Aaron Tippin: It’s all for the fans
Singer says audience feedback essential to meaningful songs
By Rachel Kubicek

Back in the day, says country performer Aaron Tippin, Joplin was a “country-music stronghold.”

“It was the place to play if you were a country band,” he said. “I have a lot of history here. I came here with Randy Travis in ’89 or ’90. I’ve been there tons of times. I had some Missouri boys on my staff for quite some time.”

Tippin, who will perform Tuesday during the Freedom Fest 2006 celebration in Landreth Park, has released a number of albums, including “Stars & Stripes,” a post-9/11 set that included the song “Where the Stars and the Stripes and the Eagle Fly.” The single was dedicated to those who lost their lives in the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Tippin became involved in music after he decided to end his career as a corporate airline pilot because of cutbacks in the airline industry.

“I had no idea I was going to do this for a living,” he said during a recent phone interview. “The energy crunch hit and people were being let go so I decided to quit.”

He returned home to South Carolina and started to perform in clubs at night.

“I never dreamed it would go this far,” he said.

His first band was a bluegrass group called Dixie Ridge Runners, and he later played in a honky-tonk band called the Darby Hill Band.
“I moved to Nashville and started to do my own thing, writing songs and playing them. Song writing is what I really do,” he said.

Tippin says that a love of music is essential to becoming a full-time musician.

“There are times when you think the whole world is against you when they probably aren’t,” he said. “It just feels that way. Doing it to get rich isn’t it. All the hours I put in and laying awake worrying or thinking about it doesn’t even out to even minimum wage.”

Tippin says that listening to feedback from the fans is also important.

“If you don’t listen to them then you leave them behind,” he said.
Tippin says that every night after a show he goes out and shakes hands and talks to people to find out if they like his songs.

“It’s very important to listen to what they are digging in the show. I look for things that are going to be meaningful to them,” he said. “It’s all for them. If I were going to play for myself I would go out on the porch and get a mirror and play in front of it.”

‘Now and Then’
Tippin has a new single — “Ready to Rock in a Country Kind of Way” — that will be released soon. “Aaron Tippin Now and Then,” a new best-of album, will be in stores on Aug. 8.