Chris Sipe grew up in a musical family with his mother a piano teacher and organist. His father is renowned pipe organ builder Robert L. Sipe, whose father was a band director, and cousin, Joe B. Mauldin, was bass player and founding member of Buddy Holly and The Crickets, who many consider the first rock'n'roll band. The family traveled a lot for organ installations, which later clearly had influence over Chris' love for the road. A Dallas native, Chris studied music performance at the University of North Texas with Dr. Robert Schietroma, Ed Soph, Henry Okstel, Renato Pereira (Brazilian), Poovalur Srinivasan (South Indian) and Leigh Howard Stevens (Marimba) among others. Chris also mentored for many years under Dallas session drummer Gene Glover, who assisted him in getting into many professional gigs.

Professional drumming began at age 19 when Chris toured the U.S. and Canada with Black Top Recording Artist, Darrell Nulisch and Texas Heat. He spent several years with multi-instrumentalist Milo Deering and his wife Rachel Goetz in their band Ghostown. Chris also played briefly and toured with critically acclaimed Texas band Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks, playing the Bumbershoot festival, and premiering two theater pieces, one of which was a collaboration with Firesign Theatre member David Ossman in Seattle.

In 1997 Chris relocated to San Francisco, and has played with Sprocket Ensemble, Carla Kihlstedt’s Two Foot Yard, guitarist Jim Campilongo, Moe Staiano's Moekestra!, Herb (Herb Alpert tribute), Bitches Brew, Joe Buck, and singer/songwriters Chris Von Snidern, Tom Heyman, and Jesse DeNatale. In 2003 he joined Rykarda Parasol's band, which led to meeting Eric Drew Feldman who asked him to play drums for his project kNIFE & fORK. In fall 2004 that band supported P.J. Harvey on half of her U.K. and U.S. tours. 2006 found Chris joining one of the Bay Area's buzziest indie bands, The Herms. We played Live 105's BFD festival, and had our CD Release at Great American Music Hall.