Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #51: Carlos Baker’s Evolution Through Cancer, Parenthood, and Passion

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 51

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast.

Jason Tonioli:

Welcome to the podcast. My guest for today is Carlos Baker. I’m super excited to chat with you. Carlos, you’re living in Germany, but you’re originally from the States and you spent your career in the pet food industry. For the last 14 years you’ve been a musician and been able to write songs. I know you’ve got a story from as a kid that I think our audience is going to be really interested in, but I’m really excited to kind of share your journey with our listeners. Anyway, it probably was a terrible introduction.

Carlos Baker:

No, it’s all good. Thank you for having me, man. Yeah, I’m out here between Hanover and Hamburg. I’ve been out here for I guess 14 years now and married a German lady. We moved here with my three kids. They were seven, six and four at the time. Now those three are in the States studying and we have a twelve-year-old still here with us. I made a life out here. I would have never dreamed. When we moved here, we thought we were just going to, we didn’t have any plan, we didn’t have anywhere to live. We just kind of packed up our stuff. I’ll back up to explain how we ended up at that decision.

To start, early on, when I was twelve years old, I was a real normal kind of typical kid. I grew up in a very loving family and all that kind of stuff. When I was twelve, I kept complaining to my dad and my mom that I was kind of having like my left foot kept falling asleep, like pins and needles type thing. That went on for about six months and then finally my knee started swelling up. My Pops was like, okay, we’ll swing by in East Providence. There’s a walk-in clinic there, we’ll check it out. We walked in and the doctor took a look at, he said, okay, we’ll take an x-ray, make sure it’s nothing, but I’m sure it’s your young kid, and blah, blah, blah.

When he walked back in the room, even I, as a twelve-year-old little guy, knew that something had changed. His energy, the energy in the room, his voice. He was like, you know what? I’m going to send you over right now. He was talking to my father. He said, I’m going to send you over to a colleague of mine at the big hospital in Rhode Island. There’s something going on there. We want to take a look at it. He knew it was something called osteogenic sarcoma. Which is bone cancer, rare bone cancer. From that day on began a new life, right? How else can you say other than as a father of four is that’s the day our new life as a family for me, from my family, from my friends. Everything changed because in some ways it was a death sentence. I didn’t really comprehend that because I was too young and naive. Ultimately, I did two years of chemotherapy and a lot of surgeries. Cancer spread, metastasized to my lungs for whatever reason I survived.

Jason Tonioli:

This was as a twelve-year-old kid.

Carlos Baker:

This was as a twelve-year-old kid and everyone around me was dying. It’s fascinating. When I do this, when I think back on the experience, they cut my leg off to the middle of my thigh because the cancer had kind of eaten through the bone and the knee and all that stuff. They did the chemotherapy. They found tumors in my left lung, found more tumors in my right lung. At some point, it was kind of like any normal human would have said, oh, I guess I’m not going to make it, but for whatever reason, the way my brain worked, whether nature versus nurture, whatever the reason, it never dawned on me that oh, I could die. It just never dawned on me. These people all around me that had the same cancer or Ewing sarcoma or leukemia or whatever these cancers were at Dana Farber. These kids were dying around me but for me it was just like, oh, they found more. Another surgery, okay. Which is very odd when I think back and people often when I tell the story they’re like what do you think? What made you different to survive? I’m like stupidity, naivety. What word can you use to say I don’t know. It’s even more fascinating because it wasn’t until years later that those things started kind of dawning on me that not only did my sickness affect my family obviously because oddly for me, but it also wasn’t really at least the way my defense mechanisms or my brain works. It was never really that bad. I don’t know. I was the center of this little world.

Everyone was taking care of me. For me, I don’t remember it as being so tragic or so sad or scary. I loved the doctors. I was fascinated by the nurses. Of course, it wasn’t pleasant to get chemotherapy and all these surgeries but ultimately it wasn’t until I was like 16, 17,18 and healthy and living a relatively normal life that people started kind of telling me things like, oh, we all thought you were going to die. Everyone just assumed you were going to die, and I would be like, what? What are you talking about, dude? I like to tell the story.

