Anton Barbeau

Anton Barbeau is a cult-hero's cult hero. With his esoteric and highly-personalized brand of psychedelic power-pop, his "mind-bending" stage show, and his auto-neurotic humour, he is quietly yet quickly building a global fan-base. The release gig for his record Guladong was held at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. His previous disk, King of Missouri, recorded in Bromley with psychedelic legends the Bevis Frond as backing band, was released in Europe on the Frond's Woronzow label and in North America on Vancouver's Bongo Beat Records. The album has been described as "a stellar display of psychedelic power pop" while The Sunday Times of London says of it "...like Bob Dylan fronting some great lost British freak-beat band."

In his hometown of Sacramento Barbeau has won a number of SAMMIE Awards for Album of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, and most recently the somewhat puzzling Most Popular Folk Singer Award. In 2001, a 23-hour Anton-a-thon was held in his honor with over 20 performers covering Anton songs, and the sleep-deprived star performing sets with members of his various backing bands.

Barbeau has shared the stage with the likes of Weezer, Robyn Hitchcock, Barry "the Fish" Melton, Mono and even a reformed Bay City Rollers. 2006 was an action-packed year for Barbeau, with a US west-coast tour crammed between two UK jaunts, and three album releases, including a collaboration with Game Theory/Loud Family guru Scott Miller called What if it Works?, followed by two solo albums. The first, In the Village of the Apple Sun, is a Beatles-meets-Julian Cope-meets-Joe Meek psychedelic pop odyssey featuring Cake's Gabe Nelson and Oxford folkstress Sharron Kraus, released on San Francisco's Four-Way Records. The sister disk, Drug Free, out in England on Pink Hedgehog, mixes traditional American/English pop structures with Kraut-inflected space rock stretchiness including crowd-pleasers such as the title track and "Leave it with Me, I'm Always Gentle." 2007 saw the release of The Automatic Door on Oxford's legendary Shifty Disco label. The album is layered with the Sandy Denny-like harmonies of Su Jordan and features the Soft Boys' Kimberley Rew on guitar and the the backing of CAKE's classic rhythm section. The album will see release in France on Volvox in Summer 2008. As well as completing his own next album, the psychedelic-disco Plastic Guitar, our cult-hero is currently writing/producing Bag of Kittens, the debut disk for California gal Allyson Seconds. All this while Barbeau continues relentlessly touring tea shops and stone circles in the UK. Oh, and yes, Adrienne Barbeau IS his cousin!