Andrew James Barker

Andrew James Barker has been busy since the mid-naughts releasing solo albums and collaborating with other artists (Bruce Peninsula, The Weather Station, Timber Timbre, Eons, Misha Bower, Dave Picco, and Jerry Leger), and is still going strong today. Barker is a guitarist with a penchant for unique composition and production whose music falls between rock, folk, jazz, and Americana.

Born in England and raised just north of Toronto in Thornhill, Barker took up the guitar at age 11, inspired by rock and blues players. He attended Humber for Jazz Performance and received his Bachelors with Honors. After graduating, Barker spent several years teaching and playing Jazz gigs around Toronto as a sideman. Around this time, Barker started to feel the pull back to original music and composition, and he recommenced recording ideas on his high school Tascam 4 track. This new creative avenue led to Barker striking out into Toronto's original music scene, where he would meet his future Bruce Peninsula bandmates (among many other notable musicians, artists and songwriters).

Since then, Barker has predominantly led his own bands and focused on his recordings, has written and recorded six solo albums to date, is back to playing jazz standard gigs, and continues to collaborate and record with artists like Jerry Leger, The Del-Fi's, Craig Robertson, The Keys, and Peter Kauffman.