Then moving forward, as I’ll tell you a little bit more about myself. What is the reason that I had that personality type? Was I meant to be kind of like a more creative artist? Does my brain work differently or my mind work differently than other people? I don’t know the answer to the end of these things, right? I’m kind of posing these questions, but ultimately, I can remember one moment in particular, my grandmother.

I would have been 16,17 and we were learning in high school about the Great Depression. I went to my grandmother after school. I was hanging around with her and I was like, what’s the worst thing that happened in your life? Do you remember the Great Depression? She’s like, no. This and that. The worst thing probably was you. I thought she was joking. I was like, no, really? She’s like, no. When you got sick, that’s probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to the family. I remember being like, okay, so what I went through affected my community more than it did me, or certainly it affected them differently than it did me. I think through my young adulthood, I maintained that, for lack of a better phrase, I maintained that kind of carefree spirit personality.

I went to college, I went to work for the family, I got married, I did all the stuff and through all those steps, I was kind of not a very serious guy. I was working for the family. I put my hours in, but the reality of it is when I look back, I wasn’t really serious about it. Take that for what it is, I don’t really. Even when I use the word serious, all I can say is. What I mean by that is I wasn’t really ever fully engaged in it, right? I was there. I was part of going to work every day, but I wasn’t like everyone else. I was goofy and I didn’t really take anything kind of. There was no weight to anything until I got married. We had a bunch of kids in a row. We had three kids in 36 months. We bought a house. We did all that stuff. All of a sudden, I went from being this kind of carefree dude who I grew up to. Music was backing up again. Music was part of my life all my childhood. Even when I got sick, I always had a bass or a guitar in my hands.

Throughout high school, bass became my main instrument. Then all of a sudden, I got married and got a real job. I can remember almost physically saying it out loud, like, okay, now I have to put the toys in the basement. I got to put my bass, because now I got to be a father and I got to be a husband, and I need to do the stuff that real adults do.

Jason Tonioli:

Time to grow up, right?

Carlos Baker:

Yeah.

Jason Tonioli:

Feel like we really do, even though…

Carlos Baker:

I was fighting it every step of the way, but I do know that I knew I had to do that because now I was running into issues with family members that also worked for the family business because they were producing. If I’m honest with myself, I can look back now. I can squash my ego a little and say, yeah, of course they were upset with me because I wasn’t living up to the expectations that a family business guy has to.

Here’s what happened, is my mind could no longer handle that. The reality of me having to become an adult, I just couldn’t do it. So, my brain instead just shut down, and I went into full on depression. Full out. I had my first panic attack in 2006, I would have been about 30 in my early thirties, me and my best bud went up to Boston to watch John McEnroe, and those guys used to do those fun, professional tournaments, and I was sitting with them. I wasn’t feeling myself and all of a sudden, boom. Got hit with what I now know as a panic attack.

Much like getting diagnosed with cancer, the second that panic attack hit, my life changed, because now I became a dude that was fighting mental health issues, and I had no idea how to handle that because I didn’t have my family to help me out. I wasn’t telling people what I was feeling. All I could think of 24 hours a day was running from ever feeling that panic again. So now you’re no longer able to function. All my mind was doing was like, I have to stay so controlled that I will never allow this panic to come back. It doesn’t make any sense, obviously. I don’t know how much experience you have with this kind of stuff. It’s not real -the fear, but it’s real in my mind. Ultimately, I just shut myself away from the rest of the world. Basically, I went from being the fun dude in the room to not being able to be in a room. I just stopped being there. I stopped being present in any way with human contact other than my wife and my three kids and still pretended to go to work every day, but in a haze and just not able to communicate anymore.

It’s the most bizarre story when I think back. Ultimately, it was either jump off a bridge or reach out for help. Ultimately, I was lucky that I did reach out for help at a wonderful mental health place in Rhode Island called Butler Hospital. The psychiatrist there helped me get squared away, got on the right meds with the same meds that I’m now, 15 years later. I’m still on the same meds. It’s called Effexor, on the same dosage and everything. From that day forward, the sun kind of came out again, right? So now those meds, they stop the insanity but then you have to deal with what I would consider was even worse, which was the shame and all the emotions that come with this failure. I just completely failed at life. I couldn’t handle work. I couldn’t handle being a father. I couldn’t handle being a husband. I’m a total failure.

