Zupe
Zupe, 39, of Altoona, has been performing piano professionally for 25 years and records at his own home studio.
His Christmas CD, "Christmas Piano," is available at CDBaby.com. You can visit his Web site at www.zupe.net.
What's the one thing that would surprise people most about you as a performer?
The fact that I write music for hit TV shows such as "Malcolm In The Middle," "The Simple Life," "Dateline NBC," "MTV Road Rules" and "Real World."
Where is your favorite place to perform?
Wherever my audience happens to be that night.
What song do you perform that you hope your mother never hears?
Songs an artist wouldn't want his/her mother to hear aren't worth performing, let alone recording. Besides, half my audience is made up of mothers!
Who are your biggest musical influences?
My music teacher, the late David C. Dysert of Johnstown, Duke Ellington, Bobby Darin, Miles Davis, Donald Fagen and Bruce Honsby, to name a few.
How would you describe your music?
I play music people enjoy dancing or listening to. Be it Glenn Miller all the way to Matchbox 20, depending on my audience. Music is the grand social elixir.
What's in your CD player right now?
"San Paulo," a new song I co-wrote with Chuck Knepper. You should hear this thing!
How did you get interested in music?
I've been singing as long as I've been able to put two words together, so trying to pinpoint how I got interested is difficult to say. But, with the encouragement and involvement of my parents and teachers, I've been able to make a successful career out of this.
What's your favorite song to perform, original or other?
"Take The 'A' Train." This jazz standard allows me to really push myself, technically, as a pianist, and it's never the same twice.
And "Black Magic Woman" because it takes a lot of finesse to make a guitar solo sound convincing on a keyboard!
What keeps you motivated?
Money. Girls. Free beer. Seriously, knowing that I get to do what I truly love to do - and being able to make a living at it - is enough motivation to last me a lifetime.
Zupe: Press
The Zupe Archives
By Jim Price - Pennsylvania Musician Magazine
FRIDAY NIGHT - I started off by checking out Zupe at the Daily Grind Cafe. First, a BIG tip of the hat to Jeff and the Daily Grind, they have a really good thing going here, especially for under-21 fans. The crowd, mostly in their early- to mid-teens, were having a blast dancing and swinging as Zupe played everything from "Jump Jive and Wail" to Elton John and Billy Joel to Staple Singers (yes, Zupe, that's who does "I'll Take You There"), B-52's, Steely Dan, original songs and more - since it was a warm evening, the kids were going outside and dancing on the street corner, way cool! Zupe is the master entertainer, he does it all - singing, playing keys and doing all the programming. It was a very upbeat and enjoyable show.
Dave Villani can write a symphony or a jazz tune. Some day he’d even like to score a motion picture.
Sure, as a guy who earned a master’s degree in music composition, he knows the beauty of Beethoven’s hour-long “Symphony No. 9.” But when it comes to writing a jingle to promote a business, he knows the value of something that’s short and catchy.
“By Mennen,” may be one of the best ever written, he says.
Three notes, two words. The kind of tune that gets stuck in your head and won’t go away. The kind that sneaks into your subconscious and helps you make choices when you’re standing in the toiletries aisle looking for deodorant.
It’s the kind of jingle that sells products and garners the favor of advertising gurus. It’s also the kind of jimgle that pays dividends to the writers for years to come.
“I have written hundreds of them locally and regionally,” Villani says. Unfortunately in a small market like Altoona, the jingle is paid for on delivery with no future residuals.
Villani’s name may not be widely known, but the lines he’s penned and put to music are well known across the region.
“Join the switch to John Stuckey Ford,” is one of them.
Another one is “You get treated nicer at Shuster Chrysler.”
And he’s the guy who first uttered the comforting words for ACI Cellular, “You are never alone when you’ve got your cellular phone.”
“Part of the psychology behind a jingle is how often it’s played,” Villani says. “A bad jingle, if it’s played often enough, will be just as memorable as a good jingle.”
He reflects on an interview the writer of the “By Mennen” jingle did, in which he said he didn’t feel confident that it would work.
That writer, Ned Davis, is a credentialed musician who worked to build many music studios. In spite of his other accomplishments, his name is most often associated with those two words, “By Mennen.”
Villani also wrote a two-word jingle most Altoonans know.
The folks at the Blair County Ballpark asked him to come up with something memorable, a kind of chant with a country feel.
“They are almost diametrically opposed,” he remembers thinking when he heard the assignment. But he took the challenge, wondering, “How am I ever going to marry those two ideas?”
What he came up with was the musical chant, “Altoona! Curve!”
Zupe, a local musician who goes by a single moniker, says the art of writing a jingle for a customer is, “You have 30 seconds to get the point across that they are the best product or service available for your money.”
And although he’s written music that’s been played on television and in film, he says writing a jingle, “is challenging.” His music has been picked up for use on Fox’s “Malcolm in the Middle,” The History Channel and will be heard soon on NBC’s “Dateline.”
Perhaps one of the greatest challenges he ever got came from State College Electric and Mechanicals, a company that wanted a jingle for their water purification and air filtration systems.
