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bio
The Zappia Brothers- (L-R) Joe, Paul, Johnny Sr. And Graziano Zappia
Born in Huntington Beach, CA to a musical family, it was no surprise that I loved music and started playing mandolins and guitars, learning traditional Italian music as early as age four. By the time I hit elementary school, I was completely fascinated by the records my older brothers and sister were listening to. Bands like Cheap Trick, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. I wanted to know how they made those sounds and I was going to learn. By the time I was in 7th grade, I started putting together a band with my likeminded school buddies, delegating who was going to play what, with me being on lead guitar. We spent every day after school practicing and eventually getting to perform at the middle schools and local youth centers. As I got into my late teens, I really fell in love with bands like The Kinks, Faces, New York Dolls, The Stooges, Social Distortion, The Cult, The Damned, The Ramones and Humble Pie to name a few, all of which became essential to my performance and songwriting later on.
Achilles 1989 (L-R) Tony Montoya-Bass, Kelly Nelms-Vocals/Guitar, Johnny Zapp-Guitar, Art Vasquez-Drums
By 1996, just two years out of high school, I had relocated to Phoenix,
Arizona and started getting around the live circuit in Arizona, Southern
California and Nevada playing guitar, bass or drums in numerous bands. Along the
way, I befriended several industry professionals who mentored me and taught me a
lot about songwriting and how to put on a great live show.
In 2001, with no prior formal music education, I began studying drums and
learning the ropes of recording, producing and multi-tracking with Troy
Luccketta of Tesla in his Scottsdale, AZ studio. Being exposed to a professional
studio environment with a professional musician/producer was an invaluable
learning experience and had a huge impact on the direction I wanted to take with
my future in the music industry.
In early 2008, I stepped back and took inventory of where I was at, where I had
been, what I had done, where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I sat
on the beach literally for a week straight, with tons of literature from ASCAP
and other resources and just studied, studied, studied. I quickly realized
there is a lot of opportunity in writing rock singles for film and television
and I wanted in! So I made the decision that being a single dad and having
grown out of the band thing, I was done with that and going to focus on the
business side of songwriting and film/television. I then got a publishing
license for my own publishing company, Zapp Songs Publishing and got to work.
By April 2008, I had secured my first non-exclusive deal with licensing giant
Pump Audio/Getty Images.
For the next two years, I remained hunkered down in my fully equipped 24-track analog/unlimited track digital studio (Zapp City Studios) banging out singles with me playing all guitars, bass and drums and handling most of the vocals, with the occasional guest vocalist on a track here and there. Eventually, that hard work resulted in me securing two more non-exclusive licensing deals. I am now on the roster as an artist and writer for three major players in the music licensing for film and TV business, Pump Audio, Indigi Music and Indie Tracks Library and I continually prospect projects and freelance.
A handful of my singles have hit FM rock radio around the world, with two of them breaking the mainstream independent radio top 30 charts. My single "Alone Again" peaked at #5 and hung in the charts for the better half of 2009 and most recently, my single "Dirty Good Time" hit over 110 radio stations and peaked at #3 in the mainstream independent charts. Three of my singles, "Alone Again", "Poor Pitiful You" and "Want You Need You" also won Billboard Magazine World Songwriting Contest Excellence In Songwriting awards. One of which broke the top 1500 and two broke the top 500 of over 20,000 entries.
In late 2009, I added actor to my resume and I was cast to play the role of Peter Fonda's Captain America character in a music video tribute to the legendary counter culture classic film, Easy Rider. The video was for Germann rock artist Matt Roehr's single "Fuel Into The Fire" and it wound up winning the Independent Music Network's Music Video Of The Year for 2010.
2011 brings more film and TV, new music, more radio and good times.
Cheers
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