Player
Taught Him About Music Business

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter

The_Phoenician 
UltimateGuitar.com Writer

Originally published on Feb. 22, 2025

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter reflected on how working as a session musician taught him professionalism, noting that being a hired gun requires that “you park your ego at the door and get the job done.”

From co-founding Steely Dan and playing with the Doobie Brothers to working with NASA and the US government and playing the solo on Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has done it all — with stone-cold professionalism. However, the one thing that helped elevate Baxter’s career in music was going through the strict regimen of a session player, he told Vulture in a recent interview:

“You’re basically standing by and waiting for a call. It’s kind of like a combination of an EMT, a carpenter, and a number of other things to ultimately satisfy the artist. You park your ego at the door and get the job done.”

When he joined the Doobie Brothers in September of 1974, Baxter decided to try and get the other members to do the same thing:

“I think ‘Livin’ on the Fault Line’ was the best Doobie Brothers album. It was an exploratory record. It was stretching out everywhere. And while we were doing it, I thought, ‘I’m a studio rat. Why don’t I suggest to the band that they work as a rhythm section for other artists? Just like Steve Lukather was doing with Toto. They all said, ‘Yeah, that’s a great idea.’ So we started doing sessions for other people, such as Leo Sayer, Carly Simon, and Hoyt Axton.”

He added:

“There was something to me about this experience that was very constructive. A producer doesn’t care what band you’re in or how cool your shoes are. You show up at nine in the morning and you play it right or you’re fired. Those were the rules we would live by in the studio. I thought getting the guys in the Doobie Brothers into this concept would be a good thing. And they rose to the occasion beautifully.

“We had an excellent rhythm section. Not only were we great musicians, but because the band had played so much together, it was a great dynamic they brought that very few people did. Having had that experience paved the way for the massive success of the ‘Minute by Minute’ album.”

In addition to the total absence of ego, session work sometimes required Baxter to know when not to play at all, as one of his anecdotes shows:

“Gary Katz was, famously, the producer for Steely Dan. It opened up a lot of opportunities for him to produce other acts. He called me one evening and said, ‘I’ve just finished this album with a very talented singer’ – I won’t name who it is – ‘And I need you to come in and listen to everything and tell me what it needs.”

“So I went in a couple of days later and everything was all set up. I probably hauled in 20 guitars and six different amplifiers – all the stuff you bring because you never know what they’re going to ask for. So Gary said, ‘Sit down and have a listen.'”

“I listened to the record top to bottom. I turned to him and said, ‘It doesn’t need anything. It’s just perfect.’ And Gary turned to me and said, ‘That’s why I pay you triple scale.’ There’s something to be said for what you don’t play.”