HI STRYTUS!!
It's Steve. Sorry I've been outta touch. How are you!? I haven't seen you since you went to the West for your internship. We should get in touch. I may be able to help you with some of the issues that you're running into re: rigging/binding. You can alter the weights on a smooth bound character. Use the Component editor and tab over to the skin weights. Turn off show all columns --so that only the bones that have an influence on the head will appear. Also, use prune the small weights to cull nuisance weights on the skin clusters. In order to fully handle your problem, I would have to see the character rig. Also, remember that when you rig areas where there will be multiple deformations, you'll need to group the groups to supply a new deformation node. It avoids double transformations. Hopefully, we can get together soon. I hope you are well SS! Talk to ya soon! By the way, most of the books out there only half cover the TD area and they are usually incomplete.