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| Kapanka hankers for stardom By Jim Abbott | Sentinel Pop Music Writer Posted May 6, 2002 Jack Kapanka has no business being alive. Just listen to his life story. "I was swimming at this quarry with some friends," says the aspiring country singer, recounting his school days in rural Pennsylvania. "I climbed this cliff and onto the branch of this tree. "Well, I'm about 200 pounds, so the branch snapped, and I hit the quarry face-first. I fell into the water unconscious." The high-school senior survived that day with broken bones and facial injuries. Kapanka, now 31, made it to graduation with taped ribs and a protective mask. Years before, older brother Kevin Kapanka remembers, 4-year-old Jack flew over his head after careening down a hill and over a ramp on his Big Wheel. "We said, 'Please don't tell Mom and Dad,' " says the older Kapanka, 43, now a high-school teacher in Ohio. "We could get Jack to do just about anything, and the strange thing is, he eventually did do just about anything." What he never did was stop taking risks, which is something that happens when you're blind in one eye and learning to compete in a family of 20 children. Compared with that, launching a show-business career with Orlando's Trans Continental Records seems like a reasonable proposition. It's hardly his first career. Kevin's little brother already has been a volunteer firefighter, shoe salesman, stuntman, carnival barker -- he even sold bridal gowns over the telephone. All of which, it turns out, is good training for a country singer. Or, as Jack Kapanka says: "As long as you're breathing, you're fine." Jack Kapanka's first challenge was the blindness that encased his world in darkness at birth. At 2, he began to see fuzzy images, and his parents took him to San Francisco for an operation to improve his vision. There was a complication removing a bandage, however, and the tissues in his left eye were destroyed. The right eye, perhaps because of the situation, became much stronger. Little Jack could see. "It was a miracle," Kapanka says now, but it didn't mean that his young life was getting easier. His parents would divorce after the strain of raising 13 foster kids in addition to seven of their own. There were tense confrontations between Jack and his father. The Kapankas were not the Waltons. "I hear stories about [warm and happy times] from my older brothers, but it wasn't that way for me," Kapanka says. "It was pretty tumultuous. "Reality smacked my parents in the face. They weren't immune to the real world, but they were still trying to hold on to this picture postcard of America." For a time, Kapanka lived in a log cabin, where the family would burn wood for heat. "Every winter, the plumbing would freeze over," Kapanka says. "Every spring the house would get flooded." In high school, he would ride his bike 60 miles to visit friends and relatives. He would recoil in shock after going to work with his mother at a state school for the mentally disabled. Sometimes, he would travel with his father, a credit manager for an aluminum-siding company. "I kind of had to fend for myself," he says. "I did my own cooking, my own laundry. I rode my bike everywhere." Somewhere along the way, Kapanka started singing in high-school musicals, though he was better known as a star of the school's nationally ranked wrestling team. "I did it to meet girls," he says. Wacky Wire led to wedding A year out of high school, Kapanka's way with a song helped him win the woman of his dreams on the boardwalk at Wildwood, N.J. The future Kandy Kapanka met her husband as a co-worker on an attraction called the Wacky Wire. It would prove to be a fitting description of their first years together. A former state track-and-field champion, Kandy would eventually become a three-time finalist in the Miss Galaxy fitness competition. Her husband, meanwhile, was starting to dabble in songwriting, at his wife's insistence. "The first night we met, he had poems and bits of songs," she says. "He sang them to me, and they were really beautiful. He had this natural talent for writing poems, and he was never encouraged to do it. Once I started encouraging him, he wrote more and more, and they got better and better." As in high school, Jack pedaled himself where he wanted to go. "He would ride me to work on the handles of his bicycle. It was snowing, just freezing. I turned around and looked at him, and he said, 'We're gonna laugh about this someday.' " They won a trip to Hawaii for a honeymoon, where they backpacked and stayed in youth hostels and slept on the beach. About 10 years ago, they loaded everything into a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit and drove to Orlando. "We had no money, and we slept in sleeping bags when we got here," Kandy says. "One of the first things Jack told me was, 'I promise you, Kandy, I'll show you the world,' and he really has." Skeptical record exec now fan Kandy laughs now at those days, but sometimes, Kapanka makes his wife cry. It happened at this year's Florida Citrus Bowl, when a performance of his "What They Gave to Me" was the centerpiece for a mammoth patriotic halftime show for a national television audience. Suddenly, Kapanka had a buzz that extended beyond his potential country audience. Kandy wasn't surprised. Neither was Robert Fischetti, the executive vice president of Orlando's Trans Continental Records who embraced Kapanka four years ago despite his distaste for most country music. "My wife kept telling me about this guy, and I'd say, 'Honey, I'm not into country music. What do you want me to do?' " Fischetti attended an initial audition with skepticism, which increased when Kapanka arrived without a demonstration disc or even a guitar. "He was so green," Fischetti says. "But he told us a heartwarming story, then he sang this song. I was motionless for a good 15 or 20 seconds. I said, 'I don't like country music, but if that was country music, you just put chills up and down my spine.' " Fischetti hired Kapanka as a publishing coordinator and started promoting him with the same enthusiasm that Lou Pearlman once shopped the Backstreet Boys. Kapanka sang for people in hotel lobbies, airplanes, restaurants. When he wasn't singing, he worked with boy bands, including a stint as talent scout for the TV group O-Town. And he kept writing music and dreaming big. He has a list of hundreds of phrases that might eventually become songs. He operates a side business, Angel in My Arms, that creates wedding keepsakes on compact discs. Often, when a good idea strikes in the middle of the night, he calls his office number and describes it to himself on the answering machine. "I feel like I'm holding a lottery ticket," Kapanka says. "I'm just waiting to cash it in." 'He's just innocent' If Kapanka manages to hit the lucky numbers with a solo career, his unique background and childlike enthusiasm will make it happen, says noted Nashville musician and producer Bruce Bouton. "I don't think Jack sits around and tries to calculate whether this will be commercial or hit a certain demographic or anything like that," says Bouton, well-known for his work with superstar Garth Brooks. "I think that's probably part of his charm. He reaches a lot of ordinary people." Kapanka's innocence and spirit immediately impressed Bouton, who produced the studio version of "What They Gave to Me" and several other tracks on a self-titled promo album. "I've really grown to just be a big fan of Jack Kapanka as a human being," Bouton says. "He's just innocent. A lot of artists come in like that, but get brutalized by the business. I think it has killed a lot of the honesty in country music. "Jack's biggest asset is his heart. This guy has got the biggest heart of anybody I've ever met. He's got a story to tell." That's something Kapanka's older brother knew all along. "Jack has never had it easy, but it's not like he feels sorry for himself. It's like if it wasn't difficult, he wouldn't know how to do it. "Some would call him a dreamer, but there's nothing wrong with this world having a few of those." Jim Abbott can be reached at jabbott@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6213. Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel |