Andrew Reynolds is one of the most influential skateboarders of all time and the founder of Baker Skateboards; a brand that went on to define an entire era of street skating. Rising to prominence in the late ‘90s, Reynolds left Birdhouse to start Baker in 2000, assembling a team that included the likes of Jim Greco, Erik Ellington, Dustin Dollin, Bryan Herman and Kevin Spanky Long. Everyone on the team was a one-of-a-kind maverick and the Baker videos redefined skateboarding by shifting the focus from just skate-tricks to an unfiltered documentation of the way they were living. The hi-jinx, partying and fights presented alongside their skating created an authentic view that skateboarders worldwide related to. While the partying of the early 2000s faded away and Reynolds himself went sober; over two decades later, the impact Reynolds has had on skateboarding remains.

Angel – When did the idea first come up of wanting to start a company of your own. 

Andrew Reynolds – I was on Birdhouse and we had filmed the The End, but by that point I had moved up to LA. We had a group of skaters that all came to Huntington Beach and were around the same age and all kind of trying to make it in skating. You know, it was Erik Ellington, Elissa Steamer, Jim Greco, Ali Boulala, Brian Sumner. I mean, it was a whole group of us and we were always skating together. Erik and Jim were riding for Zero and I was on Birdhouse. There was nothing really wrong with Birdhouse, you know, it was a good sponsor. It was with Tony Hawk, obviously, he did so much for me. But I think it was just seeing what Rick and Mike had done and what Jamie did with Zero and Ed Templeton did with Toy Machine. We use to talk about it. How that’s the next step, you know? It just seemed like that was the next step. 

We were always skating together and we just thought this would be cool if we had our own brand that was just us. Heath Kirchart had started riding for Birdhouse, he came from Foundation. I think it was like the second time he rode for Birdhouse or something like that. He brought with him the team manager from Foundation, which was a guy named Jay Strickland, who if anybody knows about Baker, they know like the original logo and the the elephant logo. And he’s a graffiti artist and kind of had a little more understanding than all of us did about how to make it happen. So once he was part of the picture and he was filming us, we just all would talk about it like, “Dude, we should start a brand, that would be sick.” He was just kind of like, “I can help you guys make it happen” and fully just helped us bring it all together. We couldn’t have done it without him. I mean, we were just skating and didn’t know how it all worked. We had some name ideas and stuff. He put together a little line sheet thing of some graphics and ideas just started to form, you know?

It became real. I don’t think anybody involved was nervous or worried about the outcome or even cared about “Is this going to work” or not. It was just like, “Oh, this is just what we’re doing.” But I think people older than me thought it would fail hard. I heard that Jeremy Klein and guys that were making Birdhouse graphics and working there were like, “Yeah, this is not going to work.” If you see one of my last Birdhouse boards, it’s a razor blade with blood all around it. And I think it was, I heard, I don’t know for sure, but I heard it was Jeremy Klein kind of saying like, “Yeah, you guys are basically committing suicide by doing this.”

Angel – Going from being a crew of skateboarders who hang out with each other every day, skate every day and live that lifestyle into a business that has worldwide recognition, how did it happen? 

Andrew Reynolds – So when Tony Hawk started Birdhouse, he had formed something called Blitz Distribution, which is basically what Baker Boys is today. It was a distribution company that had Flip, Birdhouse and Hookups. So me and Tony were really cool and me leaving Birdhouse wasn’t a bad situation. I just went to Tony and said, “We have this idea to do a brand. Can we do it with Blitz?” I had a lot of people around that were willing to help me and Tony understood, he left many years at Powell to start Birdhouse. He understood that i’m taking this next step, the same way he did. So he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll help you guys.” And then obviously you have to have some money to invest in the company and somebody like Jay Strickland who is willing to help put it all together and edit and come up with art. 

There’s so many pieces. I now see that it just lined up for us.

But I think about it for young, young skaters who want to start a brand, do they have their their Beagle or Bill Strobeck that’s with their crew constantly? Do they have like a NECKFACE or a Mike Gigliotti? There’s so many pieces. There’s so many little things that make the formula. And if you’re missing some, it’s a little harder, you know. It takes a lot of things to line up and we just got lucky, I guess.

We had a really cool group of friends and a cool name that we thought was just a joke to us, and we had Tony Hawk behind it and I had made enough money to start it, you know what I mean? 

It’s crazy to think about now, but I mean, to have somebody like Beagle who has dedicated their life to Baker. I asked him recently, “How do you feel about filming Zion and the new kids and Max compared to how it was filming us back then?” He’s like, “Dude, I get the same exact feeling. We’re making this happen.” And I’m like, that’s so sick. He feels that same way today as he did in the beginning of just getting hijinx and clips. That’s his life, you know?

