As a songwriter, arranger, programmer, producer and co-owner of DRC Entertainment/Music Avenue Records, Biddy Schippers is living her dream of a life in music. She’s also winning acclaim in an area she hadn’t intended to pursue—as a recording artist in her own right. With the truly original musical creation “Alice In Wonderland,” a national dance chart hit at record pools and at mix and web radio nationwide, Schippers builds on the success of Randell & Schippers, the moniker under which she and collaborator and husband Denny Randell perform.

Featuring Biddy on the lead vocals, “Alice” is full of wit and whimsy, narrating the adventures of the song’s title heroine with infectious lyrics and an irresistible groove. Other stand-out singles written and performed over the years by the duo of Randell & Schippers include “Let’s Go For It” and “Love Jam,” which the U.K.’s Blues & Soul Magazine called, “Quite simply, a modern masterpiece.” When the pair first started recording together in the mid-’80s on their own Ear Candy label (later sold to a group including BMG Records), they called themselves Fantasy—“Our music as artists is kind of surreal,” explains Biddy. While the name was a good fit for their dreamy, funky sound, Randell & Schippers soon stuck as the official name of their act together.

Schippers’ passion for music began in childhood, and her journey in realizing it has been an extraordinary one. Raised in an unincorporated town of about forty people outside of Hartford, WI (itself a satellite of Milwaukee), she started playing piano at age six, guitar at age nine and composing songs at age eleven. Biddy excelled in varsity swimming and mathematics competitions, and went on to earn a B.A. degree at Stanford University in political science/pre-law; her studies also included a semester at Oxford University in the U.K.

After graduating, Biddy waited tables and crammed for law boards until, partly inspired by a Stanford professor who highly praised her poetry, she opted to forgo a law career and become a songwriter. “It really was a bungee jump,” she says. Schippers enrolled in the music program at San Francisco City College--“I was still very academically focused at the time, very much into theory and  musical harmony writing,” she remembers. She roomed with a lawyer/opera singer, and they worked out a schedule so each would have dedicated hours on the apartment’s prized piano, set in a room with a spectacular view of San Francisco Bay. Biddy began performing around the city, and her unique blend of pop, opera, rock and theater music developed a loyal niche following.

Schippers’ next leap of faith came when, “I decided I was ready to write commercial music, so I got rid of everything I owned and moved to Los Angeles.” She continued with school to expand her range—“When you’re a classical pianist, you’re not used to a lot of changes, you’re reading music. I wanted to loosen up, and throw myself into more improvisational jazz and pop-oriented situations. Her demo tapes and early collaborations quickly found favor with music publishers, and she sold her very first song, “When We Make Love,” to a Paramount-affiliated firm in 1985. Subsequent songs became hits in Japan and Europe, and an independent publisher Biddy was working with suggested she meet with Denny Randell, thinking they’d be good writing partners.
 
“At first, I was really nervous,” says Biddy, “to have only been in town for a year and a half, and to be writing with someone of Denny’s caliber. Then we started to talk, and we both happened to be people who wrote music and lyrics--we connected on that. When we got together, we did a first round of songs, a variety of things, and it was just an instant, intimate, good collaboration.”
 

Biddy Schippers and Denny Randell were ahead of the curve on incorporating synthesizers and drum machines into their music, still a pioneering sound in 1986. It was also around this time that Biddy’s incarnation as a songstress began after Denny listened to a demo she’d once made when a singer she’d hired for a recording session didn’t show up. “Denny just really loved my voice,” she remembers. “He said, ‘I think you have a hit sound. I think we should make a record and put it out.’ At first I wasn’t sure, having boycotted chorus in the 8th grade, but we went for it.” Self-released, their first “Randell & Schippers” side leapt onto dance charts in New York City, later making its way across the country with notoriety at top dance pools and mix radio. A recording contract with Scotti Brothers/CBS Records followed, and the “R&S” sound made a splash on both sides of the Atlantic, impacting dance charts in the U.K. as well.

Going forward from there, Biddy Schippers and Denny Randell made the decision to diversify and start their own company, DRC Entertainment--including DRC Music Group, Music Avenue Records Group and Cyber MC Webcasting—and continue to write and produce for a collective of artists instead of solely focusing on Randell & Schippers. Their current roster includes the soul/crossover vocal group Soul Tempo.  Denny and Biddy are also producing solo sessions with Soul Tempo’s lead singer Jerry Brunson for a forthcoming album project.
 
Biddy is excited about the musical show they’ve been writing for several years and are close to completing. And, the mix of developing and producing projects for other artists notwithstanding, the success of “Alice In Wonderland” attests to the ongoing popularity of Randell & Schippers, a sonic duo that will live on through inventive new material that Biddy and Denny are currently writing.

As naturally suited to composing a wonderfully original song as she is to engineering it in the studio and getting behind the microphone to embellish it with her distinctive vocals, Biddy Schippers’ dynamic balance of “left brain” and “right brain” talents is a partnership as innovative and winning as her ongoing artistic duet with Denny Randell. After several years juggling an east coast studio in Orlando, FL with musical roots in L.A., Biddy is thrilled that she and Denny are back in Southern California full time now, with new headquarters for DRC Entertainment…and every manner of wondrous project that they’ll dream up!