The title of Steve Stipp's latest CD says it all: "All But Forgotten." And it is as much a statement about a lifetime of curiosity, exploration and achievement - viewed mostly in retrospect now - as it is about his 67-song musical repertoire that has not been heard from in more than a quarter of a century. All pretty good stuff, interesting, maybe even worthy of a second look. Or a listen. Or a read. And so here we are.

To quote from a brief autobiographical essay written back in the 90s, Steve said, "... And so today I can look back and say that I can or have played three different musical instruments in my time - the trombone, acoustic guitar, and piano. I've owned and even raced motorcycles (amateur only). I've sky- and scuba-dived, snow- and water-skied, and I've free-climbed the rocky promontories surrounding Mount Rainier in Washington. I've worked on movie sets and in recording studios, and I've sat in on the taping of two different TV shows. I've chauffeured celebrities, I've been an air traffic controller, and I've even spent some time as a paratrooper in the Air Force's 'special forces.' I've been an artist on the streets of Disney World, a free-lance portraitist and caricaturist, and I did all the artwork for a boardgame that two of my best friends and I co-invented, marketed, and even got published. I've toured the world as the keyboardist and bandleader of the "Air Force's premier touring band, Tops in Blue," which, in turn, allowed me to perform centerstage in the half-time show of Superbowl XIX. I've lived (from four months to four years at a time) in three different countries outside of the United States, and I've visited close to thirty more as either a tourist, an airman, or a traveling minstrel. I've recorded, as a pianist, on the albums of three different commercial artists, as well as recording [two] album[s] of my own. I've got a poster on my wall from a computer-animated short film I co-created with a friend, I've got a pilot's license, and now I'm a struggling writer."

In other words, just about anything he ever had an interest in - or even just a curiosity about - Steve has tried. These daring little explorations, though, were seldom regarded as anything more than 'dalliances,' or, at most, 'hobbies,' and so were never taken seriously or mastered. With few exceptions, Steve never 'trained' or 'studied' for any of them... he just 'tried them on for size.' And with the exception of the air traffic control, he never pursued any of them as a potential career.

The result of all this 'dabbling' is a repertoire of original music, an archive of unseen artwork, shelves of unfinished writing, and a lifetime of stories to tell. And that's kinda' what this website is all about.

Starting in 1957 in Austin, Texas, Steve Stipp was the firstborn into a family that would soon become a band of roaming nomads. And it had nothing to do with the military. Rather, it was more the result of his father being one of the co-inventors of the modern Carbon-14 archeological dating process, and the demand for his services at labs and universities all around the country and even across the globe. And shortly after the births of Steve's first two siblings - a brother and a sister - the moving began.

From Texas, they moved to Chicago for two years, then Tallahassee for one. And by the time Steve turned 8 years old, the family shipped out for three years in Canberra, the capitol of Australia, of all places. In fact, that was where his third and final sibling was born.

Steve was 11 when they all returned to the United States to live on the island of Key Biscayne, Florida, just across the bay from Miami. And three years after that, they were living on the mainland, just a mile from the University of Miami, where his father had finally started his professorship.

At each of these locations though, some aspect of his creative curiosity was sparked, and another learning curve begun. Like, for instance, his interest in drawing and his revelations on how it was done were kindled while living in Chicago. His mother pushed him into piano lessons in Tallahassee... from which he mostly played hooky, and was soon 'dis-enrolled.' And in Australia, right alongside his father, he learned how to play the acoustic guitar. Once back in the United States again, he 'discovered' Elton John and his style of playing rhythmic 'guitar chords' on the piano while singing the lead melody. And, with the help of the little upright piano his dad had just gotten his mother for Christmas, Steve began to hammer away at teaching himself to play like Elton.

It took him a long time.

In the meantime, in 1975 he graduated from South Miami Senior High, where - again at his mother's insistence - he'd played the trombone in the marching band. And, under the blanket of family connections and obligations (his father taught geology at the university, after all, just a mile from the house, which therefore meant free tuition!), Steve begrudgingly took a stab at 'college.' But he hated it. College life, for him, boiled down to just two things, neither of which he enjoyed or was any good at: namely, studying and partying. So, in February of 1976, he just quit going.

Thirteen months later, in March of '77, he left home for Air Force Basic Training.

