As Eddie Trunk often says, “No Band Ever Ends.” And so it is with ’80s hard rock mainstays, Winger.
A year ago frontman and namesake Kip Winger announced the band’s retirement would follow one final Sunset Strip blowout at the Rainbow Bar & Grill. That event took place August 31, 2025, at one of the Rainbow’s semi-regular live music events called the Rainbow Bar & Grill Backyard Bash 2025. The Rainbow, of course, is the legendary Sunset Strip hangout that has been practically a second home to rock stars and other Hollywood celebs since long before Kip Winger knew how to play a bass guitar.
Now, during an October 21 episode of SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk,” Kip talked about his bandmates — including founding Winger guitarist Reb Beach; Rod Morgenstein on drums; Paul Taylor on keys, rhythm guitar and backing vocals; and John Roth on rhythm guitar and backing vocals — having already played multiple shows since that “Final” 2025 Rainbow Bar & Grill bash (about a half-dozen, it would seem).
“We toured a lot for the last five years,” Winger told Trunk, “and I was wanting more time to focus on the other writing I’m doing. I had a lot of trouble with my voice. I’ve got this paralysis in my vocal cord, so it’s very difficult to get my voice up and running, but I can do it. And we did a show at the Rainbow Bar & Grill [in West Hollywood, California] about a year and a half ago. And I was telling everybody, like, ‘This is gonna be my last show for a while, because I’m doing other shit.'”
But according to the Winger frontman, Marq Torien of Bullet Boys sorta f’d that all up for him, in a way. Maybe Torien was egging Winger on about retiring. Y’know, just givin’ Kip a hard time. Or maybe he had thoughts of, “Hey, maybe I can replace Kip in Winger and keep the band going, and make some better money because Winger gets paid more than Bullet Boys.” Who knows what was going through Torien’s mind at the time, although, seeing as it was a big-time party at the Rainbow, we can guess that it probably wasn’t just hot tea with ginseng.
So apparently Kip never actually said he was retiring the band Winger. Or at least that’s what he told Eddie Trunk yesterday. His take on the events of August 31, 2025, at the Rainbow were more like, “And fuck if Marq Torien didn’t go out there and go, ‘This is Kip’s retirement gig.’ He said it the whole set. So that’s how it got spread. I never announced it, but I was thinking we were gonna go from 35, 40 shows a year down to, like, six or seven, and that’s what we’re doing.”
So, whether Kip said it and is now having second thoughts, or whether Torien was just messin’ with the kid, Winger is going to continue playing more shows. Like Eddie says, “No Band Ever Ends.”
If you’re in the Chicago area, you can see Winger this Saturday night, October 24, at the Arcada Theatre in the Chicago suburb of St. Charles. Opening the show are Don Jamieson (of VH-1’s “That Metal Show”), and Orianthi.
The Arcada is a cool thousand-seat restored theater that just celebrated it’s 100th anniversary (and yes, I was there, along with Carmine and Vinny Appice, Chubby Checker, and Priscilla Presley). Proprieter Ron Onesti, who also runs the Des Plaines Theatre in the Chicago area, has for many years, just about single-handedly kept rock and roll alive in Chicago, so go to this show as much to support Winger as to support Onesti’s efforts. And the Arcada is so much more than just the theater, as Onesti and his brother Rich have turned the entire building into an incredible entertainment venue with multiple stages, multiple restaurants, multiple bars, a dance club, and so much more.
As for other Winger dates, currently these are all the shows that have been announced:
Hey, this is tonight: October 22nd, Cancun, Mexico
October 24th: The Arcada Theater, St. Charles, IL
October 25th, Detroit, Michigan, The Sound Board at Motor City Casino
May 6 to 11, 2027: Monsters of Rock Cruise
