Bruce Barthol

Bruce Barthol, (born November 11, 1947), is an American bass player.

Born at Alta Bates Hospital, Berkeley, California, he was the original bass player with Country Joe and the Fish through to November 1968. Staying on in England after a European tour eventually led to the formation of Formerly Fat Harry with Gary Peterson and fellow Berkeley native, and one time denizen of the Jabberwock, Phil Greenberg. Upon his return to the Bay Area, Barthol formed Energy Crisis with some ex-members of the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band before becoming the musical director for the Tony Award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe in 1976. In 2005 and 2006 Barthol joined ex-Country Joe and the Fish members Joe McDonald, David Bennett Cohen and Chicken Hirsch for a number of short tours of the United States and the UK. Retirement from the San Francisco Mime Troupe came in 2009 together with the release with an acclaimed solo album The Decline and Fall of Everything. He has also written for the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and the Oberlin Dance Company. Barthol is currently playing bass with the Former Members who include Greg Douglass, Roy Blumenfeld and David Bennett Cohen in their line-up. He holds an MFA in Musical Theater from New York University.

Country Joe McDonald

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Joseph Allen "Country Joe" McDonald (born January 1, 1942) is an American musician who was the lead singer of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Country Joe and the Fish.

Early life and early career

McDonald was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in El Monte, California, where he was student conductor and president of his high school marching band. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy for three years and was stationed in Japan. After his enlistment, he attended Los Angeles City College for a year. In the early 1960s, he began busking on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California. His father, Worden McDonald, from Oklahoma, was of Scottish Presbyterian heritage (the son of a minister); he worked for a telephone company. His mother, Florence Plotnick, was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and served for many years on the Berkeley City Council. In their youth, both were Communist Party members before renouncing the cause, and named their son after Joseph Stalin.

San Francisco

San Francisco (/sæn frənˈsɪskoʊ/), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California and the only consolidated city-county in California. San Francisco encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles (121 km²) on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, which makes it the smallest county in the state. It has a density of about 18,187 people per square mile (7,022 people per km²), making it the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California, after Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, and the 13th-most populous city in the United States—with a Census-estimated 2014 population of 852,469. The city and its surrounding areas are known as the San Francisco Bay Area, and are a part of the larger OMB designated San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth most populous in the nation with an estimated population of 8.6 million.

Country Joe and the Fish

Country Joe and the Fish was an American psychedelic rock band formed in Berkeley, California, in 1965. The band was among the influential groups centered in the San Francisco music scene during the mid to late-1960s. Much of the band's music was penned by founding members Country Joe McDonald and Barry "The Fish" Melton, and consisted of issues of importance to the counterculture such as anti-war protests, free love, and recreational drug use, with lyrical content daringly to the point. Through a combination of psychedelia and electronic music, Country Joe and the Fish's sound was marked by innovative guitar melodies, and distorted organ-driven instrumentals which were significant to the development of acid rock.

The band self-produced two EPs that drew attention on the underground circuit before signing to Vanguard Records in 1966. Their debut album, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, followed in 1967, and contained their only nationally charting single "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine", and their most experimental arrangements. When their second album, I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die, was released in the latter part of the year, its title track, with its dark humor and satire, became their signature tune, and is among the era's most recognizable protest songs. Further success followed, including McDonald's appearance at Woodstock, but the group's lineup underwent changes until their disbandment in 1970. Members of the band continue in the music industry as solo recording artists and sporadically reconvene.

Bruce

The Scots-English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place name Brix of the Manche département in Normandy, France, meaning "the willowlands". Initially promulgated via the descendants of King Robert I of Scotland (Robert the Bruce) (1274-1329), it has been a Scottish surname since medieval times; it is now a common given name.

The variant Lebrix and Le Brix are French variations of the surname.

Actors

Musicians