Washington, D.C native Marc Capponi delves into his personal journey as a composer, performer, and music educator in conversation with contributing writer Emma Downes. Read on to learn more about his early presence in the city’s most widely-loved live venues, his work in the studio and on the road with Rocknoceros, and exciting upcoming projects.
Within the realm of D.C.-based music, few artists have such an evolutionary history and diverse range of both studio-based and live performance projects as Marc Capponi. “I’ve been playing around town for a long time,” he says, “and I’m still doing it, decades later!”
This composer, performer and music educator draws from wide-ranging influences, with roots in the classics. “I grew up listening to the Beatles and still do now — not obsessively, of course, but I still listen to them a lot,” he chuckles. “In college I discovered Frank Zappa and still listen to a fair amount of his stuff.”
As for newcomers to music, Capponi has become fond of modern-glitchy pop production featuring female vocalists — Billie Eilish, New Zealand powerhouse Benee, and Remi Wolf, to name a few. “Artists today are still pushing the envelope! I’m a fan of female singers in general, and I love the new really choppy, digital, Skrillex sound that’s coming out now,” he says.
Capponi is particularly interested in the ways these artists combine past and present to create something universally appealing. “I like the fact that Billie Eilish and many others are bringing back the sort of Great American Songbook, jazzy chord progressions,” he reflects. “You’re hearing this very modern soundtrack, with obviously synthetic drums and very mechanical sound, while also using these very old-timey chord progressions. I’m sure who really got that ball rolling was Amy Winehouse.”
As an artist, Capponi combines this openness to the new era of composition and artistic expression with a strong, deep-rooted background in the dense live music scene of the early 2000s. His journey began when he was a teenager, doing tech for shows at the former venue D.C. Space — one of the city’s only live sources for original punk and avant-garde music and art (now closed).
As a full-time musician, he’s made many contributions to D.C. music since the year 2000. It all started with a simple ad in Washington City Paper, a single act of outreach that would become the basis for connections that would eventually send him on to perform for thousands internationally.
“After I graduated college, I realized I wasn’t playing as much as I used to play,” says Capponi. “So I put an ad in the city paper for a pianist looking to play with people. And a guy called me one night when it ran and said, ‘What’re you doing tonight?’”
What began as a pianist fill-in at Columbia Station quickly became a pianist gig that prompted Capponi to quit his day job and play on 18th St. in Adams Morgan for years, both at the former jazz venue and Felix Restaurant & Lounge across the street.
“I was playing gigs before, and I would make some money doing it, but that was my real start as a full-time musician,” he recalls. It would be far from the last, as he would come to find out after connecting with old high school friends who needed a piano player for their new project: the kid’s band, Rocknoceros.
“Rocknoceros has been my main ‘thing’ since we started,” says Capponi. “By far, I play with Rocknoceros more than anything, and it still is tons of fun. For a while, I was putting a lot of creative energy into it.”
The band could not have arrived at a more perfect time. “Kindie” rock, which combines singer-songwriter talent with childlike whimsy, had an international explosion in the 2000s. “It was a national phenomenon,” reflects Capponi. “Every legitimate artist had their kid’s project they were working on!”
“By the time [kindie] really took off we had already been performing for several years… in our first four years, we released three full length albums with original music. It was definitely an explosion of creativity for us,” he says.
Rocknoceros — which currently consists of Capponi as “Boogie Bennie” on piano-drum & accordion, and Patrick “Williebob” Williams on guitar & banjo — rode the kindie rock wave across the country in the late 2000s and early 2010s, performing at Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, and the Kennedy Center. During this time of peak creative energy and exposure, Capponi learned more about his own craft and the wider musical umbrella.
“Getting older always offers a new perspective on what you’re doing,” he says. “And along with gaining perspective in general, creating for kids… it really solidifies the idea that you’ve gotta have the fundamentals [of music] down. The basic stuff is the stuff that is most important.”
No matter what the story tells, each song in Rocknoceros’ discography combines fun, humor, and educational content with equally catchy and captivating instrumentals. Recently, Rocknoceros has tried their hand at taking a fresh spin on a classic and adding to a story many kids are familiar with — as seen in the band’s release, a take on “Five Little Monkeys.” Capponi cites the musical teachings and influences of 1940s bebop piano player Barry Harris, who was an educator until his passing in 2021, for the inspiration behind this fun new direction.
“It’s a radical, different way of thinking about harmony that has fused nicely with where we are with Rocknoceros — taking old songs that everyone knows, adding your own spin and exploring new ways to harmonize it.”
A music educator himself, Marc usually picks up new students through Rocknoceros. While he does teach traditional private lessons, he often encourages entire families to get in on the excitement together.
“If parents come to me about getting their kids started, I say, ‘let’s do it as a family,’” he affirms. “I try to get everyone started on the ukulele because you only need a few chords and it forces you to sing the melody… Most people just want to be able to play and sing some songs with their family.”
