Mike Calvanese

Mike Calvanese is a singer, songwriter, and software developer, appearing in such bands as Frick, Fail Me Not, and solo project Starring Role, and is also the creator of a rival social networking website used for promoting bands and communication between friends.

Born Michael Frank Calvanese on March 15th 1983, to Debra and Alfonse Calvanese of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Calvanese lead a quiet suburban life, spending much of his youth studying piano and later guitar and trumpet.

His Music

Calvanese’s first band Frick was founded in 2000 with high school friends Jesse Ameigh (shared vocals and guitar) Dave Bielunis (Bass) and Sean McKenna (Drums). Calvanese shared lead vocals with Ameigh, as well as guitar parts and songwriting. They recorded their first album “Spicy Chicken” drawing a great deal of inspiration from the pop punk stylings of Blink 182. They even went so far as to cover at least one Blink 182 song at each of their early Frick shows. Calvanese has been quoted as saying "We were just little kids. We didn’t know it wasn’t cool to do that." [1. "The Hunter Envoy", 30 March 2007 "Going Solo with Starring Role - How One Artists Takes on a Solo Career vs. Bands." by Samantha Lewis] Frick’s career, like most high school bands, was short lived. They release one other EP in 2002 minus Ameigh and Bielunis who had formed another band at the time. Instead, Adam Taylor played bass and Calvanese assumed lead vocals and guitar on his own.

Upon attending Lehigh University in Fall 2001 Calavanese found new inspiration in the alternative acoustic style of Chris Carrabba in the early days of Dashboard Confessional. Influenced by the emo sound and heartfelt lyrics, Calvanese began a quieter solo project of his own called Starring Role, playing acoustic guitar and singing alone. His self titled album, released on Robot House Records was simple and poignant, and allowed him to focus on himself and his own songwriting with sweet heartrending songs such as Played to Lose and We Stole Their Hearts Away. Calvanese even began integrating his piano skills into his work in songs like “You Set it Off for Me.” [2. [http://www.myspace.com/starringrole] ] At Lehigh, he also befriended fellow musician and ironically enough, fellow software developer, Jesse Powell and recorded tracks on Powell’s album “Push Start,” also of Robot House Records, this time, adding vocals, bass, and guitar. [3. [http://www.beattorrent.net/pushstartgraphics/songs.html] ]

Breaking from his solo career, Calvanese decided to begin a new band and formed Fail Me Not in 2004 with Chris (detail needed) Jim (detail needed) and Cory (detail needed), again assuming the role of lead vocals, guitar, and songwriter. Fail Me Not brought back some of Calvanese’s punk roots but mixed in a slightly more hardcore sound. Fail Me Not had a short but successful career, touring the east coast and mid-western United States with hits such as One Wish and Chain Reaction Year, and their catchy T-shirt slogan “Fail Me Not rocks me harder than my boyfriend.” They recorded two self released albums, Chain Reaction Year and a self titled album, both still available on iTunes and Amazon. [4. [http://www.purevolume.com/failmenot] ] Fail Me Not was also nominated for Pulse Weekly’s Best Punk Band of 2004. [5. [http://www.failmenot.cjb.net/] ] As front man, Calvanese took the band seriously but was eventually dissatisfied and the band dissolved, though their music is still available.

A man cannot live on Punk alone

As for the software developer aspect of Calvanese’s career, he originally began teaching himself the programming language C#.NET in order to promote Fail Me Not, but realized his talent for the subject immediately when he reportedly wrote a spamming engine to harvest user names from the social networking site xanga.com and auto-post information about Fail Me Not. Much to Calvanese’s surprise, his spamming engine was so powerful that he would have been able to harvest over 1 billion user names and decided not to go through with it, fearing legal ramifications. [6. "The Hunter Envoy", 12 October 2007 "Emerging Artists and What Feeds Them - Literally. A profile on how an emerging artist supports himself." by Dan Stoecker] The experience did give him a foundation for his programming, and he began working for Hamilton Sundstrand working mainly with vb.NET, but was soon interested in the inner workings of sites such as myspace and facebook. He began working with javascript to create a web mp3player and extended this project into work on his own social networking site, with the intentions of creating a place for bands to promote their music, communicate with their fans, and have friends connect to each other. The site “honor” (working title), though still in development stages, was impressive enough to land him a job at Portware in NYC as a java programmer. He then began work for Resolute, creating a rich user experience for web 2.0 portal for a health insurance provider. That consulting job finally catapulted him into Microsoft consulting, where he currently works. [6. "The Hunter Envoy", 12 October 2007 "Emerging Artists and What Feeds Them - Literally. A profile on how an emerging artist supports himself." by Dan Stoecker]

Today, though a consultant for Microsoft by day, Calvanese has redirected his music by night, changing his sources of influence once again, and now drawing from pop and R&B sources such as Cobra Starship and Justin Timberlake. He has begun a new album, scheduled to be released in Summer 2008, in which he has created all beats, vocal tracks, and guitar parts. His new album, though originally a solo project, has once again inspired him form a band, with talk of his reuniting with the drummer from Fail Me Not to form this pop/dance based rock group.A man of eclectic musical style, Calvanese currently lives in New York City. [1. "The Hunter Envoy", 30 March 2007 "Going Solo with Starring Role - How One Artists Takes on a Solo Career vs. Bands." by Samantha Lewis]

References

1. "The Hunter Envoy", 30 March 2007 "Going Solo with Starring Role - How One Artists Takes on a Solo Career vs. Bands." by Samantha Lewis

2. [http://www.myspace.com/starringrole]

3. [http://www.beattorrent.net/pushstartgraphics/songs.html]

4. [http://www.purevolume.com/failmenot]

5. [http://www.failmenot.cjb.net/]

6. "The Hunter Envoy", 12 October 2007 "Emerging Artists and What Feeds Them - Literally. A profile on how an emerging artist supports himself." by Dan Stoecker