what's a good bare bones theme

If you want really bare, Toolbox or BlankSlate.

By Automattic: https://underscores.me/

Also another one: https://bckmn.com/naked-wordpress/

Thanks, everybody.
r

You are welcome!

if you dont like those theres also startbox

happy coding

My situation is that I’m coming from knowing Drupal where you can easily edit the html in templates without having to deal with a bunch of php. I really like that simplicity, and it seems to me that people use WP themes like they are. If you want something different then be prepared to hack away at php. I may be wrong on that. I am after all just a newby.