Music
Luke F. Walton records as Scoobert Doobert, a self-produced indie and chill-pop project: he writes, plays, produces, and mixes most of the work himself. His first break came on the road, touring as a guitarist and vocalist with the Doobie Brothers and opening for Gregg Allman alongside Lara Johnston. He started producing with her after coming off tour, and worked with artists including the Saudi pop musician Tamtam as he turned toward production in earnest. Launching the solo project from his bedroom, his single "I'm an Idiot" was added to Spotify's New Music Friday.
That single is what reached CHAI. The band heard it, and he was soon remixing their work as "Miracle (Scoobert Doobert Remix)" for the Sub Pop EP WINK TOGETHER (2022), alongside remixes by ZAZEN BOYS, STUTS, and Confidence Man. That opened into a long working relationship: across CHAI's catalog he has played bass, guitar, and percussion, sung backing vocals, recorded, mixed, and produced. He produced "WHOLE," the theme to the NHK drama Koisenu Futari (Sony Music Japan / Sub Pop), and "MY DREAM," written as the theme for the film The Fish Tale (Sakananoko), along with "That's Love" and other Japan releases, and produced a CHAI collaboration with Shingo Murakami of Kanjani Eight. The Japan thread is not incidental; he has studied Japanese for years, and it runs through the catalog.
He has been releasing records since 2007. His own catalog runs through Big Hug, KŌAN, and Moonlight Beach into a four-part cycle still in progress: MÖB and I are finished LPs; US is rolling out as chapter EPs; MÖBIUS is planned. The bibliographic index is at Catalog. That arc is part of close to 300 compositions registered with BMI since 2014. He annotates many of them, song by song, at Song meanings, with album notes grouping the records those songs come from. He has also recorded as Burrito Bot, a short-lived AI-generated music experiment. Under the Scoobert Doobert name he produced and narrated an audiobook of Plato's Apology (2023), the first in a series of Socratic dialogues read in a comedic but faithful register, distributed through the major audiobook platforms and carried in public libraries. He collaborates widely, recently with Victor Marc, Lou Roy, Jamie Drake, Bubby Lewis, and Limón Limón, among others. Under the same name he runs Love Music More, a newsletter and podcast on the craft, philosophy, and history of music, with guests including the mix engineers Andrew Scheps and Craig Bauer; new episodes on Tuesdays.
Walton has also spent years inside the music-products industry. He was associate director of marketing at NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants, which he joined in 2018, and he has written for the music-instrument and pro-audio trade press, with bylines at NAMM, ProSoundWeb, and Gearspace.
He also mixes and produces for other artists. He mixed DEBUT, the first album by OKAME, the post-CHAI project of CHAI's MANA and KANA. For the actress and singer Kerri Medders he worked as producer, co-writer, and session guitarist, with FEiN's Brandon Woodward, on songs including "Don't Give In," featured in the film Do Not Reply. With Woodward he also produced singer-songwriter Nina Francis's debut album Between Dreams. His studio work has been profiled in Japan's Sound & Recording Magazine (サンレコ).
Before the solo project he was half of FEiN, the alternative-pop duo he formed with Brandon Woodward at USC Thornton. He was part of the inaugural class of USC Thornton's popular-music program, where his classmates and touring companions included Rozzi Crane and Sam Wilkes. FEiN's 2016 concept album Little Homes, on Tiny Giant Recording, and the singles "#Grownupz" and "LOVED" built a real streaming audience, and "LOVED" remains the duo's best-known song. FEiN was also the featured vocal on London producer Embody's single "Remember Us," released by Armada Music. Earlier, he fronted The Luke Walton Band, a San Diego alternative-rock group that grew out of high-school projects Mannequin and Blue Suburbia, self-released Goodbye/Hello (2010), and drew national press after a Taylor Swift date video went viral — including a Winter 2009 Trojan Family Magazine cover with Peter Lee Johnson, Leland Cox, and Mia Minichiello. Early solo releases used the bare credit Luke Walton (Luke Francis Walton; not the NBA coach). He also played guitar, co-wrote, and co-produced in the band Exist Elsewhere, which won a competition to perform at the Macworld/iWorld Indie Innovation Conference. Credits across these projects carry the name Luke Francis Walton, which is the thread that ties the music together.
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Newsletter and podcast on the craft, philosophy, and history of music. The hub at Love Music More lists recent episodes and posts; essays stay on Substack.
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