Angel – When you guys were filming the original videos, was there any feeling of “This is legacy shit”?

Andrew Reynolds – No, I mean, we thought it was cool and funny, you know what I mean? I think editing Baker 2G, me and Jim Greco sat over the shoulder of Jay in Jay’s apartment. And basically we picked all the music. We lined it all up. How the parts should go. We put it together. We didn’t know how to use the computer but Jay knew. So we were just there kind of directing it and, you know, while we’re editing it there were funny sections, like Jim’s part of Gloria. And we knew like, “Yeah, this is really good. This is good.” We didn’t think much about it. We just thought like, damn, this is cool. You know, we have something.

There was no plan, no marketing plan, no sit down. Now companies have a meeting and they’re like, “Here’s our marketing plan.” I actually fired somebody one time because they sat us down and tried to come up with a marketing plan. And I was like, “Dude, you’re done.” Like no, there’s no plan. We do what we think is cool and if people stop liking it then they stop liking it, whatever. But no, we didn’t know. 

Jim and Ali just got really punk rock. It was one of those things, the same exact way when skating was super punk and then all of a sudden Wu-Tang came out and everybody started wearing baggy clothes and all the videos had hip hop. I mean, that caught on the same way, you know what I mean? I think it was just time for another kind of change and we just happened to be there at the right time.

Angel – How unfiltered would you say the videos were?

Andrew Reynolds – I edited Baker 3 and Baker 2G pretty much. I didn’t even think about. I just thought, “Oh, this clip is funny.” Or Erik with the chainsaws. There’s so many good Shane clips and quotes and so many good Terry Kennedy clips and quotes that made me laugh. I’m going to put it in. I look at those as almost like a skate clip. You know what I mean? Still now, like “Where can this go? I feel like people should see this.” It was a look into the person’s personality more than had been done before. I just thought like, you know, Fucktards puts these guys puking in the kitchen. That’s what I wanted to do too. I just want to make my videos look like that. Everything I ever watched growing up, Zoo York mixtapes and Anti-Hero Fucktards, it’s the little stuff that sticks with you, the funny moments in between.

Angel – I mean, you see it’s all documented. You can see yourself and all your homies. Looking back on it now, what comes to mind when you when you watch it? 

Andrew Reynolds – I think it holds up. You know, the quality of the skating. I think if you watch Baker 2G right now, I think the skating is still really sick, still gnarly.

I don’t know. I don’t think there was any part of us that was trying to look cool or tough or anything. It’s purely what was happening. Over the years, I got some people saying, “You guys are being a bad influence showing all this weed and drinking and stuff” Which kind of bothered me sometimes because I was sober. When I made Baker 3, I was sober. I had to have a conversation with myself like “This is what’s happening. This is actually what the footage Beagle gives me is.” To me, my own sobriety in my life and trying to get my life together doesn’t mean other people can’t smoke weed and drink. Other people can. I can’t, but other people can. I’m not going to project my own shit and make these boring videos. I’m going to make them what Baker is. 

Angel – What was the journey like for you going sober? When did you realize that’s something you even wanted to do?

Andrew Reynolds – Pretty much the first time I started drinking and smoking weed, I always went way too far. Right away. I was like curled up on a bathroom floor somewhere throwing up. This was the only way I drank. I don’t know why. Well, I know why, I’m an alcoholic, but that’s just how I drank. I wanted to have fun with my friends, but it never ended up that way. I always ended up in some trouble.

But I’d say from 16 to 24 years old, I tried to make it work. I just tried to party and it would just be a mess. And then some close friends around me got sober. Justin Regan had a year sober and Jim Greco had two weeks sober and out of our group he was so bad on all kinds of drugs, just fucked. And I saw him get sober for two weeks with nothing, no weed, nothing. And right then I knew that whatever he was doing could work. So really it was Jim getting two weeks clean. That showed me that this is possible and I just followed him into it and we both been sober ever since.

Angel – 21 years right? 

Andrew Reynolds – Yeah. So we were 24 years old and it was a decision on both our parts. Do we throw everything away that we’re working for? Or do we just wrap it up right now and say, “You know what? This doesn’t work for me.” You can’t half ass it. You just have to be like, “OK,  every day I wake up and I don’t touch drugs and alcohol and that’s just how I live now.” I do all the things that people that are all sober around me tell me to do. And I just shut up and listen and know that I don’t know anything. If I have three days and somebody’s got a month, they obviously know more than me. So that’s kind of the way you look at it in the early times. You’re like, “All right, well, that dude’s got a month. So I’ll just do what he did to get a month.”