Though his original intention was to become an air traffic controller, once he reached Air Traffic Control School, he found himself waylaid - well, actually, he waylaid himself - into the Air Force's version of the 'special forces,' called Combat Control. And this is what his book, entitled "A Sheep In Wolf's Clothing," is all about.

*** (to read the book-in-progress, go to the "WRITING" page of this website) ***

It started with a ferocious 'buffing up' course, a hardcore physical improvement and strengthening program that he attended while he was going through ATC School. And upon graduation from both, he began a fast series of back-to-back specialty schools and exotic training experiences that pushed him to his limits. Three weeks of Army Jump School, two weeks with his newly assigned McChord Combat Control Team in Tacoma, Washington, then off to seven of the most intense weeks of his life at Combat Control School. It was a beyond-maximum effort for him, which, though it came with way too many close calls, he still - somehow, just barely - managed to struggle through successfully. And in the end, despite the unlikelihood of it all, Steve walked away from it an official graduate, wearing his much coveted beret.

From there it was on to Survival School (in the dead of a Spokane winter, no less), which included an unbelievable experience as a prisoner in POW School. That was followed by four months in a control tower in Georgia, getting his full legal ATC certification, then two busy (and hilarious) weeks back at Spokane going through Water Survival School and the Altitude Chamber. After that, his team shipped out to Alaska of all places - to the Army's Ft. Greeley, outside Fairbanks - where, after days of training and miles of cross-country marching, the trip culminated in a soaring static-line parachute jump: 'under canopy' more than a mile above the central Alaskan tundra. It was a thrill of a lifetime... and it's all in the book.

But the fact was that Steve just wasn't right for the job of Combat Controller. Aside from his incompatibility with the lifestyle, he wasn't in it for the right reasons. He was just 'exploring,' once again dabbling in exotic pastimes, and his curiosity had long since been satisfied. In addition, the line-up of ever more advanced schools looming in his future - like Scuba School, HALO School (High-Altitude, Low Opening), and Arctic Survival School - along with a daunting four-week exercise in Alaska, in January, called 'Jack Frost,' convinced him that it was time to end the charade.

It took several more months of research and paper-wrangling with the authorities, but by early December of 1978, Steve was finally out of Combat Control, and back to being a regular old Air Traffic Controller again.

For the remaining two-and-a-quarter years of his tour of enlistment then, he worked up in the McChord control tower, and he loved it. He was in a new squadron, living in different barracks, and enjoying a lifestyle far more suited to him.

It was during this time that he entered his first talent competitions. He climbed Mt. Rainier, and witnessed the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. He owned, rode, and then raced his first and only motorcycle. He performed regularly at the Airmen's Club as half of the two-man combo "Steve & Ed," and just before getting out in March of '81, he did his first studio work, recording the seven-song demo that would ultimately earn him a recording contract, as a civilian, living in Miami.

He was only out for two years though, before events drew him right back into the Air Force again. But they were two very eventful years.

For starters, he signed that recording contract.

*** (for more details, visit the "MUSIC HISTORY" page) ***

This ultimately allowed him to record on a 9' Bosendorfer grand piano in the Miami studio owned by "K.C. & the Sunshine Band."

For another thing, he and his younger brother took up skydiving together. His brother gave it up, but Steve continued to jump on into the next year.

Then, in August of that year, the air traffic controllers went on strike. President Reagan fired them all, and Steve decided to give civilian controlling a try. He applied, tested, and got high enough marks that he was accepted to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, which he attended for four months ending in late June of '82. Upon graduation, he begrudgingly knuckled under to the pressures of his fellow classmates, who all wanted to go to the West Palm Beach International Airport together, as a group. And, forsaking his original plans to go back to Miami, he moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, instead... and instantly regretted it.

The post-strike working conditions there were terrible. Morale was low, the six 'survivors' of the facility's original crews were exhausted from all the training of replacements, and the Chief Controller at the time did nothing to help matters. So, when Steve's Crew Chief pulled him aside one day to discuss his waning progress in the high-pressure training syllabus, the conversation ultimately led to Steve proclaiming that he'd basically had enough, and he resigned on the spot.

