The 103rd episode of No Hair, No Heart has Mookie sitting down with Pat Donohue, one of the most respected acoustic guitarists alive and a player whose reputation among musicians is legendary. A Grammy winner, National Fingerpicking Guitar Champion, longtime performer with A Prairie Home Companion, and an artist once praised by Chet Atkins as one of the world’s great fingerpickers, Pat joins Mookie with zero ego and tons of good advice.

What follows is a sharp, grounded, often funny discussion about talent, discipline, and staying sane in a noisy world. Pat talks about his life in music, the long road from learning guitar as a kid to becoming one of the most admired players in the business, and why he still carries himself with the modesty of a working craftsman instead of an icon.

The conversation also gets into something rare these days: an artist intentionally keeping politics out of the music. Pat explains why he prefers to let the songs speak for themselves and why not every stage needs to become a soapbox. In a culture addicted to public declarations, Pat's voice and approach are a refreshing stance.

Pat also shares stories from his years on A Prairie Home Companion, where he spent decades as part of the famed Guys All-Star Shoe Band, performing for millions of listeners each week and contributing to one of America’s most beloved radio shows.

For younger listeners and aspiring players, Pat also offers the most practical advice imaginable: get out there and play. Don't theorize endlessly, or wait until you’re “ready.” Play live. Play often. Learn in public. Make mistakes. That’s where musicians are forged.

The Guest

Pat is one of the most listened-to finger pickers in the world. As the guitarist for the “ Guys All-Star Shoe Band” of Minnesota Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion, for twenty years, Pat got to show off his savvy licks and distinctive original songs to millions of listeners each week. Pat’s musical tastes are eclectic. Though he considers himself foremost a folk guitarist, Pat’s influences are rooted in bluesmen Blind Blake, Robert Johnson, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters and Miles Davis. He manages to blend jazz and blues with folk, and the mix is seamless. Over the years he has captivated audiences with his unique original compositions, dazzling instrumentals and humorous song parodies, including Sushi-Yucki and Would You Like to Play the Guitar?

If you're in the city, come out and see Pat Donohue & Friends Dan Newton and Mike Cramer at the Midway Saloon in St. Paul.

His Website

https://www.patdonohue.com/index.html

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

On this 102nd episode of No Hair, All Heart your favorite bald host Mookie Spitz is thrilled to go full ADHD with the legendary musician, producer, bandleader, teacher, radio host, and industry connector Jesse Krakow: He's the musician's musician thanks to playing with everyone cool while somehow showing up wherever the interesting stuff is popping.

Jesse's jet fuel is fan obsession. As a kid, he dove headfirst into the weird end of the pool—Zappa, Beefheart, outsider bands, avant-prog—and never stopped swimming. That energy carried straight into Time of Orchids, his long-running experimental band, and into a career defined by constant motion: new projects, thrilling collaborators, and endless experimental rabbit holes.

One of the wildest threads is his deep connection to The Shaggs, the famously unpolished, totally singular band from the ’60s. Jesse loves them, tracked them down, organized a tribute, built relationships with the surviving members, and helped bring their music back into the world as a full-fledged multimedia revival. That’s how he rolls: If Jesse's energized, he dives in and makes it happen.

His conversation with Mookie moves like his career: fast, sideways, and occasionally off the rails. Jesse tells wild stories, contemplates the value of failure while revelling in success, and bursts with ideas and enthusiasm. They talk about The Muse ignoring then inspiring the greats, and how brillance can end any second, stressing the need to double-down before she goes belly-up.

That mindset is all over Jesse’s process. He’s always thinking about music, working ideas out, playing gigs and publishing. Collaboration is baked into everything—bands, revivals, and teaching. His advice to young musicians is exciting and clear: make it good, believe in yourself, and listen to people who have been there and done that.

The Guest

Jesse Krakow is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, sideman, teacher and music director. He was a co-founder of the experimental rock band Time of Orchids, a touring bassist for Shudder To Think and a member of The Shaggs/Dot Wiggin Band. He has worked with John Zorn, Paul Rudd, Kate Pierson (The B-52’s), Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart), Nina Persson (The Cardigans), Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Gilbert Gottfried, Nona Hendryx (LaBelle), Roddy Bottum (Faith No More), Julee Cruise (“Twin Peaks”), Chris Butler (The Waitresses), and longtime NYC institution The Losers Lounge, among many others. He was awarded a Fellowship from The Brooklyn Philharmonic, hosted the weekly radio show “Minor Music” on WFMU, a Professor at Bootsy Collins’ Funk University, and has recorded re-creations of albums by Hulk Hogan and Corey Feldman. Currently he is the MD for MANDONNA: an all-male tribute to Madonna. His most recent recording is "Bastards of Prog", released on Cuneiform Records in July 2026 under the name KRAKHOUSE.