That’s the saying, you know, one day at a time. It’s true. I wouldn’t have been able to make Baker 3 without sobriety. John Minor got me my setup, my laptop and Final Cut Pro. And the first thing I started to do was figure out how to edit my part in “This is Skateboarding” with the Jimi Hendrix songs.

I’d be calling him all the time. “I’m stuck. I can’t figure out this part, the editing, the tools and all the keys and stuff.” And he would walk me through, “Use this tool, do this.” I slowly picked up editing from being sober and not bullshitting all the time. I just had extra time on my hands. I edited that part and then I showed him. After that I just started telling Beagle “Bring the footage to my house and I’m going to start making parts.”

I would just stay up late at night and edit Baker 3. Baker 3 is basically me learning how to edit. That’s why I think there’s a lot of funny sections in there with like the Tumbleweed that goes by. I was bored at home. I think that’s the best way to make a video actually. Have a couple years and just have the footage coming in and just messing with it. I just sat there and kept on adding little things. And I came up with the idea to have that music looping. I don’t even know, like I think it was maybe Requiem for a Dream that had that music kind of going the whole time. I don’t know exactly if that’s what gave me the idea, but i’m like, “Okay, in between. I just want to use this one song every time.” Lou Reed “Street Hassle”, I didn’t even didn’t know it was going to have that effect, but it but it did.

Angel – It was legendary.

Andrew Reynolds – It was an accidental thing. But as soon as I saw it pop back up while I was editing for people’s intro, I couldn’t not do it. You know what I mean?

Angel –  It just feels right.

Andrew Reynolds – It’s so good when I hear that now, I always joke around that I want to get an old car and make that the horn.

Angel – To what do you attribute Baker’s longevity? 

Andrew Reynolds – I think a huge one is that I skate with everybody. I don’t know. I go skate. I’m working on parts the same as they are in the skate park. I play games of skate with everybody and I’m competitive with them. My goals and things i’m into are not far off from what they’re into. That’s definitely a huge part of it. And only reason I know that is because I’ve seen the opposite of that with brands, the owners get into other parts of their life, which is fine. I mean, anybody can do whatever they want, but they get into other parts of their life and other interests. I don’t think it’s as attractive for the team or for new riders to ride for people they can’t relate to. They tell me, “As long as you’re doing it, I’m going to keep trying to do it too.” So that’s definitely probably the biggest piece. You know, I work with Spanky and Mike on the art. Just skaters.

Another part, which people don’t really talk about often is the hard decisions that have to be made. You learn to do them for the good of the company. There comes time when people are at the end of their career or there comes a time when certain people might not fit into the picture of what Baker is, stuff like that. And it sucks. It’s horrible. It’s the worst part of having a brand. Making the hard decisions of changing the team and letting people go.

And it’s funny, my girlfriend was like, “Well, it’s your company. How do you want it to be like? What do you want it to be like?” And she’s like, “Well just do that.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, you’re right.” You don’t have to hang on to something that doesn’t fit into what you want it to be. So that’s huge. I’d say me skating and the hard decisions getting done and paying attention to who’s ripping. Be willing to sponsor people that might not end up working out. If you’re a company and you’re too cool, right, you don’t want to put anybody on. You don’t want to flow anybody. If you do that long enough, then that’s the end of your company. You have to give people a chance, some may end up being a Bryan Herman. Some may end up being, you know, Zion or like a Kader, you just never know.

Angel – It’s sick to hear the way that Baker was created was just through living your life with natural interest.

Andrew Reynolds – Yeah, it really was. We used to call Ali Boulala “Baker.” That was a nickname for him. And Ali’s never even been on Baker, but him and Shane are like the official Baker mascots or something, they represent Baker skateboards. Like Ali. We named the company after him, you know what I mean? When it came time to choose a name, we had “Six degrees”, “Two cents” and “Baker”. And we were just all laughing at Baker. Like what? Baker doesn’t even make sense. I remember the feeling of thinking like, that’s ridiculous. But at the same time, who gives a fuck? Let’s call it Baker. It’s so funny. And then it just completely worked, I guess. I mean, fuck, 20 something years later. Yeah. That’s the most like wrong name out of the names, but it was the best.

Like NECKFACE, if you ask NECKFACE why he’s called that, he’s just like, “Dude, shit doesn’t even make sense. Can’t even have a neck on your face.”

Interview by Angel Cheng. Photos by Marco Hernandez

Full interview, featured in Issue 9, Living Proof Magazine.