Barend Courbois born on July 13th 1967, as the son of the veteran jazz drummer and Bird Award winner Sir Pierre Courbois.
He was influenced by bass-players like: Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, Doug Wimbish, Marcus Miller, Geddy Lee (Rush), Steve Harris and Herman Deinum (Barend’s Dutch bassgod).
In 1976 Barend started to play the bassguitar (he also played the drums and the Scottish bagpipes). In 1979 Barend played his first concert.
From 1981 until 1984 Barend studied at the school of music in Arnhem. In this period he started to play in local bands such as U-gene, Scary Harry band, Treason, Fitzkin and Lancer.
Between 1984 and 1988 Barend joined bands in Utrecht and Amsterdam. Some of these bands were Hammerhead, Barracuda and Monroe.
From 1988 until 1990 Barend played in the new band of Ian Parry (Elegy) and Jos Zoomer (Vandenberg), Perfect Strangers..
In 1990 Barend setup a new band together with the Whistler brothers, (Cyril: guitar, sitar and violin, Jusso: drums, percussion and samples, Barend: 4,5,6 string, fretless and double bass (contrabass in Dutch). This band was logically named Whistler-Courbois-Whistler (W.C.W). This instrumental trio competed in 1991 in the "Grote prijs van Nederland’’ (Big award for Dutch bands). In the category bands, W.C.W won the 3rd prize and Barend himself gained the singular award of "Best bass player of The Netherlands". They also had the first Van Halen Tributeband in Holland wit.....