When Capponi isn’t enacting family fun on stages across the U.S. and inspiring future musicians, he creates more personal work. The studio project Square Meal Laboratories gives Capponi the creative space to explore sounds outside of the Rocknoceros realm.
“Square Meal Laboratories is something that I love to do, that allows me to experiment with studio stuff and these new sounds that I’m hearing — things that I probably wouldn’t even know how to do live if I wanted to,” says Capponi.
Throughout Square Meal Laboratories’ discography, listeners can find that same energetic, glitchy exploration that Capponi admires in the next generation of pop artists. Many tracks make creative use of voice clips and audio archives to add texture or set an uncanny vibe.
“I like public domain stuff in general, and think it’s a cool concept,” says Capponi. “There comes a point where we [humans] all share certain things, and I like the idea of being able to riff on that stuff freely.”
Capponi takes keen interest in expressing the ways music and art connect humans across metaphysical realities — the inherently collaborative nature of art, even with those you’ll never meet. This theme has never been clearer than in Square Meal Laboratories’ latest release, “Chapter 34,” which released to streaming platforms on January 31. The EP is an “experiment in collaborating with other people through space and time.”
The EP’s three tracks were created separately and later sewn together in the studio for a straight-through listening experience — a decision inspired by Zappa’s discography and The Beatles’ Let It Be.
“Between the songs, there are little things that make them connect,” says Capponi. “I decided that I wanted to be releasing these as more than just a song. Maybe there could be a song that’s the main feature of it, but to give it something to make it so that you could listen straight through.”
When listened to one after the other, “The Acid Test,” “Circle of Breath” featuring London-based artist Phoebe, and “Sounds of New York” convey a similar message to their open-source components: that we are all connected, and can see those threads of connection most clearly in the ways we artistically interpret our surroundings.
While “Chapter 34” is Marc’s first musical release of 2023, it won’t be his last. After a decade of workshopping and the chance to record remotely during Covid, the five-person stage play Queen of Somerset — a collaboration with his sister, Debra Capponi — is set to officially release this year.
Work began on Queen of Somerset three years into Rocknoceros, at the tail end of the band’s most active period. “It was Rocknoceros 24/7,” recalls Marc. “I wanted to switch gears and work on something absolutely naughty and adult!”
Queen of Somerset is silly, raunchy, and delightful in an entirely different way than the rest of Capponi’s work. The show stars a drag queen who is past his prime, and chronologizes his failed dreams of a spot in high society.
Like its inspiration — Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime — the setting for Queen of Somerset remains purposefully ambiguous. “There’s an element of Victorian or 18th-century, but there’s also this Vegas stage show element of it,” says Capponi. “It never really clearly says where or when this is happening. The whole thing has a nonsense foundation that we were able to build off.”
Queen of Somerset is written for piano, bassoon, and three singers/actors. Upon release, it will be the perfect choice for smaller teams. “Right now, I’d say the audience [for Queen of Somerset] is people who would consider performing it!” he says.
From stage to studio, Marc Capponi’s many stakes in the music industry gives him an interesting perspective on how it has evolved over time.
“The industry — as far as being a local performer goes — is similar to how it’s always been. But certainly, on the bigger scale of being a recording artist in the world today, everything has changed,” Capponi remarks. “Certainly, getting people to hear you is a little less difficult since you’re always just one click away. I think it’s a super exciting time to be around.”
Once essential distribution materials, CDs, vinyl, and cassettes are now novelty items used to express keen interest in a particular artist. In their place, Capponi’s numerous projects join a seemingly endless supply of new music from every genre, all in one place.
“There’s no shortage of creative people doing creative stuff, and it’s inspiring. It’s a great time to be a music fan, too, because it’s so easy to check out new music… Although it’s still elusive trying to get people to hear your music and to even know that you exist, it seems more attainable — and that’s sort of comforting,” he chuckles. “It’s relatively inexpensive to put yourself out there, compared to what it used to be, and it’s more conceivable to have people find it.”
As for advice for up-and-coming D.C. based artists and music industry folks looking to make it happen, Marc Capponi has one message: building connections based on kindness will take you far.
“Be patient, be persistent, and be nice!” he says. “Even if it looks like you’re done working with someone, you never know. And people like working with people they like.”
Rocknoceros recently rang in the new year for children and their families at Jammin Java in Fairfax, VA. There are plenty of other opportunities to look forward to in 2023 from Marc Capponi, both live and in the studio. Be sure to check out Square Meal Laboratories’ newest EP, Chapter 34 on all streaming platforms — and discover more great artists on the Alchemical Records Multigenre Mixture playlist on Spotify.
Emma Downes is a recent graduate of DeSales University in Center Valley, PA, where she studied English and Communication. As a lifelong writer and music lover, she is happy to be incorporating both into her work for Alchemical Records. When she’s not writing, she enjoys getting to know the DMV entertainment scene, drawing, and spending time with her four siblings.
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Alchemical Records is a Washington, D.C. based music publication. We cover the Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Richmond, VA metro area music scenes, including band interviews, articles about your favorite musicians, new music and concert dates.