“Sometimes you can be cute and try to rhyme,” he says. Sometimes you can’t.
So he took a different route and wrote about “cleaner air to breathe, for the children, for the family and the quality of life. State College Electric and Mechanicals.”
Jon McClintock, owner of ad agency Cherryhill Associates, Hollidaysburg, says, “We [consumers] are all blitzed by so many incoming messages every day, [advertisers] have to stand out.
“Anything we do has to be short, simple and sweet,” he says.
Mark Thomas, the Bedford-based car dealer, wanted to promote “negotiation-free selling” by his team of “non-commissioned salespersones,” McClintock says. The words didn’t exactly meet the short, simple and sweet criteria, so Thomas came up with the notion of “upfront pricing,” which means the price on the car is the price it will sell at.
Most advertisers, expecially in regional markets, McClintock says, don’t have budgets large enough to saturate the market like the folks who run the ads that end, “Lost another loan to Ditech.”
Zupe says nationally known artists like Paul Anka and Barry Manilow made fortunes writing jingles aside from their successes on Top 40 lists.
“Paul Anka has written everything for everybody including the Johnny Carson theme,” Zupe says.
In a local or regional market, jingles work best when they’re written by someone who knows the market and can target the audience a little better, Zupe says. Even so, he adds, “There are no area businesses that have the advertising budget of McDonald’s [restaurants]. No one is going to come close to the ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ campaign,” he says.
Villani says what he does best in the jingle market is to understand the advertisers and how to show them in the best light to the public.
One time a “reserved client with an upscale image” asked him for a jingle with an MTV sound.
It didn’t seem to work in his mind, so he created two jingles, the one the client asked for and another one he thought best fit the client’s inage.
“They bought mine,” he says.
Passenger Profile
Zupe, Performing Musician / Composer
By Kenny Kerner
Zupe had to find out the hard way what the word "unsolicited" meant. When he finally began to take his music and songwriting seriously, he discovered that he was totally lost in a sea of industry executives who wouldn't give him anything more than a friendly rejection via a form letter.
Although he had written a song called "The Light" in 1995 that the Red Cross used in their disaster relief awareness ad campaign, it seemed to mean nothing at all to publishers and music supervisors across the country. That he had achieved a modicum of success on his own was worthless to the industry Movers and Shakers. Zupe had hit a brick wall. Frustration had set in.
Out of sheer desperation, he reached for a TAXI ad that he had seen over and over. He had nowhere else to turn. After becoming a member in 1998, Zupe's second submission was forwarded and hope sprang eternal. To date, our esteemed Passenger has accumulated a neat package of 49 forwards and six deals. Check this out: A song placed in the hit TV series Malcolm in the Middle, an indie film called Mr. Id, three single-song deals with Ren Music and a song placed with country artist Anthony Rivera.
Zupe began playing trumpet and piano when he was about eight years old and by high school was performing with some local rock bands despite being taught big band music by his teachers. "Right about that time I thought I'd start taking music seriously. However, I didn't look at the big picture until I was with another rock band while stationed in Germany with the Air Force. We played the bar scene there. I wrote some songs and then decided to start pitching them. I had no success. I learned the hard way what 'unsolicited' meant. I picked up a couple of those songwriter market books and started to randomly pitch my music to record companies and publishers wherever I could. And that never worked out well either. I was pretty much doing things on my own and learning the hard way"
In 1998, after re-recording a jingle for the third time and watching his client back out of the deal, Zupe had enough. "I told my wife that I had been looking at these TAXI ads for years and even though I was a little doubtful, I was going to give it a shot for a year and see what happens."
What happened was that Zupe got more than he bargained for. In addition to getting forwarded, he became a better songwriter, thanks in part to the critiques he received. "I found out a lot about myself through the critiques. The best word I can think of is--focused. TAXI taught me to focus--to find my target audience and present my music to a particular audience. And once I started doing that I started getting more successful. Another thing about TAXI is that the screeners really do listen to the music. On one of the jazz songs I submitted, a screener wrote me and told me to listen to the song at the 3:25-mark and I'd hear a chord clash. He was right. It was something that I missed. It was the sustain pedal on the piano that was held too long so I fixed it up. But they are paying attention to the material."
About a year ago, Zupe upgraded his membership to the Dispatch area of TAXI. "TAXI Dispatch is the quick turnaround electronic version of regular TAXI. You get the listings via e-mail and you have a short period of time--sometimes as little as 24 hours--to get your MP3 to the listing. They're done on a yes/no basis so you hear back usually within 24-48 hours. Also, Dispatch deals specifically with placements for TV and Movies. My deal with placing my original song with Malcolm in the Middle happened through TAXI Dispatch. I got an e-mail and next thing I knew I was in touch with the music supervisor of the show to make the deal."
Zupe readily admits that were it not for TAXI he'd still be "treading water and banging my head against the wall". Through constant submissions, he got better at knowing how to send in material and how to more accurately read the various listings. And to show you just how satisfied he is, Zupe is ready to renew his membership the second it expires. Now if that don't spell satisfaction, nothing does! Congratulations, Zupe, for a job well done.