Get More Jesse

BoP: https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bastards-of-prog

HULK: https://jessekrakow.bandcamp.com/album/hulk-rules

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jessekrakow7127

ToO: https://timeoforchids.bandcamp.com/album/sarcast-while

SHAGGS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uecAAN6E6yY

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

In the 101st episode of No Hair, All Heart, Mookie is thrilled to chat with legendary guitarist and songwriter Laurence Juber—a player whose illustrious career adapts and expands at every turn. From studio sessions with George Martin to lead guitar with Paul McCartney's Wings, to becoming one of the most respected fingerstyle guitarists in the world, Laurence's career has evolved with every opportunity enthusiastically taken, every new skill masterfully learned.

Mookie zeroes in on something rare: Juber’s ability to absorb new musical environments from rock to film scoring, jazz to classical, altered tunings to popular orchestrations, and translate them into his own distinct and thrilling aesthetic language. Central to his success has been Laurence's inspiring flexibility where patterns, theory, and instinct seamlessly blend into his distinct and masterful style.

Going beyond “rock guitarist,” “session guy,” or “fingerstyle player," Laurence lives a life of incessant creative and technical exploration: standard tuning, DADGAD, orchestral voicings, counterpoint that sounds like multiple instruments at once. Mookie frames it clearly: most people get overwhelmed by possibility, while Laurence embraces it and rocks it. New context? Learn it. New constraint? Conquer it. New sound? Build around it. "Cerebal plasticity" is what Mookie calls Laurence's secret sauce, and together they explore the enthralling variants.

Along the way they get into:

• How Laurence immediately took to reading music, and why “pattern thinking” is the perfect complement
• How alternate tunings unlock harmonic colors musicians cannot access otherwise
• The discipline and benefits of studio work fueling the freedom and exploration of solo performance
• Why counterpoint on guitar feels like bending or blocking time—second by second, and frame by frame
• And why AI, for all its usefulness, still can’t replicate the lived, physical experience of playing an instrument

Enmeshed in soulful nostalgia, with a masterclass in adaptability, Laurence reveals how an artist stays relevant and intriguing by constantly learning. And yes, Laurence picks up his guitar and plays for us, just like yesterday and everyday!

The Guest

Laurence Juber is a Grammy-winning guitarist, composer, and arranger best known for his time as lead guitarist with Paul McCartney’s Wings. A London-trained musician and former National Youth Jazz Orchestra standout, he first made his mark as a top session player in the 1970s.

Over a decades-long career, Juber has released more than two dozen solo albums and become one of the world’s leading fingerstyle guitarists, known for his orchestral approach and acclaimed Beatles arrangements. His work spans numerous film and television soundtracks, as well as compositions for video games, theme parks, and theater.

He has collaborated with artists ranging from Ringo Starr to Harry Styles, moving seamlessly across rock, jazz, classical, and acoustic traditions—building a career defined by versatility, precision, and constant reinvention.

Visit his website at: https://laurencejuber.com/

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

Mookie is thrilled to celebrate the 100th episode of No Hair, All Heart by bringing back Dr. Barbara Minton after her first appearance on the podcast in August—and this time to share the other half of her "Music as Medicine" project: a scientist-musician partnership with guitar virtuoso and master storyteller Peppino D’Agostino. Together, they create music designed to shift the brain into healthier states.

As a therapist and researcher, Barbara works directly with the brain and has been chasing a practical question: can you compose music so intentionally—tempo, range, structure, resonance—that it reliably helps people settle their nervous systems? Not as background “relaxation” muzak, but as entertaining music with melody, emotional intelligence, and craft. To realize her goal, she teamed up with Peppino and created Calm the Storm: compositions designed to enthrall listeners while their bodies relax.

Barbara and Peppinio also share how they collaborated. Barbara brings the science-driven constraints and a clear target: music that supports regulation. Peppino effervesces with artistry, intuition, and a composer’s instincts about what enthralls a listener. Putting egos aside, they co-created by testing ideas, adjusting, rewriting, and finding the sweet spot where the music stays expressive while still serving the physiological goal.

