Bobby Barth is a singer, songwriter and record producer. Born in Coffeyville, Kansas, December 5, 1952. Bobby attended Saint Johns Military School in Salina, Kansas and finished his formal education at Fountain Ft. Carson in Fountain Colorado. Barth playing drums in 1960 and doing weekend and 1 night shows in 1963. Barth learned guitar basics from his stepfather and in 1968, left home and began to play music fulltime.

Barth joined the Colorado group "Wakefield" in 1969, as lead guitarist and singer. Wakefield was made up of Pueblo Colorado natives "Charlie Ferrill" drums, "Carl Marcon" bass, "Mike Carrol" trumpet, " Ron Struthers" sax and flute and San Franciscan " Paul Zamucen" on congas and timbales. The band performed in clubs across the country, until parting company, around 1973.

Barth then launched " Babyface" around that same time, with Colorado drummer " Bobby Miles", California bassist Mike Turpin, Wisconsin keyboardist Edgar Riley jr. This band went thru a few member changed and recorded their first and only record, for now defunct ASI records. Although the band felt betrayed by the producer, who changed the direction of the record after the band left the studio, the record produced a top 20 song on the Billboard A/C charts. The band seeing themselves as a cerebral rockband, but being stuck performing for crowds that expected to hear their top 20 hit, were forced to disband in 1978.

After a short time Barth, Turpin and Riley joined forces with guitarist Michael Osborne and drummer Teddy Mueller to reform the " Babyface concept" without the intrusion of ASI records and emerged in Gainesville Florida as "Alien". In 1979 MCA records penned a deal with pop music label "Curb Records" to form a company that would co-produce Rock bands. Alien was the first band to sign with the MCA-Curb label and after a quick name change to "Axe", due to the release of the motion picture "Alien" gave birth to two records, "Axe" and "Living on the Edge". Barth recounts that both records were a poor representation of the band, due to their lack of studio experience and " dreadful" choice of producers. After the industry wide bloodbath of 1980, like so many other bands, Axe found themselves without a label. Working with Roger Probert of Atlantic records, a deal was set with Atlantic. Details are confusing, but overnight, the band managed by Jim Dawson and Arnakata Mgmt and produced by Thom Allom "Judas Priest", found themselves on Atco records instead of Atlantic, with a new manager and producer. Three records were produced under that contract, "Offering" and "Nemesis". Offering brought the band to the attention of American radio, with " Rock and Roll part in the Streets", when the single, without any real support from Atco, made the Billboard Top 100 songs for their year ending charts, and the Album making the Billboard top 75 albums of the year charts, both for 1981. the band continued to tour and record, until in 1984 Osborne and Barth were involved in a fatal car crash, Barth escaped with only spinal injurys, but Osborne was killed in the crash. Barth recorded his solo record "Two Hearts One Beat" as a tribute to Osborne in 1985.

Barth joined "Blackfoot" another Atco/ Nalli band in 1984 after recovering from the crash. He played with Blackfoot until their breakup in 1986. After the breakup of Blackfoot, Bobby continued to tour with Blackfoots Ricky Medlocke, until leaving in late 1986. Barth moved back to Los Angeles and partnered with UFO drummer Andy Parker to open "Satellite Sound Recording" in Burbank. Barth started to engineer and produce projects with the help of the producer of his solo record 2 Hearts, Was Not Was bassist Bruce Nazarian. The two became involved with writing and producing for major films, until in 1990, Barth was recruited to play guitar for Angry Anderson, after recording Angry's record " Blood From Stone", Barth moved to Australia to tour with Anderson. The record garnered 2 top 10 hits and a tour with Aerosmith. Upon Barth's return to the USA, he and his wife left Los Angeles and moved to Denver, and started NEH Records. Barth produced several records for MTM, Toshiba-EMI, Japan's Zero Corporation Label, as well as countless indi projects. In mid 2001, Barth and his business partner Micheal McPherson, separated the labels retail sales from the studio and Barth moved the studio to New Orleans. In 2004, the original members of Blackfoot minus Medlocke, asked Barth to reunite and to tour again. From 2004 to the present, Barth and Blackfoot are touring. Although a working musician all his life, Barth says his greatest accomplishment was receiving the Colorado Master of the Year Award in 1998 while serving as the Worshipful Master of Denver Lodge # 5, Colorado's oldest Masonic Lodge. He continues to be active in Freemasonry and in the rebuilding of New Orleans.


Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Barth