He vacillated then, for another six months or so, back and forth between menial driving and delivery jobs in the Miami area... until one of his two roommates, with whom he'd been splitting the rent of an apartment, moved out. Steve and his friend Bill (the remaining roommate) could not afford to pay for half the rent each, and so had to move out as well. Steve returned to his parent's house, and immediately began contemplating long-term career options. But when, after several weeks of considering alternatives, he still couldn't think of a thing he'd want to do for the rest of his life, he instead asked himself what he'd ever done in the past that he'd enjoyed and could probably stick with. And the answer? The Air Force, and air traffic control again.

In March of 1983 then - almost exactly two years after getting out - Steve re-enlisted in the Air Force and resumed his air traffic control career. As per his request, he was assigned to Robins Air Force Base, outside Macon, Georgia, where he'd received his first tower rating some five years before. BUT... much to his surprise, instead of being assigned to the airfield's control tower as he'd expected, he was instead posted to the mobile unit that was also on-base, sort of the communications equivalent of a M.A.S.H. unit. Technically, it was air traffic control, but it sure wasn't what he'd wanted.

The unit spent much of its time in the field, setting up and living in 'tent cities,' and assembling fully functional bases and airfields wherever they were deployed. The controllers worked out of towed one- and three-man 'towers,' two-man communications Jeeps, and twelve-man radar trailers. It was almost worse when they were on-base between deployments though, since the controllers had no job there, and were relegated to the 'slave labor pool,' doing busy-work to fill the hours. No matter how good the people were that he worked with, for Steve the job and the lifestyle sucked.

Barely had he graduated from their three-week 'Mob School,' when he was deployed with the rest of his squadron to the deserts of Oman for three more weeks. And those six total weeks just happened to be the same six weeks that Steve had spent trying to record his first studio album, entitled 'Dancing Fingers.' It did not go well.

***(visit the "MUSIC HISTORY" page for more details on the recording of this album)***

By March of the next year, 1984, he was looking for any escape from his duties in the mobile unit... and he found it in the Base Talent Competition. If he could win, at least at the Base Level, the higher levels of competition that would follow would ensure him of at least a month, maybe two, away from Robins Air Force Base.

As it turned out, much to his surprise, he actually won all the way to the top - to the Worldwide Talent Show, even earning a place in the cast of the Tops in Blue Overseas Tour - and wound up being gone for most of a year instead!

***(visit the "TOPS IN BLUE" page for more details and photographs from the competition circuit, and the world tour that followed it) ***

By the time Steve returned to his mobile unit in Georgia in February of 1985, he had a serious (albeit long-range) relationship going with a young lady named Beth that he'd met during the Command-Level competition, and at the same time, he had orders in hand for a transfer, in May, to a regular air traffic control tower in Germany. And obviously, the transfer would have had a bit of a disruptive effect on the relationship's longevity if something wasn't done about it.

So, just one day before heading overseas, Steve, aged 28, finally proposed to her.

Steve and Beth were married four months later in September of '85, just two weeks after Steve earned his certification in the Ramstein Air Base control tower. He flew back to Dayton, Ohio for the wedding, but had to return to Germany alone, while Beth finished out the last three months of her college education at home. So the new husband and wife came together for good - at last - just in time for Christmas, 1985.

Steve's original two-year assignment to Ramstein Air Base, as a bachelor, was automatically extended to three years the day he got married. Then, when, at the end of those three years, the Air Force tried to transfer him to a base along the Canadian border of Maine, he declined the transfer and extended his overseas tour for another year instead, bringing his total time in Germany to four years. And those four years were eventful.

During that time, he achieved supervisory rank, and as a result, a year after that, became a Crew Chief, in charge of his own air traffic control crew in the tower. Major renovations to that control tower - which took a full sixteen months to complete - banished all the crews to a tiny three-man mobile tower (with which Steve was already frustratingly familiar from his preceding time with that mobile unit in Georgia) that had been set up right next to the runway... of the busiest military airfield in Europe... Ramstein Air Base.

And it was at Ramstein that, in August of 1988, the world's worst airshow disaster occurred... with Steve and his wife standing at ground zero, ducking wings and wheels and burning fuel, as the crashing aircraft plowed through the crowd.

