Malvern, Arkansas is known for being the Brick Capitol of the world. Every June the town hosts the Brickfest where 18 wheelers lead the parade down the main drag, launching the festival. It was in the Brick Capitol of Arkansas that Big Daddy would run into a young musician named Jimmy Don.
"Jimmy Don was very funny," Shipp remembers, " and looking back, he was way ahead of his time musically." Both musicians were into Southern Rock and after getting to know each other and jamming a few times, Jimmy mentioned that his older brother was looking for a band.
"That would be Billy Bob Thornton," Big Daddy deadpans.
"This was the long hair era, and Billy had the longest hair of anyone I had ever known," he recalls. "Billy and I immediately became great friends, almost like brothers." The two shared a love of baseball and rock and
roll. Billy Bob was a couple of years older than Michael and had been exposed to a lot more music than he. "It helped me a lot to broaden my musical scope," Shipp explains.
Thornton and Shipp hit the road together and performed the roadhouse circuit . "Our bands were pretty good back then, playing high school dances and stuff all over Arkansas," Shipp elaborates. "We pissed a lot of daddies and principals off. We learned that we were always dressed wrong, played too loud, or blamed for stealing something." Somehow they laughed their way through it all and survived long enough to settle into solid southern rockers.
As the country slid into the 80's, Shipp and Billy Bob still played music but Arkansas was in an economic disaster. Shipp's rental equipment business had grown but the economy started to bankrupt him. He decided to move his family to Houston and Billy Bob moved to LA to give show business a shot.
"I immediately fit into the Texas rock scene," Shipp mused. "Not long after I was in Houston, Billy called me down there." The fledgling actor was giving up on Los Angeles. Shipp invited him to come to Houston to play music, "and I think he pretty much dropped his apron in that pizza parlor he was working in as he was hanging up the phone." Big Daddy's first trip into the downtown Houston area was to pick up his partner at the Trailways station.
"Once Billy got to Houston, we were into that three-piece sound, and we really dug the blues", Shipp explains. "I had settled into the guitar, and Billy had moved to the drums."
"We were playing at a place called Fitzgerald's one night, and this guy that had worked with ZZ Top's management company approached us. He said he had been looking for a band to do the club circuit as a ZZ Top tribute- type act."
With the approval of the management company, a deal was made and someone christened Big Daddy, Billy Bob, and a third partner "Tres Hombres."
"We traveled the hell out of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida,"
Shipp recounts. "Mostly we played Texas and made great money." But there were also dives and roach pits; the boys often got ripped off. "We were so stupid," Big Daddy grins, "but we had a lot of fun and laughs."
The first place the trio performed as Tres Hombres was in Wichita Falls, Texas. "It was very cool to drive into town and see the sign on the little roadhouse that said Tres Hombres Tonight Sold Out, Shipp says. This lasted about a year, and by then they felt they could hold their own with all the great musicians in Texas. The band traveled in an old bus and then, as they got a little bigger, graduated to an equipment truck, a manager, and a couple of roadies. Tres Hombres did an independent record on a small Texas label that got some decent airplay. Big Daddy was starting to get good reviews in the Texas music magazines and newspapers and was labeled as a decent young guitarist who sounded "like a Billy Gibbons clone."
"Billy Gibbons is a true world talent," Shipp says of the label, "but it was like I was an Elvis impersonator or something."
Unfortunately, the Texas economy was starting to suffer the same fate the Arkansas boys thought they had left behind them.
"Things started getting rough. Our record people disappeared, and we had some big decisions to make. I had two children and had to make a living. We were going to leave Texas. Billy had enough stamina, freedom, and willpower left in him to try the movie business in L.A. once again. We all know the success he finally had there--and mighty well deserved, I might add."
Big Daddy had to decide whether to leave the real pursuit of his rock dream or come back to his home in Arkansas and raise his children. He came home to Arkansas.
"I played around Little Rock in clubs a lot," Shipp continues. "I became very successful running my equipment business again. Most of all though, I spent time trying to be a decent dad. I know some guys can walk away from that to pursue a dream, but I couldn't."
Shipp took an active part in his children's lives, coaching baseball and softball. He was also elected to two five-year terms as a school board member.
"I don't think there are a lot of guitar slingers out there with school board member on their resume," Big Daddy laughs, "but I am proud to have worked with and for kids. My kids ended up graduating from the same school I went to way back when I met Billy. For people to elect me to serve them was special for me."
In retrospect, Shipp sees his past musical career as a series of stages that brought him to where he is today.
"All those stages, all those problems that seemed gigantic to us then were just little, bitty baby steps down this road and that is what helps keep me sane. It's like in baseball, no matter how far the last guy hit your pitch, you still have to throw to the next batter. You still have to get that third out.
And I still hate playing to small crowds in a dive."
| Audio | Gallery | Big Daddy Diaries |
CD Baby Page | |
|
Goldie's Page
|
||||
|
Powered by . . . Like the Wind Productions/LonesomeRogues Design |
||||
