Travis Barker is a $50 million American drummer, musician, and reality television celebrity. While Barker is best known for his drumming work with Blink-182, he has also participated in MTV’s reality show “Meet the Barkers,” published a memoir, and created a fashion company and record label.
Blink-182’s most popular album, “Enema of the State,” has sold over 15 million copies, and in 2016, “Rolling Stone” magazine named Travis to its list of the “100 Greatest Drummers of All Time.”
Travis was a passenger on a private plane that crashed in South Carolina in 2008. Four persons were killed. Travis and DJ AM sustained serious injuries, while Barker sustained burns to 65 percent of his body. He underwent 27 procedures and spent four months in the hospital rehabilitating.
Travis is engaged to Kourtney Kardashian in October 2021.
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Childhood and Education
Travis Landon Barker was born in Fontana, California, on November 14, 1975. He was raised by his mother Gloria (a babysitter), his father Randy (a mechanic), and two elder sisters. Barker’s mother gave him a drum kit when he was four years old, and the following year he began attending lessons.
Travis also took trumpet lessons and learned to play the piano in junior high, where he briefly joined a choir. He pondered a career as a professional surfer or skater but thought that his drums provided the best outlet for his creativity. Unfortunately, Barker’s mother died of Sjögren disease on the eve of his first year in high school. Travis was a self-described stoner who played drums in the marching band and jazz ensemble while attending Fontana High School.
Personal Life
Travis Kennedy married Melissa Kennedy in 2001, however, the couple divorced after nine months. On October 30, 2004, he married Shanna Moakler, a former Miss USA, one year after the couple welcomed their son, Landon. Additionally, they have a daughter, Alabama (born in December 2005), and Moakler is the mother of a daughter from a prior relationship with Oscar De La Hoya.
The family participated in 16 episodes of the reality show “Meet the Barkers” in 2005 and 2006. In 2008, Barker and Moakler separated. Travis and Shanna were arrested in 2014 following a police summons to their joint residence. Barker allegedly threatened to assassinate Moakler and to have her boyfriend beat Travis up.
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Travis submitted legal filings in February 2016 requesting a reduction of his $19,000 monthly child support to $2,900, stating that his annual income had decreased from almost $2 million to approximately $600,000. Barker’s net worth was estimated to be at $40 million in the filing.
Barker developed an addiction to opioids following his divorce from Moakler, but he overcome his addiction following his plane tragedy. He also credits the plane disaster with making him more health concerned; after leaving the hospital, he resumed regular swimming and running and adopted a vegan diet; he had been a vegetarian since his adolescence but was forced to consume meat to expedite his recovery.
Career
Barker was a member of the band Snot and Feeble following high school, and subsequently joined the Aquabats, a ska-punk band created by Feeble bandmate Chad Larson in 1996. Travis released one album with the Aquabats, and the band toured with Blink-182; when Blink-182’s drummer quit, Barker filled in and eventually became the band’s permanent drummer in 1998.
Barker’s debut album with Blink-182, “Enema of the State,” was released in June 1999, and the band soared to fame thanks to the singles “All The Small Things,” “What’s My Age Again?,” and “Adam’s Song.” “All the Small Things” peaked at #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the video was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award in 2000. In the fall of 1999, the band embarked on an arena tour, but Travis was forced to miss many gigs due to a fractured finger.
Barker has since collaborated with Blink-182 on five further albums: 2001’s “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket,” 2003’s “Blink-182,” 2011,’ Neighborhoods,” 2016,’ California,” and 2019’s “Nine.”
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Travis joined the Transplants, a rock/rap ensemble created by Tim Armstrong of Rancid, in 2002, and appeared on four of their albums. Barker released his first solo album, “Give the Drummer Some,” in 2011, and has collaborated with +44, TRV$D JAM, Box Car Racer, Expensive Taste, Goldfinger, and Yelawolf, among others.
Barker founded Famous Stars & Straps clothing line in 1999 and LaSalle Records record label in 2004. He published a memoir, “Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums,” in 2015, and has appeared in several films and television series, including “American Pie,” “Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place,” “The Simpsons,” and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”
Real Estate
Barker paid $4 million for a four-bedroom property in Los Angeles’ Cheviot Hills area in 2014. In 2017, he sold it for roughly $4.5 million. Barker also paid $2.8 million for a 7,200-square-foot mansion in Calabasas, California, in 2017.
He listed it for rent in 2019 at a monthly rate of $27,500. Travis also purchased a $9.5 million Calabasas mansion in 2007, a $1.5 million Bel Air residence in 2010, a $1.3 million Rancho Cucamonga residence in 2010, and a $480,000 Lake Elsinore tract house in 2004.
Plane crash
On September 19, 2008, while taking off from Columbia Metropolitan Airport in Columbia, South Carolina, a private plane carrying Travis, Adam Goldstein (aka DJ AM), security guard Che Still, and personal assistant Chris Baker collided with an embankment and detonated. Still, Baker, and two pilots were killed, while Barker and Goldstein were transferred to the Augusta, Georgia-based Joseph M. Still Burn Center.
With over 65 percent of his body covered in burns, Barker underwent 27 surgeries and skin grafts during his four months in burn centers and hospitals.
Travis, unsurprisingly, refused to fly for nearly a decade following the tragedy. This necessitated his replacement anytime Blink-182 toured internationally. In 2021, 13 years after the incident, he flew for the first time with Kourtney Kardashian.
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4 Ways Travis Barker Makes Millions
Barker is perhaps best known as a founding member of the trailblazing pop-punk band Blink-182. Even though he was not a founding member of the band, the synergy between Barker, Mark Hoppus, and Tom DeLonge was evident after Barker filled in for their initial drummer during his absence. He quickly became a permanent member of the ensemble, and he has now been drumming for the group for over two decades.
Blink-182 is one of the most successful and well-known pop-punk bands in history, if not the most well-known. The band was founded in Los Angeles, California in 1996. Eight of the group’s albums charted in the top ten of the Billboard 200 in the United States, including two that peaked at the top.
The band has scored numerous chart-topping singles in the rock and alternative genres, as well as crossover hits — including “What’s My Age Again?,” “All The Small Things,” “The Rock Show,” and “I Miss You” — that have been warmly received by radio stations across America and, have become genre staples. Barker continues to earn royalties from the band’s biggest singles every time they are played, which is nearly every time these days.
Blink-182 has sold over 50 million albums globally to date, according to their current label. They have certified sales of ten million full-length albums in the United States, in addition to millions of singles.
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The band currently has 12.6 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and given that each of their most popular songs has earned hundreds of millions of plays, it’s not impossible to think that they’ve already accumulated billions of plays on the world’s largest streaming service. Additionally, YouTube’s over 2.1 billion views produce a sizable amount of revenue.
Blink-182 has toured the United States on at least 15 occasions, with several of those tours taking them to foreign countries. Barker has been a continuous presence in almost all of them, though there have been occasions over the years when he has been unable to perform with the band owing to injuries or unable to fly to particular areas due to his phobia of flying. The band has earned tens of millions of dollars on the road.
Is Travis Barker a father?
Travis has two children from his 2004–2009 marriage to Shanna Moakler. As with Kourtney, he shares parental responsibility for his children with Moakler.