Barry "The Fish" Melton



Barry Melton, one of the founding members of the San Francisco's psychedelic rock and roll establishment of the late 1960's, has been performing for more than 35 years. Barry's musical career took off in 1965, when he co-founded the band Country Joe and the Fish with "Country Joe" McDonald, they developed their unique sound in such places as San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom, and broke out onto the national scene with the release of the movie, Monterey Pop, which also launched the careers of such performers as Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix and the Who. Barry toured with Country Joe and the Fish during some of America's most turbulent times, appearing at numerous concerts, festivals, and in numerous movies such as The Omega Man, More American Graffiti, Monterey Pop, and perhaps the best-known music performance movie of all time, Woodstock. A recent Country Joe and the Fish release of historic tapes, entitled Live at the Fillmore West, includes a monstrous jam session including Barry, Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen , Steve Miller, Jack Casady, Mickey Hart, and others.
In 1969, before the first of the many breakups and fitful starts of Country Joe and the Fish, Barry recorded his first solo album for Vanguard Records, Bright Sun is Shining, which included performances by members of the
Wilson Pickett Band in New York and Donny Hathaway and Phil Upchurch in a Chicago-Blues ensemble. Barry has recorded seven albums under his own name over the last four decades, such as an early effort for Columbia Records produced by Michael Bloomfield, and he has appeared as a guest on other performers' albums including albums by Mickey Hart, Robert Hunter and Otis Spann. Some of Barry's more recent projects have included the band Dinosaurs, a 1980's collaborative effort with musical contemporaries such as Spencer Dryden (Jefferson Airplane), John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service), Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead) and Merl Saunders. And in 1997, Barry released a collection of recordings with his own band entitled The Saloon Years.

Barry Melton currently resides in Northern California. Besides his various musical efforts, Barry has also been a practicing criminal defense lawyer for nearly 20 years and currently serves as Public Defender of Yolo County, California.


FOR MORE INFORMATION:
www.counterculture.net/thefish/
-or- www.barrymelton.com