Back To It

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. I had the privilege of appearing in three (count 'em, three!) Christmas Eve services with the band at at Pleasant Valley Church. Such a talented bunch of people... it's always a pleasure to sing with them. Then, the Tom Hipps Trio performed at PV the day after Christmas, playing some of our favorite gospel numbers for the congregation. Tom Hipps and the Shakers played a NYE show at Westfield golf course and had a swingin' time. Lots of fun... in fact, we went ahead and booked next NYE there as well! A highlight of the evening was having one of my favorite teachers from high school, John Ruggeberg, come up and sit in on guitar (see pic on the "photos" page). Also my old bandmate Bill Lanik (see pic), who joined us on an old favorite of ours, "Ice Cream Man". To begin the new year, we took a couple of weeks off from gigging. Football on TV, fires in the fireplace, and food in my gullet... that about covers my time off. Oh yeah, and plenty of snowblowing. Good ol' Minnesota. Back to it this Saturday night, and I'm looking forward to it... the Tom Hipps Trio is performing at a new venue for us, The Rollin' Inn in Rollingstone, MN. The next weekend (Jan. 28-29) the Trio is back for 2 nights at Piggy's, the legendary nightspot in LaCrosse, WI.