Tommy Tipton’s Tipping Point

After 25 years as a professional drummer, Tommy Tipton is trading in his drumsticks for a pair of scissors.

You might have caught him over the years performing in various bands along the Grand Strand, including The Noise Machine with wife Rachel Tipton, or more recently at Legends In Concert in Myrtle Beach, where he drummed for more than three years.

“I played with tons of people from Myrtle Beach all the way down to Charleston, and was actually working pretty heavily in the Charleston scene until I got hired to go to Legends,” he said, and he was hired by that outfit when it moved from Surfside Beach to its current digs on 29^th Avenue North in Myrtle Beach.

For a time, he was playing three or four nights a week in Charleston with fellow musician Jesse Isley, who was later tapped to play lead guitar with Nashville-based singer/songwriter Will Hoge.

But he left Legends in order to do some soul-searching.

“I gave drumming my all, and I took it as far as I felt I could take it,” he said, adding that the only next step he could have taken was road work – and it’s not like he didn’t get offers. Some of these, he said, amounted to well more than he was making at Legends. But these well-paying road gigs could find him working 300 nights a year.

This was not going to happen, primarily because there was no way he was going to miss out on any more time with his daughter, Roxie, now 7.

He decided to become a hair stylist.

“Doing hair, I can work every day and be home by 5 or 6 every night. I don’t miss family vacations to Disney World anymore. I saw that no matter what I did in music, I was going to be gone late afternoon until late into the night,” he said.

He enrolled at Strand College of Hair Design after discovering that it was a member of the exclusive Sassoon Academy School Connection.

“Vidal Sassoon to me [was] a hair master, and I love his cuts from the 60s. He pioneered this whole attitude about cuts, and he was a rock star to me.”

At Strand College, Tipton learned the ins and outs of the Sassoon method of cut and color, a decidedly European approach. But in order to become a licensed cosmetologist in South Carolina, he also learned all about manicures, pedicures, facials and makeup.

“Everyone gets in and sort of finds their thing,” he said.

Strand College also has a thriving salon at the front of the school.

“When you get to 600 hours or so, you go out on the floor – and you come out of there having spent six months working in a really busy salon. And this is every aspect in a rotation. One week you are on the desk, one week you are in the color dispensary, doing nothing but mixing colors for all of the students it’s awesome.”

After graduating in October, Tipton said he explored many other area salons, but mutual friends put him in touch with Susan Stox, owner of four Stox & Co. salons [www.stoxandco.com], who interviewed and ultimately hired him.

“She’s got one guy, but she wanted another male,” he said. “It was just good timing to get in with her. She has got two or three stylists that have been with her since she started, like 23 years ago. Everybody knows that she is awesome to work for.”

He started full time this week, but has been going into work with Stox and has already worked with a couple of clients.

“I’m ready to go. I have found the perfect place to go do what I want to do.”

He says he loves to do classic bobs and asymmetrical cuts.

“In school, I jumped right into that whole Sassoon cutting thing. My teachers called me Sassoon junior, because of the way I move around the chair.

Tipton is enjoying time with his daughter.

“First and foremost it’s me and Roxie kicking around,” he said. “She is getting to the age now to where we’re doing things together outside on our own – skateboard and that sort of thing – but really just spending time with her. And I will still surf – we will all go to the beach together and I will take the boards, and I am getting her on that. She is definitely growing up seeing that surfing is a lifestyle and not just a hobby.”

He hopes to get involved with what is known as platform artistry, which involves demonstrating new haircuts or color techniques in front of an auditorium full of people.

“Obviously, I want to build up my local clientele and become a killer hairstylist, but I am really interested in this platform art. It’s almost performing,” he said.

This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Tommy Tipton’s Tipping Point."