Now, my brain is working enough to start to deal with these emotions, which shame is the emotion that I struggled with. Luckily, my wife, who’s a wonderful lady, recognized that it was going to be a long road to get back. She has her master’s degree in psychology, and she kind of was watching me go through this. Ultimately, she was like, what do you say to packing up our stuff and moving to the little village that I grew up in in Germany? It was literally like that. She’s like, should we do it? I was like, yes, let’s pack it up and go. I would have struggled so much to try and find myself in that environment in my mind that I had failed. The reality is, I didn’t fail big in my mind. I failed. The whole world had seen me fail. That makes no sense. That’s not reality.

First of all, no one gives a s**t, because that’s how life is. We’re all going a million miles an hour, and no one really cares. Our coworkers, they just want us to be. I’m a good dude, so everyone wanted me to be happy. They weren’t laughing at me behind my back, but that’s how our minds work, right? Bless you. Ultimately, we moved to Germany.

From the day we arrived in Germany, I took my bass back out. I have behind me, I think you can see, I got a three quarter. That upright bass back there looks like a cello, but it’s upright. Whether it was because I was a good dude or an American dude or a decent musician, I found this wonderful community here in northern Germany of musicians that took me in, whether it be playing klezmer or kind of eastern European music on upright bass or singing blues and playing rock tunes. In those years, it was like music… I was functioning. I was functioning as a human again. I was raising my children. My wife went to work full time. We had three and then a baby. I was functioning, but I was also still really struggling to figure it out. All those questions that we all struggle with of. What’s the point of all this? All those classic questions in my mid 30s, late thirties, and I feel like I answered all those questions through writing and through music. I found all this stuff that if I was listening and willing to kind of capture it, a lot of stuff wanted to come out.

I had the time. I was blessed with that time when I was no longer working 60 hours a week. Yeah, I was taking care of my kids, but they were at school. In those years of trying to heal my emotional wounds, music and writing was my therapy. I chose not to go see a therapist. I didn’t do any of that stuff. To me, writing how I got through it. My songs are my babies. I don’t know if you’re in any way a songwriter.

Jason Tonioli:

I do have a lot of songs. I don’t know, several hundred. It’s one of those where I try to write something several times a week. Yeah.

Carlos Baker:

Okay.

Jason Tonioli:

I’m one of those that has the two, three measures of something that I come up with, and it might take five years before I finish it.

Carlos Baker:

I love that. Okay, so, you know. Do you have a relationship with all those tunes? Every tune you have a relationship with.

Jason Tonioli:

Yes.

Carlos Baker:

In most of my songs that I probably have about, I do a good job at, like, you. It sounds like I do a good job at cataloging them and having them organized. I have about 75 tunes, and I’ve only made three albums, so I got a bunch of tunes that I’m so excited to. I just schedule some time in a studio here next week to do, like, a four-song kind of EP type thing. That’s how I ended up here. To this day, again, if I’m very honest, I have to work every day to make sure that my mental health is where it needs to be. To get through the day. Not to say I’m suicidal, but it’s a full-time job for me to make sure that I’m always working to stay in the moment, stay present. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s who I am. There are times I don’t understand it. There are times I don’t get why I have to give so much energy and time to what should be just basic, normal human behavior, waking up in the morning and living. It’s just my path.

Jason Tonioli:

I love the story. The whole podcast, when we started this out, it was named, Successful Musician. The interesting thing is success means so many different things to different people at different times.

Carlos Baker:

I love that.

Jason Tonioli:

If you rewind the clock back to you as a twelve-year-old, I mean, success would be beating cancer. Obviously, that would be all that mattered, right? You probably never in a million years thought you’d be doing music or spend the last 14 years of your life working and being a musician. I love that you’re willing to be vulnerable and just kind of put it out there, because I think more people are going through this type of thing than ever want to admit it. It’s one of those things that I think everybody’s got to figure out their own journey and their challenges. I think being willing to kind of talk about it or even just listen to other people’s stories and realizing, like, oh, maybe I’m a little bit like that as well and just being able to be honest with yourself, I think it’s important, and I don’t think it happens near often enough for people.

