Written by Bob Jørgensen | 14 January 2010

At backyard barbecues, weddings, charity benefits, dances and other events, to the occasional cable TV appearance, Mike Chipman and the Big Chips Trio are a familiar sight and sound in the Midcoast area.
Mike is a lifelong resident of Harpswell. Most evenings and weekends, he can be found mixing sound tracks in the well-equipped sound studio inside his beautiful home on, where else, Chipman Lane off Harpswell Road, a house he shares with his lovely wife, Susan, and a small, brightly colored parrot.
Oddly, Mike doesn't read music. At age 4, he began taking piano lessons from Mary Hackett, Dave Hackett's mother, at just 50 cents per lesson! The lessons continued until he was 8 years old, at which time he was "busted" for not playing his musical homework, memorizing what Mrs. Hackett had played for him instead and then playing it back to her. He got away with the ruse until one day, "I played the wrong piece, not the printed music in front of me."
Next, Mike took up the accordion, continuing to play "by ear." He and his squeezebox provided entertainment at the Harpswell Grange for many years. At Brunswick High School, he played the electric organ and was often picked up after school by older boys, who had already graduated so he could play with them at the armory or other dance venues. He currently plays a keyboard synthesizer that can duplicate all the instruments of the orchestra, using his left hand to play the bass guitar part and his right to produce the sounds of other instruments playing the melody.
Mike met Earl Bigelow in 1985 when the two of them played in the same band. They subsequently formed a duo, with Earl playing guitar. Later, they were joined by Earl's wife, Nancy, who preferred not to stay home when Earl had gigs. Nancy plays percussion, and so the Big Chips Trio was born in 1989. For the past 20 years, the group has continued to play pop music from the ‘40's to the present, including contemporary, country, rock, blues, plus music made famous by the Dixie Chicks and Fleetwood Mac, and some of Mike's own compositions. Often, when playing a wedding, they will take requests well in advance so that they can incorporate their own arrangements of the chosen songs into their routine.
Together, the Big Chips Trio has played at Sears, on Gardiner cable TV, the Harpswell Festival and on the cruise boat Susano out of the Percy & Small shipyard. One year, they were a part of Tim Sample's Christmas Show and are always a part of the Chocolate Church Arts Center's annual spring fundraiser, called The Natives Are Restless. In fact, the trio is currently learning new songs for the upcoming Chocolate Church Restless benefit, which will be held in March.
Mike is also working on a solo CD, on which he plays all the instrumental parts and sings all the vocal parts, mixing them on his own 24-track home audio studio. The CD will include some songs Mike composed himself. His wife, Susan, is designing the cover. Mike is also a certified piano tuner and does piano repairs. His daytime job is doing mechanical services repair at Bowdoin College, while Susan works for VISA, testing their software. Trio member Earl Bigelow teaches at Music and More in Topsham and is co-owner with his wife, Nancy, of the Broadway Deli in Brunswick, which Nancy has run for the last 20 years. Earl also operates the sound system for productions at the Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath.
When not working at his day job, rehearsing or working in his home sound studio, Mike continues to make major improvements to his handsome, cape-style home. His projects there have included insulating and finishing their second floor, installing custom wooden plank flooring in their living and dining rooms and marble slab flooring elsewhere, plus extensive landscaping outdoors.
He says, "I'm a guy who is happiest when I am kept busy." Mike's exhausting schedule of work, projects and activities are ample proof of his assessment.