Their musical talent is central to the magic: Peppino's intimate fingerstyle guitar paired with Barbara's deep, grounding power of pipe organ. Along the way, learn more about Dr. Minton’s practice and the work she’s doing in the world, and go see Peppino on tour and be amazed. And stay tuned for their workshops!

https://musicandhealing.net/album/3496530/calm-the-storm

The Guests

Dr. Barbara Minton is a neuroscientist, therapist, and classically trained musician whose work bridges brain science and the art of sound. With decades of experience in EEG brain mapping and neurofeedback, she has developed evidence-based methods for using music to influence neural patterns tied to pain, anxiety, focus, and sleep. Drawing on both her clinical expertise and her background as a performer, Dr. Minton collaborates with world-class musicians to compose and curate music designed to calm, energize, or re-balance the brain’s networks. Her approach blends hard data with artistic intuition, making the science of music accessible, practical, and deeply personal.

https://drbarbminton.com/

Peppino D’Agostino is an Italian-born acoustic guitarist and composer who emerged in the early ’80s as part of the second wave of top-tier fingerstylists who helped redefine the instrument in the ’90s. Known for jaw-dropping technique, open tunings, and percussive effects, he blends melody, harmony, rhythm, and groove into what he calls “minestrone music”—warm, playful, and always musical. He’s performed in more than 30 countries, played major festivals and theaters, and shared stages with players like Tommy Emmanuel and Leo Kottke. His album Every Step of the Way was named one of the top three acoustic guitar albums of all time by Acoustic Guitar magazine readers. Voted Best Acoustic Guitarist by Guitar Player readers and praised as a “guitarist’s guitarist,” D’Agostino also bridges classical and rock worlds on recordings like Penumbra and continues to teach widely through workshops and TrueFire.

https://www.peppinodagostino.com/

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

On this MLK Day 2026 solo rant, Mookie Spitz does what he does best on the 99th episode of No Hair, All Heart: he pulls the pin on a cultural grenade and refuses to flinch when it goes off.

Starting with Martin Luther King Jr.’s most misused line—“judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”— he dives headfirst into the uncomfortable paradox of our moment: a second Trump administration aggressively dismantling DEI and “woke” institutions, while simultaneously benefiting from a multiracial, working-class electoral coalition that flipped traditional political assumptions on their head.

Mookie dissects how MLK’s aspirational color-blind ideal has been selectively weaponized, used both to justify rolling back civil-rights protections and to argue against identity-based policies that were originally designed to correct historic inequities. Along the way, he tears into the lazy binaries that dominate public discourse: woke vs. anti-woke, left vs. right, victimhood vs. bootstraps, moral purity vs. brute power.

His rant ranges wide and wild to dive into:

• The Trump administration’s executive-order purge of DEI language and institutions
• Why some Black intellectuals openly support dismantling affirmative action
• The difference between race neutrality as an aspiration and as a premature policy assumption
• The transgender debate as the cultural fulcrum driving radical political oscillation
• Free speech, religious liberty, and where human decency actually draws the line
• Why corporate virtue signaling and pronoun theater feel hollow, even to people who support civil rights
• How chaos, disruption, and even political ugliness can create conditions for real transformation

At the emotional core of the episode is a deeply human story—told via a friend—that accidentally lands closer to MLK’s dream than most policy papers ever will: a second-grader who proudly submits Taylor Swift as her Black History Month hero, not out of irony or provocation, but because admiration came before identity.

That moment becomes the lens through which Mookie reframes the entire conversation. Not as a denial of racism, not as a dismissal of history, but as a glimpse of what genuine color-blindness might actually look like when it isn’t coerced, gamed, or politicized.

Layered on top is a broader meditation on power, disruption, and truth in a post-institutional age. Mookie draws lines from Trump to FDR, from Nietzsche to Feyerabend, from social media chaos to the collapse of old moral scaffolding. He argues that we’re living through a brutal revaluation of values, and whether it ends in disaster or renewal depends on whether we’re capable of thinking beyond tribes.

His rant is long, messy, provocative, and intentionally unresolved, much like him.

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

The No Hair, All Heart podcast goes deep this week with Craig A. DeLarge, MPH, MBA—a seasoned digital health leader, former pharma executive, public-health thinker, and relentless advocate for using technology without letting it eat us alive.

Rather than spoon up a “future of wellness” chat, Mookie and Craig go long-form with an intellectually honest conversation about what actually works at the intersection of healthcare, leadership, and technology—and what absolutely does not.

Craig walks through his post-pharma evolution into his Wise Working Leadership consultancy and what he calls serious play:

• Coaching senior life-science and healthcare executives
• Advising founders and investors in digital mental health
• Building practical frameworks for technology-enabled wellness that normal people can actually use

Together, Mookie and Craig tackle many of the tough challenges, and offer proven solutions:

• Why we live in sick care, not healthcare
• Why prevention sounds obvious but fails systemically
• Why “personal empowerment” is overrated without community
• How startups, legacy companies, and executives keep talking past each other
• Why managed care economics quietly reward dysfunction
• How AI can either accelerate human wellness—or turbocharge delusion

They also dig into digital wellness literacy, not as ideology, but as practice:

• Stress, sleep, movement, relationships, food, and attention
• How tech harms each—and how it can actually help
• Why measurement without meaning is useless
• Why AI is fire: it can cook dinner or burn the house down

The episode also gets personal: Mookie reflects on podcasting as forced humility, listening as a learned skill, and the vital realization that community—not optimization—is the missing link in behavior change.

