Homegrown Band 'Rocknoceros' Celebrates 10th Anniversary with New Album, Concert

Music can have a lasting impact on a person’s life from a very young age, something local band Rocknoceros knows far too well.

The prominent area children’s band is celebrating its 10th anniversary this summer, and its goal has been to both entertain kids as well as expose them to music early in life, which studies have shown improves a kid’s self-esteem, his or her math and reading scores, as well as the child’s chances of one day gaining acceptance into college.

The band’s members — Marc “Boogie Woogie Bennie” Capponi, David “Coach” Cotton and Patrick “Williebob” Williams — all hail from the Northern Virginia area. Cotton and Capponi were childhood best friends, and Williams joined the clique when the three friends were in high school. Capponi said the gang has been jamming since the 1980s along with a few other friends, “but the real Rocknoceros as it is currently known did not exist until 2005.”

“We definitely affected each other growing up,” Capponi said. “I’ve known Coach Cotton since I was 5 years old. Coach and I met Williebob when we were 14 or 15, and we’ve all been very close ever since. So, even though Rocknoceros is celebrating an incredible 10 years together, we’ve been friends for much longer.

“And we were pretty well grown up by the time Rocknoceros started; it was when Coach Cotton took his own children to see a performer 10 years ago that he came up with the idea.”

That’s a funny story. It was around 2005 that Cotton, who had returned to the area as a middle school teacher and later a stay-at-home dad, took his kids (then ages 3 and 1, respectively) to a children’s concert at Jammin’ Java, and thought to himself ‘I can do better than this.’

He’s spent the last 10 years backing up that claim with Rocknoceros, which has won eight Wammie Awards (Washington Area Music Association Awards), released four albums (soon to be five) and has performed in venues such as Lollapalooza, Wolf Trap and the Kennedy Center.

“For the past ten years, Rocknoceros has been my main employer,” Cotton said.

Ten years later, the band is releasing its newest album, “Plymouth Rockers,” which will not only celebrate the band’s first decade together, but will also honor Independence Day with a number of patriotic-themed tunes to which youngsters can sing along and dance.

According to the band, the album “features a bevy of high-octane songs about 14 different states, along with a Rocknoceros take on Irving Berlin’s classic anthem, ‘God Bless America.’” Capponi also noted this particular album is more rock ‘n’ roll than previous albums, and Cotton agreed.

“’Plymouth Rockers’ is less age-specific than previous releases. I can’t say if it’s better than our other albums, but it’s not certainly not worse,” Cotton said, tongue-in-cheek.

The album will drop on Saturday, July 4, completing a project the band says has been in the works for more than five years now.

“We’ve been talking about a project like this since ‘Virginia’ appeared on our ‘PINK!’ album in 2009,” Williams said. “Our tenth anniversary year seemed like a great time to roll up our sleeves and deliver.”

And deliver they have. But wait, there’s more.

In addition to a new album, the band is also putting on a free concert in the area’s up-and-coming Mosaic District on Sunday, July 12, a show that was originally scheduled for June 28 but moved due to inclement weather. The band will play a number of selections from its new album as part of the hour-long show.

But this 10-year celebration, complete with a live show and the release of a new album, is far from a stopping point for one of the area’s most popular bands.

“I think we’re always trying to communicate fun,” Cotton said. “And curiosity about music and words and life.”

Image credit: Rocknoceros