ZUPE - THE LIGHT CD Single (American Red Cross)
By D'Scribe - The Final Cut
I normally don't review singles here in the Final Cut, but this one is a special exception. Local entertainer Zupe, known
throughout this area for his computer / keyboard "one-man-band" performances, has issued this CD single, "The Light," to benefit the Keystone Chapter of the American Red Cross. Written and produced by Zupe himself, "The Light" is a ballad of hope that nicely builds into a full-blown finish, complete with backing choral harmonies by the Hollidaysburg Alumni Chorus. The overall sound suggests Journey-meets-"We Are The World;" a nice, interesting melody and chorus, with Dave Nichols' guitar nicely playing off Zupe's ivory-tickling. "The Light" is dedicated to Zupe's drummer, Brian Capotosto, who died in a Feb. 8 auto accident. A good song, for a good cause - and it's great to see local music giving something back to the community. "The Light" shines bright indeed!
ST. PATRICK'S DAY WITH ZUPE
By Jim Price - Pennsylvania Musician Magazine
St. Patrick's Days in the Altoona area are often droll affairs musically - unless they fall on a weekend, like this year. With the holiday falling on a Sunday, there was live music to be enjoyed, and green beer, Killian's Red and Irish whiskey to be consumed (I only had the Killian's).
Zupe already had a good party going as I arrived at Uriah's Pub, with the mid-sized audience of green-clad merrimakers shouting out song titles. Zupe's show mixes a variety of sounds - rock, pop, standards, oldies, ballads and even occasional jazz and polkas. From an original tune called "We've Got Tonight," Zupe soon had several women doing the line-dance thing with his version of "It's Electric," and (he admits, reluctantly) the Village People's "YMCA." Zupe does do original songs, and one that has brought him attention on a national scale is "The Light," a song he recorded last year for the American Red Cross' "Be The Light" campaign. The song has recently received radio airplay in New England and the Dakotas as various Red Cross chapters have requested the song and video for their individual campaigns. Obviously, folks locally have heard of the song, for several Uriah's celebrants called out requests for "The Light," and Zupe did a solid one-man version of it (the recorded version has accompaniment from the Hollidaysburg Alumni Chorus, resulting in a "We Are The World"- like feel). Then one of several "Uriah's Flashbacks," as Zupe did songs that made him popular at earlier shows there ... this time it was two Elton John songs, "Bennie and the Jets" and "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" to end the set.
Following the intermission (during which Zupe told me he's doing theme music for the Johnstown Chiefs hockey games, and that the team has mysteriously started winning since his music has started being used), Zupe resumed the party, starting the set with Buffalo Springfield's classic "For What it's Worth." After the Beatles "Let It Be," a humorous exchange between Zupe and a fan wanting to see him break out the trumpet ... The fan promised Zupe his firstborn if Zupe would break out the trumpet, to which Zupe replied "I thought the Smithsonian got it first..." Zupe did break out the trumpet, and led partiers Pied-Piper style around Uriah's on a dance number (with the computer running things onstage), and kept the trumpet out to appease the polka gods on "Too Fat Polka." The party continued with tunes from George Michael, En Vogue, The Knack, Fine Young Cannibals, and an original ballad. The show was supposed to be winding down (Zupe was originally slated to play until 9), but the Uriah's revellers would have no part of that - they passed the green Killian's derby hat around, and returned it, filled with cash, to the stage to a grinning Zupe.
Zupe then launched into a frolicking original number called "D.J. Blues," his ode to a frequently-occurring dilemma where folks think he is a deejay onstage. Let's make that distinction ... Zupe is NOT a deejay, and he is NOT karaoke! Folks have often argued over the years about the merits of computerized music onstage; once you study how Zupe puts this show together, you realize that this is LIVE music, albeit organized a little differently. Zupe diagrams and programs each song part, in detail, beforehand - except for those parts he plays live onstage; keyboards, vocals, and occasional trumpet. To be able to coordinate all of the programming into individual diskettes (for each song), and then be able to execute the live parts along the programmed backdrop requires precision timing and skill. Zupe does all of the above and makes a party out of it ... truly a unique entertainer.
Back to the show ... Aerosmith, the Stones, Led Zeppelin ("Rock and Roll"), an audience request for Billy Joel's "Piano Man," Billy Ocean, another humorous exchange (AUDIENCE MEMBER - "Zupe, you're the best!" ZUPE - "Thanks but no, you're not getting my Southern Comfort!"), Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman," INXS, Roxette, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, "Hey Bartender," "Soul Man," and the Peanuts theme ... By this time, the hat was making another go-round, and it was apparent Uriah's wasn't nearly ready to let this party end! It wasn't the bandorama (5 bands at each bar) you get in State College, or the ethnic flavor you get in Johnstown ... but for this year, Altoona at least had something to do for St. Patrick's Day, and this party made this St. Patty's Day one I'll remember.