I'm an LA/OC guy who through a strange turn of events ended up living in Helsinki Finland. I've been playing guitar professionally since I was 17 do the math If you want to but it's getting pretty scary! I've taken a lot of chances and done a lot of crazy things along the way, and the only regret I have is that I didn't try profesional bicycle racing. Oh well. I did manage to run a lot. 1 marathone and lots of 5 and 10k's. When I was 15, running my first cross country race on a misserable, cold, rainy day my coach said to us runners; "today is a day that will change your life. You'll always be a runner after this." He was right. I still run for fun now. No more racing, although I do toy with the idea....Anyway, on the professional side I played with lots of music legends as a young guitar player, like Little Richard, Don and Dewey (sighted by Zappa in his autobiography as one of his two major influences), The Champs (won the 1st R&B Grammy for Tequila), the Platters, the Drifters...and a whole bunch of other "oldie but goody" types. I was also the house guitarist for the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena for a while (great job, sight reading Broadway musicals!!!!). At one point I took a few lessons from the famous voice coach Ron Anderson www.ultimatevoicecoach.com/ron-anderson.htm, since a singing guitarist is much more marketable than one who doesn't. Later, I met another great voice coach, Bob Rose http://bobrosevocal.com/. I took from Bob for two years, trading guitar work for voice lessons. I really learned a lot about singing from these two, especially from Bob. During this time I was doing a lot of touring and playing out. I did the whole OC beach club thing with various bands, and also did a couple of US tours. Fun stuff. Then one day my phone rang. A promoter asked my; "would you like to go to Finland?" I had never been there, so why not? It changed my life. I met a Finish girl, and we started the whole long distance thing. As time went by I ended up hooking up with musicians there and when a chance to tour for the summer came I took it. Once I was here, I just couldn't leave. I was asked by a friend if I could write lyrics. I hadn't really done that, but why not? So I wrote a lyric for a Universal band, named Tik Tak here in Finland and Tik n' Tak everywhere else. Universal took the lyric and offered me a publishing deal. !!!!!! A few weeks later they asked me if I could teach the lead singer to sing without an accent. I had never taught voice, but why not? I knew the singing technique Bob had taught me was good, and I found out just how great the singing technique I use is. The girl learned. Her producer freaked and then I was teaching the whole band. This turned into lots of other students. Meanwhile, I was writing a lot. The whole LA workaholic vibe came in really handy then, cause I was WAY busy. I changed publishers to EMI, and wrote a song that went into the Eurovision contest representing Finland. It was a big deal. Since then I've continued along the same path, writing, teaching, playing. Changed publishers (again) to a Finnish publisher who's affiliated with BMG. It's really great.Look me up at www.tracylipp.comHere's a record I worked on recently. It's on the American I-tunes site. Check it out and let me know what you think of it in my comments.TracyBUY ALBUM NOW