*** (for some very graphic photos of the Ramstein Airshow crash of 1988, see the last pictures in the gallery of the "PHOTOS" page of this website) ***

Some of Steve's most prolific days as a pen-and-ink artist occurred while he was in Germany, including all the artwork for a boardgame he'd co-created with two of his best friends while on leave in Miami.

*** (see the "ARTWORK" page of this website for images from this period) ***

And Steve and his wife Beth got to drive to Berlin during this time - while it was still an 'east-west thing' - taking their bright lipstick-red Toyota through the checkpoints at the national and city borders, touring East Berlin, and spending the nights in the beautifully retrofitted Templehof International Airport terminal building. And though 'The Wall' didn't fall until just a couple of months after they moved back to the United States in 1989, they still got their piece of it anyway, from a friend who was still over there at the time.

Steve's final base of assignment in the Air Force, between 1989 and '91, was Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Florida. He hadn't planned on it being his last base - he'd planned on staying in for at least twenty years and retiring - but several things conspired to ultimately drive him out.

For starters, Steve was assigned as a radar controller for the first time in his ten-and-a-half year military career, and he hated it. He was a tower controller, and felt terribly stressed out dealing with the complexities of the radar environment. For another thing, he and Beth both hated the Panama City area - a region so seasonally dependent that, for most of the year, it was the unemployment sinkhole of the state - and wouldn't be able to transfer out of it for years to come. And for another thing, while on leave to Orlando, Steve 'discovered' the animation department at Disney World's new "MGM Studios" (now the "Disney Hollywood Studios"), and fell in love with the prospect of becoming an animator for Disney. So, as 1991 rolled around, and the end of Steve's third four-year tour approached, he delivered an 'ultimatum' to his commander... put him back in the tower where he belonged, or he'd be leaving the service for good.

The Air Force was unimpressed with his 'ultimatum.' And though his discharge was delayed until the end of hostilities in the first Gulf War, in March of 1991 he left the Air Force after twelve years in uniform, and moved to Orlando, Florida, to begin his new career as an animator.

As it turned out, though, Steve wasn't the only one applying for that position at Disney. In addition, the "Animation Department" in Orlando was little more than a stage prop for tour groups. All the real animation was happening out in California. And after a year of answering their calls for more and more samples of his artwork (during which time he worked on the streets of Disney World as a 'silhouette artist'), he gave up that quest, and settled for more conventional means of employment in the Orlando area.

His original plan - to fall back on civilian air traffic control if things didn't work out at Disney - fell through when he discovered that, at least in Orlando, the FAA wouldn't hire controllers 'off the street.' The FAA filled its manning slots from within first, transferring 'in-house' FAA controllers before hiring from 'outside.' And everybody wanted to transfer to Orlando. In other words, that waiting list would never run dry. So, unless he wanted to start some place like Fargo, North Dakota, and then join the transfer-request list to come back to Orlando a few more years in the future, he was stuck.

Since that time, then, Steve and his wife Beth have lived in Orlando, she with the same steady and stable job she started with and still loves to this day, and he, well... Steve continues to troll for that next 'great career.'

Over the years since they moved in 1991, Steve has worked as a street artist for Disney, a produce delivery driver, a chauffeur, a dispatcher, a computer draftsman for a tradeshow company, a tour bus driver, and most recently, as a chauffeur/bus driver for a senior assisted living facility, a job he's found to be extremely rewarding.

He can (but almost never does) still draw. He can (but seldom has the opportunity to) still play the piano. And his one remaining creative outlet - his writing - still hobbles along, hamstrung by both his busy work schedule and his need for total isolation when he writes. But somehow, his book is still coming along, his recently recorded album of favored original 'oldies' is now on the cyber-shelves at CD Baby, and his lifetime of creative explorations and accomplishments is starting to garner some attention.

Steve and Beth never had children - a conscious choice, which was 'surgically assured' early in their relationship - but have instead raised several generations of dachshunds that they've regarded as their daughters. And now, after twenty-five years of marriage, they've finally begun to enjoy their freedom to travel, taking cruises to Bermuda and Alaska, and annual driving vacations across the United States. Life is good.

In retrospect, Steve can say that he's done, or at least tried, everything he's ever had an interest in. No regrets, no hard feelings, nothing left undone or unsaid.

And so much to look back on... and smile.