Hip Jones Bio

  Hip Jones began as a songwriting colaboration between Neil Jonson and Greg Buhr after they ended up joining a band fronted by a mutual friend. They had known of each other in high school but did not run in the same social circles and neither knew that the other was a musician. Finding a shared love of well crafted songs in the vein of early Elton John, The Beatles and Elvis Costello, to name a few, they continued to get together to write while playing in different bands around their hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Even with Greg's move to Vancouver, British Columbia, they kept in touch and still got together at every possible opportunity to work on new songs and still talked about putting together a band one day called Hip Jones.

  In the mid-nineties Neil managed to land a job in Vancouver and the two began to get together on a weekly basis, writing and rewriting, fine tuning and honing their skills, which were starting to show results that the two self admitted perfectionists were quite proud of. They had tossed around the idea of putting a band together but they knew something was missing.

  Enter Denis Beaudry. Denis, a friend from the same high school in Winnipeg, moved to Vancouver in the late nineties and happened to run into Neil at a party shortly thereafter. On the next night they got together they wrote "Squeaky Clean" and it was obvious that the addition of Denis' outstanding vocals and lyrical abilities were exactly what the duo had been looking for.

  After a brief period of writing and getting Denis familiar with the backlog of songs (and doing a few acoustic shows around town), they headed into Profile Studio to start recording what would be their first CD with Sho Murray behind the console. Still without a full band, they brought in friends Lanny Hussey (Ginger) on guitar and Andy Simpson (Shocore) on drums and the results were amazing.

  Shortly after the studio project was completed, a friend suggested that the band should get in touch with former Winnipeg resident (who also went to the same highschool), guitarist Jon den Boer. Jon was a perfect fit with the group and it just so happened that his roommate, Todd Walsh, was a drummer from Newfoundland looking for a band. It became obvious from the first rehearsal that there was musical magic happening between them.

  At present, the band is doing shows around greater Vancouver and plans to release their CD independently while vying for label interest and financing to shoot their first video.