Rusty Shipp

Nashville's Rusty Shipp are taking up the torch passed down from rock legends of the past five decades, to hold it up in an age when mainstream music has seemed to give up on rock bands. Tirelessly thinking and working like it's a divine mission, the band's goal is to make people feel inspired and empowered by creating the catchiest, most creative rock music on Planet Earth. The result of this zeal is their new grunge-surf-pop song Breaking Waves which keeps with the group's nautical theme and was "meticulously crafted to get stuck in a human being's brain," says frontman Russ T. Shipp. "The song sounds like Nirvana trying to play a Beach Boys song right after hearing Dark Side Of The Moon."
True to their name, Rusty Shipp have created a sound known as Nautical Rock 'n Roll. Characterized by its dark, underwater sound, haunting vocals, and unconventional, heavy riffs, the music is a perfect fusion of grunge and surf rock, though it is most memorable for the Beatlesque chord progressions and vocal melodies at the core of every song. The band strives to bring the listener into a multi-dimensional, artistic experience that integrates music, narrative story-telling, illustration, and video to create a voyage into their underwater, WW2-era world of sci-fi machines and conspiracy theories, all to the tune of the catchiest melodies you've heard since bands like Nirvana and Foo Fighters. Think that's an exaggeration? Just take one listen to the hook-drenched Breaking Waves and it'll be stuck in your head for weeks!
Named after singer-songwriter Russ T. Shipp, the band was started in 2014 and grew to include AJ Newton on drums, Elijah Apperson on lead guitar, and Andrew "Speedy" Speed on bass. Russ T. has his own signature sound, weaving his raspy voice in and out of falsetto and vibrato; at times sounding like a "higher-pitched Kurt Cobain," as one music critic put it, and other times like a ghost.