I love that story. I’m curious if you could go back, rewind the clock back and give yourself, let’s say you’re sitting in a class, maybe the 20-year-old version of you back when you’re in family business. I don’t use the word screw up, but you weren’t working as hard as the rest of your family. If you could go back and give yourself advice of when it comes to music or other things, just life lessons, what would you say to that person?

Carlos Baker:

Well, I tell you, man, as the primary parent of four children, and now three of them are adults, 18, 20,21. Once again, I’m not a traditional father. I’m definitely not a typical father for a bunch of reasons. One, because I got to stay home with my kids, and I got to make them breakfast in the morning and bring them to school. I was doing the stuff that traditionally men don’t get to do, right? A-B-I didn’t work, so I had all the time in the world to be there for them. I’m also an artist, so I think I was so fascinated with watching them grow up, and I was taking it in. Yes, like, probably, maybe everybody. I had my demons and continue to have my demons, but I was also so involved in a nontraditional parental role with my kids. They were like my buds, and I’m a goofy dude, and I like to laugh and be silly, but then I was also, at the same time, I was trying to figure out my own stuff and trying to teach them kind of the stuff that I was figuring out.

It was like all these things that were happening that made it, at least for me, made it so special to raise the kids. During those years, the most common theme, which you just touched on, was that I’m a failure. I’ve never had success for my family. Success is financial, right? I come from a fourth-generation family business. It just took me all those years to kind of finally, and my wife would say it out loud. My wife would be like, you’re such an idiot. You have four wonderful children. You are with them every day. You’re playing music. You have this community of musicians. What else can you call success? What are you talking about? Even when people tell you, if you don’t want to hear it, sometimes it doesn’t connect. Right.

Jason Tonioli:

I think part of it is just what you’ve grown up around and raised. Especially, in the United States, we picture this success thing of having lots of stuff, making money. I think the society we live in, with all the social media, it’s showing off your stuff. As much as you want to think it’s going to make you happy, that stuff doesn’t actually, if that’s your success or happiness, once you have stuff, you realize real quick that it felt really good for, like 10 seconds. Then now what?

Carlos Baker:

I like what you said before. You said it in passing, that it’s nice to be honest with yourself. That’s just something that I don’t think we, as humans, value or understand the value of. When we’re raising our children, I don’t think often one of the parents will be like, listen, something that’s really important is learning to be honest with one’s own feelings, not to say that I necessarily said things like that to my children, but those are the things I think I was more likely to talk about because that was what was going on in my brain, right? What was going on in my mind was, and I was always honest with them, that, hey, I’m a little nuts. I’m trying to figure it out as we go here, too. If I were to go back when I was 20 and talk to myself, I think the problem is if you’re not ready to learn, man, I just feel like all the steps when I look back, all the things that I went through, all the mistakes that I made, and all the beautiful stuff that I’ve experienced, it’s hard for me to look at any of it as anything but beautiful.

Even my darkest, the darkest of days for me, where you’re just trapped in that hole in your brain and just the mind is racing and all that. I even am very comfortable in seeing the beauty in that. I saw this other side of me. I’m reading a Stephen King. He just put out a new book last year and it’s a really interesting book. The main character finds this hole in the ground that brings him into a whole another world. Once you get down there, there’s even like a sky, and it doesn’t make any sense but reading the book, I feel like because I went through that depression, because I was so aware of what I was going through, I feel like I even got to see a whole another world that I didn’t know existed in my mind. I’m not even sure if what I’m saying makes sense, if I can communicate what I’m saying. To me it makes sense that what I went through has value. It helps me understand where I’m at today. It helps me understand what is and isn’t valuable.

Like you said, I don’t have a fancy car and I don’t want a fancy car. I do love to go visit my three best buds in America and we value our time together. It’s hard for me to think I would sit down with my 20-year-old self and teach him anything. Could I say, hey, dude, don’t stress out so much when you’re in your early thirties? Yeah, I guess, but at the same time, s**t, from a life standpoint, it’s hard to teach lessons without just kind of doing it. The bummer would be if you don’t learn from all the beautiful lessons that we are experiencing every day, that’s the bummer. Of course, there’s those of us out there, and that life can go by so quickly, and you don’t take the time to learn. Using those cheesy phrases is to smell the flowers or whatever it is, but that’s also their path, right? Could I tell myself, hey, dude, make sure you never put your bass down? Sure. I would love to tell my 20-year-old self that, hey, stick with it, because bass is important to you. It’s a part of your soul. It’s one of the horcruxes. Don’t let it go. But again, I wouldn’t have listened to anybody, man.

