Dr. Stephen Baird and The Galapagos Mountain Boys

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The Short Version

Scientific Gospel is a unique musical genre created by Dr. Stephen Baird to impart scientific knowledge, discuss social and political issues, and argue for rational inquiry and thought. We are proud to be able to say that Scientific Gospel is the ONLY Gospel that is aware of, and responsive to data.

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Our Approach

Our Story

Dr. Stephen Baird

Dr. Baird was born in Boston during World War II and raised for twelve years in the Bible Belt where he grew up on country and gospel music.  After moving to California and attending Stanford University he underwent a conversion to rationalism.  Almost immediately he noticed the dearth of scientific gospel music.  He lacked the means to do anything about this problem, being a lapsed cello player (and that was forced on him) so the problem lay dormant.

He then spent a few decades obtaining an MD degree, marrying, raising children, getting tenure, and achieving financial security and happiness, but not much else.  After acquiring a modicum of competence on the guitar in the 1980's he actually began to enjoy music again.

While teaching medical school classes, he has acquired the habit of reducing medical and other scientific concepts to popular song form, shamelessly perverting the original intent of Christmas carols by using them for melodies.  The number of scientific concepts being large, he soon exhausted Christmas carols as sources of melodies and moved on to gospel and well known hymns. This led to a relatively large body of material on such arcane subjects as cytokynes, interleukins, gene function, chromosome structure, cellular immunology, and so on.

Occasionally more cosmic subjects such as the Big bang or black holes caught his attention.  Prompted by a letter from Dr. Eugenie Scott in Science News noting that the other side (creationists) have all the good songs, he decided to return to the long neglected problem of scientific gospel.  This collection is the beginning of that liturgy.

The Galapagos Mountain Boys

Daniel Baird

Daniel started out playing the piano at the "urging" of his parents.  After two years he finally decided Daniel started out playing the piano at the "urging" of his parents.  After two years he finally decided  that the piano wasn't for him and stopped playing music altogether.  Then, after several years,  Daniel joined the high school marching band in the percussion section and played most of the drums  the school had available.  After graduation in 1990, boredom and the lack of a summer job led Daniel  to start messing around with his father's guitar.  He has been playing guitar ever since.  After  graduating from UC Santa Cruz, Daniel formed a band with his singer roommate.  They played coffee  shops and open-mic nights around Santa Cruz with moderate success.  With a Biology degree, the possibility of starvation, and a  desire for a change, Daniel moved back to San Diego in late 1995.  Shortly after moving, Daniel  joined Throwin Stones, and 2 years later Lost Disciples.  Both bands enjoyed local radio airplay  and numerous packed houses at local clubs.

Daniel then decided to give music a rest and started a web design company in San Diego.  After 4 successful years, Daniel decided to venture out into the corporate world and combine his computer skills and love of music into a successful career as a software engineer.  Daniel has worked for Musicmatch, where he was responsible for creating the Musicmatch On Demand, Radio, and Store for the award winning Musicmatch Jukebox over the course of almost 5 years.  Musicmatch was eventually acquired by Yahoo!, where he stayed on for almost 2 years.  Yahoo! was a glimpse into "big" corporate America, and was not what Daniel was hoping it could be.  Instead Yahoo! systematically dismantled the Musicmatch products, and eventually most of the key personel decided to leave.  In June 2006, Daniel joined a small team (with some ex Musicmatch folks) at the startup known as Slacker.com.  Over the course of 15 years, Daniel built nearly all the web based Slacker players as well as applications for connected devices such as TVs, set top boxes, and even some automotive integrations (Ford, Chrysler and GM to name a few).  After Slacker was aquired by LiveOne, Daniel moved on to become an Application Architect for Paramount Streaming in the Pluto.tv division.

As far as the GMB go, Daniel began helping his father arrange his "funny" songs a long time ago and began to perform with his dad at several gigs supporting the Hallelujah! Evolution! CD.

Dwight Worden

Dwight Worden was the founding partner of a law firm in Solana Beach, Worden and Williams, in which he
practiced environmental law from 1975 until his retirement in 2001. He has taught, lectured and published extensively on environmental law topics throughout the state and region and remains "Of Counsel" to the law firm. He is a lifetime member of the Surfrider Foundation sitting on its national advisory board, and has served as an officer in the Sierra Club and various other environmental organizations. He served as a governor's appointee to the California Coastal Commission, and on the California Attorney General's Environmental Task Force. He is a recognized authority on environmental law in California.

Musically, Dwight plays the guitar, both finger style and flat pick style, as his first instrument,
having played for more than 40 years. He also plays fiddle, mandolin, and upright bass. He is on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Bluegrass Society and is active in bluegrass music activities throughout the region. He writes a monthly column for the Troubadour Newspaper called the "Bluegrass Corner", and plays fiddle in the San Diego bluegrass band Bigger Fish. He also plays on occasion with the San Diego roots band the Seventh Day Buskers, and appears on two of their CDs on fiddle and vocals (Long Live the Caboose and Born to Pick). Dwight
lives in Del Mar, was proud to be an Opossum, and now one of the Galapagos Mountain Boys!

Opossum Emeritus

Ron Jackson

After Ron Jackson's untimely death in 2007, the Opossums Of Truth were officially changed to  The Galapagos Mountain Boys in tribute to the fact that he can not be replaced and it was he that  named the band.  We will honor Ron's memory with rational thought and good music.  In addition  Ron is the first member of an elite group, the Opossi Emeriti.

Ron Jackson was born on March 4, 1950 in Pasadena, California (d. 2007, La Costa, CA) of mixed Scotch-Irish, Welsh and German Mennonite extraction.  He began studying the clarinet at age seven, and was quite active in harmony singing at home and in church from an early age.  At age twelve he acquired his first guitar, and began learning folk music in addition to playing clarinet in school orchestras.  At fourteen he traded in his clarinet for a banjo, and became active in the folk and blues scene in the Orange County area, performing professionally as a solo blues act and in a folk duo in high school.  An avid student of traditional Piedmont and Delta style blues, Mr. Jackson became convinced by age twenty, after years of arduous genealogical research, that he was indeed white, as many critics of his blues vocal stylings had been proposing.  Based on this discovery, he changed musical directions, moving into bluegrass, folk rock, and country rock.  Meanwhile he received his B.A. degree in Mathematics from U.C.S.D. and accepted a fellowship at the University of Minnesota in the Ph.D. program.  While studying in Minneapolis, a thriving folk and blues scene in the 1970's, he drifted into a full time music career, abandoned graduate studies, and moved back to California.  His first full-time band was Molly Stone's New Honkytonk Band, followed in succession during the 1970's by Squatters' Rites, Squatters' Last Rites, and Fancy Peaches, culminating in the formation of the Unstrung Heroes in 1981.  During this time, he was also a member of the La Mirada Gutter Strutters jug band and performed from 1979-1985 with Gabe Ward, last performing member of the well-known Hoosier Hot Shots of the 1930's National Barn Dance.  He also played rhythm guitar for Patsy Montana on her Southern California tours.  In the late 1970's, Mr. Jackson again acquired a clarinet, and began studying Eastern European clarinet styles, touring with San Diego's Big Jewish Band and Robboy's Jewish Orchestra from 1979 through 1993, playing both mandolin and clarinet.  In 2000 he began performing with Dr. Steve Baird and the Opossums of Truth, and maintained teaching music at Buffalo Bros. Guitars in Carlsbad in addition to performing solo and with the Unstrung Heroes and the Gutter Strutters.