Tucker Caploe juggles music, classwork and personal health

This Saturday, May 4 at 7 p.m., Tucker Caploe, a 20-year-old sophomore writing major at Lang, will perform original songs with his seven-piece band at The Bitter End. The club is located on Bleecker Street, just west of LaGuardia Place. This show will be one of his first times back on stage since receiving a Type 1 diabetes diagnosis two years ago.

Caploe — who released his latest album, All the Right Reasons, this past January — grew up in a musical environment. His mother, songwriter and vocalist Susan Collins, started her career with Jimi Hendrix and has since worked with the Electric Light Orchestra, Todd Rundgren, Kiss and John Lennon. His father, Andy Caploe, is a music producer and voiceover artist. His grandmother, Jeanne Goldburg — who taught Caploe how to play piano — is a classical pianist who debuted as a teenager at Carnegie Hall. And his godparents are Ellie Greenwich, the late legendary songwriter behind classics like “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Be My Baby,” and Paul Shaffer, leader of David Letterman’s CBS Orchestra and musical director for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Caploe is now launching his own career as a singer, songwriter and pianist. Even as he attends school, he has amassed a resume of his own. His voice has been featured on Nickelodeon, Discovery Kids and the Game Show Network. He frequently performs at Poisson Rouge, Drom, Birdland, and the Cutting Room. In his spare time, he also gives tours at The New School Welcome Center,  to the university’s aspiring students. He sat down recently with the Free Press to discuss music, inspiration, time management and dealing with his medical condition.

I like to say it’s pop, but I’m not trying to sound like anyone but myself. Some people say I remind them of Mika, and lately I’ve been getting a lot of “Elton John meets Peter Allen.” I love 60s and 70’s music, so I think my sound is formed by those eras. But I’m really just trying to do me.

I took that time off to focus and learn about the diabetic condition I now live with every day. During my time off, I went to school, did a lot of studio sessions with other artists, and was writing up a storm. But in the “honeymoon phase” of my diagnosis, my body wasn’t ready to get up on stage yet. Performing takes a great deal of energy, and since my body hadn’t yet maintained stable blood sugars, there was no telling what could happen when I gave it my all on stage.

I think The New School as an entire university is a great intellectual program filled with so many different diverse and artistic people. I love to read. I love to write. I love talking in a classroom with people. And I feel that doing all of those things only makes my songwriting stronger. Being a student also gives me a lot of inspiration to write. I have a classical background from studying with my grandmother. But going to Lang makes so much sense for me: I’m in Intro to Non-Fiction during the day and at night I’m in the studio or performing somewhere. It’s a great situation.

How do you balance schoolwork  with your music career?

It’s definitely tough. There are days when I get up, give a tour, go to class, send notes to the guitarist in my band, go to class, write a paper, go back and give another tour, go to the recording studio, rush downtown for a rehearsal. Then I go home and stay up late reading Oscar Wilde and Gustave Flaubert. I’m a busy guy – but I love it. My iCal on my MacBook is sacred. If anyone messes with it, I might freak out. The key to the balance is organization.

Who are your bandmates?

This group of people that I’m performing with I met through some really wonderful and unexpected circumstances in the past few years.

I met Michi, my guitarist, at a wedding. She’s this demure looking young woman with a sweet smile but when she plugs in that guitar she unleashes a powerhouse array of shred – Michi rocks.

I met Alex Pyle, a really talented New School Jazz bassist, while we were both taking Nkosi Bendele’s writing class, Too Cool for School, during our freshman year. It’s still one of my all time favorite classes and Alex is a phenomenally tasteful yet booming bass player.

I met my drummer, Noah Hyams, at a Bar Mitzvah in Westchester. We became instant best friends, and now we happen to live two blocks away from each other. Noah brings a manic intensity to the drums that powers the whole band. Noah is very in demand, playing around NYC with another group called Modern Diet.

Jazzy Sinkoff is one of my really good friends from performing arts camp, French Woods, where we spent many summers together. She sings background for me, blending with two other stellar singers who were suggested to me by Darryl Tookes, an amazing singer himself, who teaches at Tisch. When I asked him to refer me to the cream of his pop singing students, I had the good fortune to meet the lovely and talented Amalia Tollas and Alexandra Mazzucchelli. I immediately fell in love with both of these fantastically talented young singers.

It’s different every time. Sometimes I walk down the street, humming to myself and I get an idea for a melody. And other times I just go to a piano, sit there and let whatever needs to happen happen. Sometimes I’ll write a song in 10 minutes. And other times it takes years to make it right. Whenever I write with other people, I look for things to happen organically – when we’re lucky! They’ll start with a chord and I’ll add another chord and then we’ll all build off of a lyric. I really like to collaborate. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

Are you trying to get a specific message across with your music?

I think that as human beings, we’re all trying to make connections with one another: they could be romantic or platonic, or maybe even a little of both. But it’s definitely a puzzle figuring it all out. For me, sometimes it’s hard to relate to people using only words; with the added element of music, I feel like I can say something in multiple dimensions. My hope and desire is that if other people listen to what I’m putting out there, they’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.