Jason Tonioli:

Well, and I think that’s a lot of us are probably that way. As we look back at ourselves, one of the things I think is interesting in just looking at your story is we talk about success, and you’re saying, oh, I don’t need the fancy car. I don’t need this. I don’t need that. I think it’s a little bit of that satisfaction, fulfillment that we find in life when you get older, when you can maturely look back on something and be like, all right, this is what really brings that long lasting happiness and fulfillment versus pursuing this success of, I got to have the fancy car, or I got to make lots of money or do the thing that my family or whatever ideas we were raised with.

It’s interesting, as I talk with lots of different musicians, that it always usually comes back to just finding those happy moments with your instrument or just with the people that were around when we’re able to do the music. I don’t think it’s so much as if I could go back and talk to myself, same thing, that 20-year-old self, I don’t know that I would tell them, hey, you should totally pursue a career in music and just everything does that. I think it’d be more, hey, enjoy the ride. Look for those opportunities, and when you see them in front of you, don’t be scared to take them.

In those early ages, there’s a thing I call it impostor syndrome, where you almost don’t feel like you’re good enough or you don’t feel like you’re worthy enough or whatever that is. It’s like this little shoulder angel that’s telling you, you can’t do that. You’re no good, you can’t talk to them. I think if I was giving myself advice, whether it’s music or just life in general, is, don’t be scared about thinking you’re not good enough to try. The times when I’ve kind of been able to be brave enough or courageous enough to knock the shoulder angel, the bad shoulder angel, off that imposter shoulder angel, when you don’t worry about it and you just be like, you know what? That guy’s probably, maybe he’s the most famous composer in the world, but I’m not going to be afraid to go talk to him. What I’ve learned in being around a lot of really high level, successful, we’ll call it successful or fulfilled people, they’re normal people just like us, and they’ve got their own issues. They’ve got their own demons.

Carlos Baker:

That’s the classic, man.

Jason Tonioli:

Yeah, but what’s so cool about it? If you’re willing to just put yourself out there, what’s the worst that can happen? Maybe you had a chance to meet Hans Zimmer or John Williams or one of these people and you didn’t take it, what’s the worst they could have done is I didn’t have time to talk to you, but chances are they probably would be willing to sit down in that situation and chat with you.

Carlos Baker:

I’ll go one step further to what you’re saying, because I love conceptually, what you’re saying is. Mick Jagger or Han Zimmer or any of the ghost guys, they do have their persona. Axel Rose is the lead singer of Guns N’Roses, and he’s been part of our lives, but once you get away from that stuff, he’s got the same s**t that we have, man. We all have the same stuff. Or if you meet my brother in Rhode Island, is at a really wealthy country club, and he’ll literally be playing. I’ll be with him in a clubhouse or something. He’s a billionaire. He’s one of the richest guys in Rhode Island. I’m sure he’s got the same stuff we got, man. I think it takes a minute or it takes work to finally kind of recognize that, right? I do feel like I am further along in my understanding of this world because I’ve done the work. When I listen to someone like you make that statement, that lands with me, because what you’re saying is the truth, man.

The truth is that Hans Zimmer is just a dude. I mean, he’s a really talented dude, and I would love to talk to him, but I would talk to him just like I would connect with anyone, right? I love to connect with people. I love to connect with humans. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing on this earth, right? As I’m sure you do, I try not to put more weight to a connection with anyone than I do with someone else.

Jason Tonioli:

I had an interesting experience. I guess it was a realization. This fall I was at a big conference. There’s like 5000 people at this big event. Andy Grammar was the entertainment. I mean, love his music, the guy’s super talented. They brought in a full stage of, I mean, it was impressive as a musician to just watch. You’re like, holy cow, there’s a ton of stuff there. It was a really amazing production, kind of this private event they put on. One of my buddies that I was with, we’ve talked a lot, but he does music videos and he’s really talented guy. I think it’s one of those whereas we’ve gotten to know each other, he’s had that impostor syndrome, like, oh, you’re not good enough, or am I really good enough to go and help people do this, whatever the thing is he wanted to do. He just flat out, he’s like, I’m going to go talk to the people that are running the board up there and just go introduce myself. I was so impressed. He went up and he talked to him about 10,15 minutes later, he comes back, he’s like, oh my gosh, they really like some of my stuff. I showed him some of my stuff, they asked to see it and I may be able to go do this thing and they’re doing stuff with put.

