Biography Carvell's musical career began in a third grade classroom in the minature steel town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania. It was band day, 1983: the day when the school district's musician-at-large, Mr Faulk, visited each third-grade classroom with a wagon full of instruments. He demonstrated them, and explained briefly what they did. After this presentation,, each student got to choose which instrument they wanted to play. In alphabetical order. By the time our hero got to choose, all that remained were the loserly clarinet, and the even more loserly bassoon. Seeking to minimize his loserliness, Carvell claimed the clarinet, forever abandoning his dream of being a zoot-suited private dectetive who played the trumpet. Thanks to consistent, some would say relentless, parental intervention, however, he played his instrument dutifully, practicing a half hour every single night for five years. Unfortunately, in the 8th grade, he began feuding with the racist drummer who sat behind him in band. Not wanting his adversary to have any extra ammunition in their war of image, Carvell abandoned the clarinet and took up cursing. Making the most of this newfound propensity for linguistic exploration, Carvell became involved in the theatre arts and discovered, to his surprise, that he was good at it. After moving to Los Angeles at 13, he experienced a quick ascendancy to school-play superstar at Paul Revere Junior High. It was then he realized he was onto something. Riding this wave of buzz, he auditioned for and got into the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts at 14 and commenced to studying Shakespeare, Shepard, Ibsen, Checkov, Aristotle, Stanaslavski, and a host of other white men, mostly dead. In the evenings however, after rehearsals, and before tech calls, he could be found on the public bus, or wandering around downtown LA, under the walkman-based tutelage of Hendrix, Monk, Davis, Holiday, Robert Johnson, Moore (Thurston and Angelo), Morrison (Jim, and Van), as well as any other non-easy listening music that happened to cross his path. Not to mention his already long-established worship of rhyming ,dating back to the days of Kurtis Blow when 8 year old Carvell and his posse, The 3 Fresh Boys, wandered the streets of McKeesport with a piece of cardboard in case they had to battle another crew. After three years at Arts High School, Carvell was thoroughly established as a theatre fag, art snob, 12-bar blues player, and performer. Armed with these skills, he headed out to New York University at the age of 17 to pay his dues as a "theatre actor" before becoming a big-time television and movie star. Unfortunately for that plan, he attended the Experimental Theatre Wing at Tisch School of the Arts where he was further steeped in "art-faggines" and spent the next four years rolling on the floor in a black box theatre, while making strange vocal sounds. Needless to say, it was a transformative education, and under the wings of some of the best minds in theatre, Carvell delved deeper into Shakespeare, Brecht, Grotowski, Beckett, Genet, Artaud, as well as into his own soul and heart as a performers. It was there he learned the presence, honesty, and vulnerability that are trademarks of his current writings and performances. While at NYU, Carvell fell in with a motley group of painters and actors, dancers, and filmmakers who shared a ridiculous and obsessive love for music. Soon the group was living in a warehouse above a yarmulke factory in Brooklyn, strapped to their instruments until late in the night, trying their best to create a bizarre mix of the JB's, The Can, and Pharoh Saunders. Failing this, (or perhaps not) they settled for naming themselves Morgon Kara, and creating a wild and mainy music, puppet, theatre-type-thing; and in the process, getting down with the likes of Tamar Rogoff, Jonathan Hart Makwia, and Frank London of the Klezmatics. Carvell functioned first at the bass, then behind the drumkit, and finally, at the *gasp* keyboard. Predictably, Carvell's involvement in this brotherhood came to a close when he ran into the woman of his dreams on a corner in Queens. She offered him some carrot juice. Off to Thailand they went, the fool lovers, and there he found himself with only a $40 guitar and a printout of some Neil Young songs that a Canadian traveler had left behind. "Damn," he thought "this Neil Young guy can write!” By the time he returned to the US, Carvell had decided that the singer-songwriter thing wasn't so cheesy after all, and that he should give it a whirl. Breaking onto the Los Angeles open mic Scene, he found he had a knack for songwriting. And plus people were digging his stuff. So when random circumstances, deposited him and his by then fiance in Oakland, Ca, Carvell got to work, writing nearly 30 songs in the first year. Soon he formed a funked up-phrase turning band (the Accidental Beauties) and signed on as the occasional lead guitarist for J Neo Marvin and the Content Providers, Deborah Crooks, Mohammed and the Allah Stars and Eggplant Casino. so far so good. |