BENTON — He remembers it was 1966, and the gymnasium in Dyess, Arkansas, was hot. He was 9 years old, and the musician, a local artist come home, was set to take the stage soon.
“I watched The Statler Brothers, the comedian, June come out, and I had sort of heard of all of them,” Michael Shipp said. “But then Johnny Cash came out and started with “Folsom Prison Blues.” I remember thinking at 9, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”
Shipp grew up in nearby Blytheville, not far from Cash’s hometown of Dyess. While Shipp’s father dabbled with a guitar, Shipp said his early musical influences came from Cash and Southern roots.
“At the same time I’m listening to all of that, I’m listening to the new British musicians like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, [who] were a huge influence, [and] The Animals,” he said. “I didn’t know until I got to be a teenager that why I liked their music was because they didn’t create it themselves. The Beatles were hugely influenced by Carl Perkins, who I had seen playing guitar for Johnny Cash at Dyess. The Rolling Stones were listening to Muddy Waters, who was from Mississippi, and all the great blues guys. So the British guys coming over were all influenced by Southern people along the Mississippi just where we were.”
In 1969, Shipp’s family moved to Benton, and he enrolled at Harmony Grove Schools. He played music throughout his high school years with friends, but after graduating from high school, he found himself taking over the family business, Benton Equipment Rental, after purchasing the company from his father. It was during this time that Shipp met another musician, a drummer named Billy Bob Thornton.
“He wasn’t famous by any means,” Shipp said. “He was actually terrible when he worked for me at the rental store. During that time, I did music and stuff, too, but it wasn’t a career kind of thing. It was just playing on weekends, playing in clubs and stuff.”
In the early ’80s, after Thornton had gone off to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting, Shipp moved to Houston to further his equipment rental business. Then one day he got a call from Thornton, who had been managing a pizza place in California. That night, Thornton hopped on a bus to Houston to meet up with Shipp and see what Houston had to offer.
“We started playing music in Houston,” Shipp said. “Our first gig was at a place called Fitzgerald’s, opening for some blues guy that we had never heard of. I’d written some songs, and we were playing them. These dudes come backstage afterward — they were in suits — and said I was just what they were looking for as the frontman guitar player. They worked for Lone Wolf Productions, which was ZZ Top’s production management company. I was scared to death at the time.”
Shipp said these “dudes” were looking for a guitar player that could play like Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. They wanted Shipp, along with Thornton on the drums, to form the first ZZ Top tribute act, promoted and managed by ZZ Top’s management company. They were known as Tres Hombres. Shipp spent the next two years touring and recording the band’s one album. And that blues guy Shipp and Thornton hadn’t heard of? Shipp said it was Stevie Ray Vaughan.
After the two-year tour ended, Shipp eventually made his way back to Benton, where he continued managing his business. He said it was the early ’90s, and he got another call from Thornton. This time, he was coming home to shoot an independent film.
“So he came to do Sling Blade here and used a barn out here [at the house],” Shipp said. “I had a studio in there, and that’s where we had the big jam sessions. Every night after shooting, we would all gather and have these all-night parties out there. That’s where I met Kim. She was like Billy’s personal assistant here. When he had to come out here, he had to have someone drive him. She came out and backed into something the first time she was out here. Even after [shooting for] the movie ended, Kim and I kept talking.”
Roughly one year later, on May 25, 1996, Shipp and were married. The couple opened a cellphone store, but Shipp still felt called back to music. But after the birth of his children — Peyton, now 12, and Presley, 9 — he found himself being drawn less to the road and back to his home. He said his children have changed his perspective on constantly touring.
“If you do right, if you are stand-up and responsible, it makes you not want to,” Shipp said. “It’s just about impossible to do and raise your kids correctly. The kids matter, and I guess that would be another one of those things people don’t know about me, is I am so kid-driven. I’m the guy that tears up and cries because some kid I don’t even know hit the home run.”
Today, Shipp is a real estate agent for Old South Realty and performs locally with his band SHIPP, which he formed in 2008. SHIPP has performed at Riverfest and the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock. But most of the time, you can find him coaching Peyton’s baseball team, chasing turtles in the backyard with Presley, or walking around Sunset Lake with his wife and his kids — both of whom show their father’s natural ability for music. Peyton has played the drums since he could hold the sticks, while Presley prefers songwriting and vocals, Shipp said.
Shipp’s next performance actually combines two things near and dear to his heart — music and kids. SHIPP will be the headliner at the first Summer Live in Saline Concert Series on July 15 at the Benton Event Center, hosted by Fearless Spirit, LLC. The proceeds of the event will fund band programs at Saline County schools, a program Shipp supports wholeheartedly.
Shipp said that overall, of the lessons he has learned in his decades in the music business, one thing stands out.
“Perseverance,” Shipp said. “Nothing is easy. As a matter of fact, it’s hard. The music business is set up to where you are rejected constantly. Stand up, do what you say you’ll do, and persevere. And there’s that old saying, ‘If you fall off the horse, you gotta get back on again.’”