Carlos Baker:

Put himself out there.

Jason Tonioli:

It just opens this door for him. Honestly, I don’t know whether it ended up going anywhere for him. Then I’ll watch other people and even look at myself or some of my family members. The whole idea of walking up to someone that’s a total stranger and doing that would. Some people would rather die than go themselves out there and go just introduce themselves. Say, hey, my name is this, here’s what I do. This is cool what you’re doing. Just have that human interaction yet. I think in just looking at myself as a musician and any advice I’m given to somebody is don’t be afraid to go talk to somebody. If it was John Williams. You’re like, he’s the dude.

Carlos Baker:

Or just don’t be afraid in general. Whether it’s going to talk to someone. I’m sure you’ve met plenty of those guys that are like, yeah, I’m a songwriter, but I’ve never really put my music out. I’m like, what? Well, then you’re not a songwriter, dude. That’s the thing that drives me the most nuts, when people I’m like, oh, cool, where can I check out your stuff? They’re like, well, I haven’t done anything with it. I’m like, well, then we can all say we’re songwriters but you got to have a product that you can hand to me so I can check it out. That’s kind of a pre-req to say, you know what I mean? That’s just fear, because we can all afford a computer nowadays. We can all learn the basics of garage band or whatever it is that you use, Cubase or whatever. That’s just fear, man. I know that anything that I’ve made the decision in my life, one thing I can say for sure, I’m 50 years old. Anything that I’ve done, I’ve gotten value out of it. I’ve thrown money at projects that ultimately didn’t work out the way I expected them to, but there was always value from that experience because what else are we doing? What are we doing in this earth? If we ain’t learning and kind of experiencing stuff? What’s the point of it, man?

Jason Tonioli:

I don’t even know whether you’re religious or not religious and honestly, frankly, don’t think it matters but I think a lot of times people will think about, people say, oh, it’s a coincidence, or, I don’t believe in coincidences, or there’s these opportunities that land in our way. I think the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve been able to look back and be like, there’s just so many doors that aligned or that I came across in life or conversations that ended up happening that got me to where I was and it’s just interesting where I think in your mind, you’ll think about what you want to do, and if you can decide on those goals or put yourself out there to accomplish something, and you continually work towards that, it’s interesting how stars align somehow to help those things happen. I think it all starts in a lot of ways, just with your mental state of, is this a thing you’re going to think about? You’re like, okay, maybe it’s just writing a song, or maybe I want to go build a giant hotel somewhere in Costa Rica. Type of thing.

It’s interesting when you start to align your thoughts with that, all of a sudden, things will start to, you’ll meet the right person, and I could tell hundreds of stories of how that’s me. I think that’s another piece of advice I would just give myself is like, look, take those opportunities when they come, but have something in your mind of where you want to go and when you do that, things happen.

Carlos Baker:

You know what? Whether I’m religious or not, I use the phrase, which I think is just another way to look at it, is listening to the universe. I have committed. I don’t know if there’s been times in my life that I didn’t listen to the universe or your gut or whatever phrase you want to use but again, whenever I’ve listened to the universe and kind of followed that path, and it’s caused trouble. In 2019, my best bud in the world. I was primary parenting. My kids were all living home still. My wife worked full time. My best bud in the world, guy that I love, he’s my best friend from college. He got sick, got really sick, and so me and all my buddies flew into Chicago to kind of say bye to him because we thought he was going to die. Ultimately, he survived, but he’s severely handicapped.

I made the decision in February of 2019. I said, someone has to be by his bedside for the next six months. There’s no way that he can get through these next six months unless somebody is there, right? Not just the nurses, not someone that you can throw money at, but somebody that’s significant in his life. I made the decision that I was going to be that guy, and that’s the closest that I’ve come to getting a divorce because my wife’s like, what are you talking about? It’s not an option. I was like, but it is an option because we’ll figure it out. I’m going to go, and I’m telling you, it’s a specific time frame, and we’ll figure it out.

