Mister Sippy’s unapologetic raw, big sounding blues is driven by harp, humbuckers and soul. When Mister Sippy takes the stage in Melbourne's pubs and clubs, they bring an authentic juke-joint experience that's impossible to resist. Mister Sippy counts the Red Devils, JB Hutto and RL Burnside as key influencers. If you were walking off the street at the end of the day wanting to have a beer and dance, step into the Mister Sippy blast furnace of blues. Gritty harmonica blues meets a wall of humbucking rock. As the old story goes, ‘the dog aint for sale, but the sound can be yours.’
Mister Sippy emerged in 2010, founded by Max Maxey, Roger Brown and Dr. Russell Gruen as the main members… Mister Sippy started as a mish/mash blues / punk / funk band called ‘The Drummers Wife’ with frontman Cam. The Drummers wife played all around Melbourne pubs, which was a fun year or so but pretty soon we were back to the trio… (Rog, Russ & Max). As a result, we decided we wanted the next incarnation to dig deeper into the Hill Country Blues, a love of RL Burnside and Juniour Kimbrough was the catalyst.
So we changed the name to ‘Mister Sippy’ and advertised for a blues harp playing frontman… so in walks young Marshal Sayer, a harp wizard who fronted the band for a solid 3 years before departing in 2014. During that time we had a great response from our debut EP, heaps of great gigs and lots of radio play, the vibe was really good. But here we were 3 again, with no frontman… so what now? We had no answers, so we drifted away for a while (a mere 10 years) to ponder our next move, staying in contact and ocasionally catching up for a jam.
Fast forward to 2023 and Dr. Ray Swann, an old mate of the band, said what about if I fronted the band… now Ray is an a great guitar player and an even better singer, but we are a harp band… you don't play blues harp! Little did we know that Dr. Ray had been secretly having harp lessons with none other than the great Ian Collard, long before he talked about getting Mister Sippy back on the road.
As RL would say… “Well, well, well…” when he fronted up with his blues harps licks… the Mother F@#cker could play… real good… so within an instant the band was back together, bolstered even further by new Bass player ‘Jumpin’ James Crosland' who plays bass with both Max and Rog in other bands… and from the first jam the vibe was awesome.
So the rest is history and the future is Now… so here we come!!! For bookings contact us at mistersippyaus@gmail.com