Tobias Boshell (born 20 July 1950) is an English songwriter and musician, best known as the founder of the

folk rock Folk rock is a fusion genre of rock music with heavy influences from pop, English and American folk music. It arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music re ...

band

Trees In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only p ...

. He was born in

Wye, Kent Wye is a village and former Civil parishes in England, civil parish, now in the parish of Wye with Hinxhill, in the Borough of Ashford, Ashford district, in Kent, England, from Ashford, Kent, Ashford and from Canterbury. It is the main settlem ...

, was educated at

Bedales Bedales School is a coeducational boarding and day public school, in the village of Steep, near the market town of Petersfield in Hampshire, England. It was founded in 1893 by Amy Garrett Badley and John Haden Badley in reaction to the li ...

and the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music (RCM) is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including pe ...

. Boshell formed Trees in 1969 with Celia Humphris on vocals, Barry Clarke on lead guitar, Unwin Brown on drums/vocals, and David Costa on acoustic guitar & dulcimer. Bias sang and played bass, guitar and piano on their two

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

albums, '' The Garden of Jane Delawney'' (1970) and '' On the Shore'' (1971), and wrote much of their material. ''On the Shore'' was remastered in January 2007 and re released on CD. After the original group broke up in the early 1970s, Boshell worked with

Kiki Dee Pauline Matthews (born 6 March 1947), better known by her stage name Kiki Dee, is an English pop singer. Known for her blue-eyed soul vocals, she was the first female singer from the UK to sign with Motown's Tamla Records. Dee is best known f ...

, writing her hit songs " I've Got the Music in Me" and "First Thing in the Morning," among others. In the 1980s, Boshell became a guest musician for

Barclay James Harvest Barclay James Harvest are an English progressive rock band, which following a split in 1998 now exists as two successor bands. They were founded in Oldham, in September 1966 by bassist/vocalist Les Holroyd (born 1948), guitarist/vocalist John ...

, touring and recording with them. In 1987 he moved on to

The Moody Blues The Moody Blues were an English rock band formed in Birmingham in May 1964. The band initially consisted of Graeme Edge (drums), Denny Laine (guitar/vocals), Mike Pinder (keyboards/vocals), Ray Thomas (multi-instrumentalist/vocals) and Clint W ...

, becoming their lead keyboard player after the departure of

Patrick Moraz Patrick Philippe Moraz (born 24 June 1948) is a Swiss musician, film composer and songwriter, best known for his tenures as keyboardist in the rock bands Yes and the Moody Blues. Born into a musical family, Moraz learned music at a young age an ...

in 1991. He stayed with the Moody Blues until their 2001 tour. He has also recorded with

Sheena Easton Sheena Shirley Easton (; born 27 April 1959) is a Scottish singer and actress who achieved recognition in an episode of the reality television series ''The Big Time (TV series), The Big Time: Pop Singer'', which recorded her attempts to gain a ...

Kevin Ayers Kevin Ayers (16 August 1944 – 18 February 2013) was an English singer-songwriter who was active in the English psychedelic music movement. Ayers was a founding member of the psychedelic band Soft Machine in the mid-1960s, and was closely asso ...

Beverley Craven Beverley Craven (born 28 July 1963) is a British singer-songwriter best known for her 1991 UK hit single " Promise Me". She has recorded six studio albums, including the collaborative album '' Woman to Woman'' with Judie Tzuke and Julia Fordha ...

Chris Farlowe Chris Farlowe (born John Henry Deighton, 13 October 1940) is an English rock music, rock, blues and blue-eyed soul singer. He is best known for his hit single "Out of Time (Rolling Stones song), Out of Time" written by Mick Jagger and Keith Ric ...

, and

Duane Eddy Duane Eddy (April 26, 1938 – April 30, 2024) was an American guitarist. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he had a string of hit records produced by Lee Hazlewood which were noted for their characteristically "twangy" guitar sound, including ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boshell, Bias People from Wye, Kent 1950 births Living people The Moody Blues members English male songwriters English male singers People educated at Bedales School Musicians from Kent English rock keyboardists Trees (folk band) members