I moved to Chicago for six months. I lived in the hospital with my best friend for six months and it was the most tragic, yet the most beautiful six months not of my life, because I’ve had so many wonderful experiences, but it was one of the most beautiful and I always use this phrase when people are like, well, why’d you do that? I was like, because there was greatness to be witnessed. That’s what it kept popping in my head. Is here’s a guy that had everything, and now in the movies or in the Bible or he’s been stripped down to have nothing, you’ve lost it all. You got nowhere to turn. How are you going to deal with that if that ain’t greatness, if that story isn’t greatness? I don’t know what is.

I always say I feel like I was selfish to make that decision because I wanted to witness it. I wanted to see what this guy did. He was the coolest guy in college. He made all the money and had all the women and the cars and all that stuff, and then all of a sudden, he’s got nothing. It was beautiful, man, and we laughed and the only way you can deal with a tragedy of that level is just kind of almost pretend like it’s not happening. You almost have to just push it aside in these early months of kind of survival mode, right? To watch him do that, to be a part of just the laughter and trying to create fun in this environment, that is not fun. It was so wonderful, and I feel like that was, like, my ultimate listening to the universe moment. It was against everything that I could have possibly done at that point to leave my babies at that age when I was so important.

In the end, my wife obviously supported it. Ultimately, she supported it and even the value that my kids got from it, right? Kind of that cycle of all that I’m learning, all that I’m getting from this experience, they get to see their father be like, hey, I’m leaving you guys to go help somebody. There’s no way you can lose in that situation. Needless to say, I didn’t look at it from all those different angles when I made the decision, right? I made the decision because that’s just the way the universe told me what to do. I listened, but it was awesome and now he’s amazing, man. He’s got no hands, no feet, lost his nose for six months. He was just in bed, and now he’s the most badass. Killing it, walking like he drives. He’s the most amazing dude you’ll ever awesome.

Jason Tonioli:

Carlos. I know we’re, like, way over time, but I’m curious if you look back, best advice anybody’s given you. Life advice, music advice. Just curious what you would respond to that question. Best advice you’ve gotten.

Carlos Baker:

Well, I tell you, last year, whenever you ask me a question, I feel like I go into a ten-minute soliloquy here, but really quickly is I got to work with. I threw money last year at working with a producer, a real guy, a guy that’s been there. He’s towards the end of his career. His name is Brian Deck, out of Chicago. I moved to Chicago last year for six months and made an album with him. I threw a bunch of money at him. Threw, like, literally 50 grand at this project. In my world, that’s real money. That’s as big a kind of rolling the dice as I can do. I do feel like I probably did it from not the right place. I think I threw that money at it, thinking that I was going to make a product that was going to help me create a career in music. Ultimately, it wasn’t really the right reason. In the end, it was simply the most amazing experience, because I got to experience what it’s like to make an album with a real guy in the most professional possible situation that you can. He gave me his time. He gave me his expertise. I worked with his studio musicians, the pre-production process, et cetera.

I think one of the best advices is I struggle with that lack of confidence, my self-esteem. All the stuff you’ve been talking about is I’m not a good enough singer. I don’t belong in this studio with these monster musicians, all these types of things, right? All the stuff that maybe we all deal with, but Lord knows I do. One specific time, we were in the pre-production process, and he was working through my lyrics, and he was tough, man. To me, my lyrics are just so near and dear to my heart. Every word in my songs, right? He’d just be crossing lines out. This is s**t. The first day, day one, he’s just crossing lines out. He’s like, this word is no good. This and that and then he was writing other words. What do you call that? The margins. I’m like, what did I get myself into? What is happening right now?

At the end of the day, he’s like, all right, Carlos, let me explain what happened today. Let me explain you what we just did, and he went into this thing about how there’s the melody of a song, and then there’s the kind of. The rhythmic, syllabic kind of melody of lines, right? He was like, you are just squeezing way too many syllables into your lines. The song is there. The melody is there. I’m trying to help you understand. What I’m doing when I’m crossing this out and these words that I’m writing in the margins, these are like space holders for syllables.