If you are:

• A healthcare or life-science executive
• A digital health or mental-health founder
• A leader navigating AI, burnout, and complexity
• Or just someone trying to live sanely in a dopamine-engineered world

Craig hits home the truth that:

Technology isn’t the villain.
AI isn’t the savior.
Wellness isn’t a product.
And real change doesn’t happen alone.

The Guest

Craig A. DeLarge is a digital healthcare strategist and mental health advocate & educator at WiseWorking Leadership, where he develops leaders, advises digital mental health firms, and educates citizens about the topic of digital wellness.

He has contributed as a digital & healthcare marketer, strategist, and educator, and has worked at Novo Nordisk, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Takeda, and Johnson & Johnson. He has also taught marketing, communications, leadership, and business ethics at several colleges, including Temple University, Philadelphia University, Chestnut Hill College, St. Joseph’s University, and Penn State University.

Craig holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Marketing and Design Management from Philadelphia University, from the University of Westminster, and King’s College, London. He is also a certified professional coach and published author of The WiseWorking Handbook (2014). He resides in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Craig's Contact Information

Wise Working Website

Stress Test eBook

Newsletter

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

Parricide ranks among the most disturbing crimes imaginable: children killing their parents. The crime appears rarely — roughly 1–2% of all murders in the U.S. — yet the psychological impact lands with enormous force.

In this Season 2 premiere of No Hair, All Heart, Mookie Spitz uses a recent, high-profile Hollywood family tragedy as a lens to examine something far more universal and uncomfortable: entitlement, parenting, resentment, gratitude, and the emotional violence that often precedes physical violence.

This episode rejects true-crime voyeurism, and delivers an unsparing reflection from someone who has lived on both sides of the parent–child divide: as a son shaped by fear, contempt, and unresolved anger toward a hard, emotionally distant father, and as a father who deliberately chose the opposite path: the fun dad, the permissive dad, the nice guy. Mookie questions the cost of that choice.

The conversation dissects the collision of wealth, fame, addiction, and enablement in celebrity households, arguing that unlimited resources frequently destroy the very boundaries troubled children need most. Hollywood becomes a metaphor for America itself: a culture that hyper-inflates success, worships celebrity, and then feeds on collapse — a modern pantheon of Greek gods armed with money, power, and catastrophic blind spots.

The rant moves fluidly between cultural critique and personal confession. Mookie confronts his own parenting decisions, his fear of becoming his father, and the uncomfortable possibility that avoiding hardness can breed entitlement just as easily as cruelty breeds rebellion. He reflects on generational trauma, the necessity of separation between parents and adult children, and the evolutionary reality that conflict often fuels independence.

No clean answers appear here. No parenting formula emerges. No redemption arc ties itself neatly with a bow. Instead, the episode offers perspective. Gratitude arrives late more often than anyone admits. “Good enough” parenting stands as the only honest standard. Growing up — for children and parents alike — demands brutality, necessity, and unfinished work.

Mookie's rant delivers a raw, intellectually restless meditation on family, boundaries, fame, failure, and survival — and opens a season focused squarely on the hardest truths of the human heart.

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

The 96th episode and season finale of No Hair, All Heart sits host Mookie Spitz down with Claris "Bud" Hyett, an 81-year-old farm boy turned innovative corporate problem-solver, Marine-raised straight-shooter, cancer survivor, and unapologetic truth teller. Doctors gave him months to live—nine years ago. Instead of folding, he keeps fighting, living, thinking...

And storytelling: from growing up on a hard Midwestern farm to shaping major aerospace projects, from a near-death brush-fire experience to messy marriages, brutal family battles, redemption, love, and ultimately pride in the life he built, Bud doesn’t regret a damn thing.

He talks about grit, American culture losing its backbone, education losing its soul, politics losing its honesty, and what it really means to work hard, stand up, build something, and keep going when life beats the hell out of you. He also talks love, loyalty, Freemasonry, marksmanship, near-spiritual moments, and the strange miracle of still being here after doctors counted him out. Rather than gloat or complan, Bud offers profound perspective from a man who earned it the hard way, while still having his own unfinished business.

If you want a conversation that hits reality square in the jaw—resilience, mortality, family, work, and purpose—this is it. Listen, learn a thing or two, and maybe rethink what “a good life” really means.

Bud's Memoir

Where We Belong

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show