Thanks for the quick reply. I guess I was ignorant of the available tools, the article pointed me to 'sheer' and 'scale' to get what I'm looking for. Reading the user guide for those tools helped.
I did find this in the user guide:
"Shear can be applied to an entire hierarchy of bones and is easier to apply than using deform keys or mesh weights. Also, shear is available in Spine Essential while meshes and weights require Spine Professional."