This is the advice he gave me, and it was off the cuff. He said, I am not a songwriter. I don’t have that talent. You’re the talent. You’re the songwriter so these words, these spacers that I put in there, that’s for you to go and use from a syllable standpoint to then go find the lyrics that you think fit. I remember just that moment. It was like a light bulb. It was like, okay, here’s a guy, he’s worked with counting crows. He’s worked with iron and wine. He’s worked with these guys that I love, like these musicians that I really love. He’s looking me in the eye and telling me that I have a talent, I have an ability that he doesn’t have, and I melted, man. I’m like, okay, all right. I got this because the reality is, he’s not a songwriter. He’s never written a song in his life.

You know, whether I’m a great songwriter, whether I’m Bob Dylan or. It doesn’t really matter. I’m standing in his studio with songs that we’re trying to bring to life. That makes me a songwriter and I do feel like that realization, it changed everything for me in that experience with him, but also as a songwriter, I was like, okay, man, all right. This guy just told me I needed a big shot, relatively a big shot. I needed someone like that to just be like, dude, be proud of the talent or the kind of skill that you have, because it’s kind of cool, and not everyone has it, which was pretty cool, man.

Jason Tonioli:

I love that. It’s interesting how important it is to have somebody that believes in us like we’re doing right now. You reflect back. It’s like, the reality is, it’s important to believe in yourself, too. I think what I’ve tried to do, and I’ve failed and succeeded sometimes, but I think the more we can help people believe in themselves and build people up, I think in a lot of ways, the more success and fulfilled you’re going to be able to fill. I find it interesting; I almost find more joy in seeing other people have those success moments. That’s where I think I find the longer happiness, fulfillment than the little fleeting moments of, hey, I made lots of car, or whatever it might be, those less important things that somehow, we fixate on and focus all of our energy on. Then you finally achieve it, and it’s like, okay, that was cool. I got a cool plaque.

Carlos Baker:

Just to wrap up, and I know you want to wrap up. Music is everything to me, man. Nothing makes me happier than when my favorite bands put out a new album. Nothing makes me happier. I’m a huge Jeff Tweety fan from the band called Wilco, and he recently put out a new album, and it made me so happy to listen to those 14 new songs and try and understand where the hell… how he came, the direction that he chose to go at his age. Music is the best and I do appreciate you having me on here, and I feel like I didn’t talk much about music. I tend to kind of philosophize more about life, but in the end, music brings so much joy to me.

Jason Tonioli:

I appreciate you just being willing to share your story. I do think, yes, we could talk about music a lot on this podcast, but the longer I’m doing this and the more people I interview, it’s as much a life. Just getting your mindset right, recognizing that one of the cool things with music is you talk about music as everything to you. When you put that thing out or the song out, it’s like a piece of you, and it lasts forever. We’re going to be gone and music really does have this potential to reach and touch other people and very few things in this life that have the ability to continue to help somebody fill something. It’s just a really special thing with music. I think understanding the journey like you’re talking about, with just understanding how they put the thing together, that type of stuff helps people.

Carlos Baker:

Awesome.

Jason Tonioli:

You’ve shared your story. If somebody wants to find out more about you. I know you’ve done some podcasts, but is there a website people can go look at? Or if they go look up on YouTube.

Carlos Baker:

The band I put all my music out on is a CK Baker Band. I have a website and then my music, I got a bunch of albums streaming. The last album that I made that I was just talking about with Brian is called ‘Find your Way’. I’m really proud of. It’s. I guess working with the producer is fascinating because you give so much. At least the way I approached it, I gave him so much room to kind of put his voice in the album. You know what I mean? I gave him so much rope to make so many decisions, and I don’t regret that at all. That being said, the album came out very different than I expected, but I love it and I love the tunes that we chose to put on the album. So, yeah, please take the time to listen to that. Then I wrote a book that I am very proud of. It’s called ‘Songs for Ivy.’ That’s out there everywhere. That’s on Amazon and all that stuff. So read it. Tell everyone you love it. Let me make a few bucks. Come on.

Jason Tonioli:

Well, Carlos, this has been super fun. I’ve loved this interview, and I think we’re going to be talking more and more, too, so I appreciate you taking time to share with people.

Carlos Baker:

Thank you, brother.

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