I'm playing a solo show for 3 hours this Saturday.

Copper Tree had a 3 hour show scheduled for this Saturday at Sangria's Bar and Grill in Lowell. Unfortunately, Ravi and Damien won't be able to be there :( so I'm kind of in this awkward position of playing a solo show. Right now, I'm scrambling to figure out how this is all going to work. Knowing 3 hours of material is surprisingly the part I'm least concerned with. I'm more concerned about finding people who can come. Sangria's is a nice-looking bar and grill located in scenic Lowell, Massachusetts. They serve dinner until 10pm, so if you want to get some food, you should probably get there in the first hour. Because they serve alcohol too, it's 21+. If you could come, I would be ecstatic.

So, details:
* solo show
* Sangria's Pub [on the web] [directions]
* 21+
* a whole bunch of Copper Tree songs
* a whole bunch of other good original songs that never got rolled into Copper Tree
* a whole bunch of covers, because, hey, I don't have 3 hours of original material (probably most of these will be in the first hour)
* you, coming because you want to hear good music and you want to save my ass from being all by itself all night.

Let me know if you might be able to make it, again I'd be seriously ecstatic if you can.

liam can cook

Want to cook together? Let's do that.

I hate eating by myself. Eating to me is such a social thing, I love to eat with other people. A while back, I tried to start a "Feed a Liam" campaign, but it never really got off the ground, maybe because it involved eating out, which doesn't work into a lot of peoples' budgets/diets. I'm also not a very experienced cook, either. Most of my home cooking involves some kind of prepared meal-in-a-bag deal, which isn't really particularly healthy or cost-effective. I hate cooking by myself too, because it's a lot of effort for little return.

I was thinking- I've got a lot of time on my hands (and not much money), I really should learn how to cook. I'd also like to resurrect the Feed a Liam campaign, though eating out isn't such a good idea. So here's what I think would be great.

Let's cook together. You pick the day, you pick the time, breakfast, lunch or dinner. We agree on the food, and I'll pay for at least 50% of it. I'm aiming for making meals that I can learn and remember and potentially cook by myself if necessary. My car situation at the moment is a little sketchy, so cooking/eating at my place is preferred, unless your place is within walking distance or you want to pick me up. Doesn't this sound like just the best thing ever?

i'm biking across maine!

So as a lot of you know, my dad died of lung cancer just over 10 years ago. Well, I'm going to bike across Maine in order to raise money for lung research. If you've ever driven through Maine, you know it's a gigantic state compared to Massachusetts, and it'll take three days of biking to get from one side to the other. Now I've done the Walk for Hunger, which is 20 miles long, and sometimes, there were blisters involved. This is going to be a lot more difficult.

I also need to raise a lot more money. I'm going to have to raise $500, so I'll be asking all of you to help me out in any way you can. I'll probably be talking to a lot of you in person, but the easiest way to help is right through the web, so I'm going to put this here. Please visit this site to pledge for me to bike across Maine. The money is going directly to the American Lung Association of Maine. If you have any questions about the whole thing, please let me know. Also, I've got a roadbike, but I don't have much else, so if you have supplies that you might think are beneficial, those would be much appreciated as well. Thanks in advance to those of you who will help make this happen.

the sound of music

If for every door that closes, another one opens, I'm currently standing out in the hallway in front of the Copper Tree door, still somewhat ajar, but slowly and silently closing. Yeah, in other words, Copper Tree is quietly ceasing to be. And I get the sense that all three remaining band members are implicitly ok with that. Any one of us could be propping the door open, but it seems that none of us want it badly enough, including me. And that shouldn't be taken for anything more than it is- the band ran its course, it was enjoyable, it's just not going to last. It may have been better if we had figured this out before we decided to pay for studio time, but at least now I have some recordings for songs like Silhouette and All These Lazy Angels that I know some friends have wanted. And we do have a few more shows in the works before we all go in our separate directions, so I'll keep you all updated with that.

In the meantime, I've been writing more material. Now that I'm not writing with Copper Tree in mind, I'm able to be more personal and more honest, less concerned with "can this work in a 3-piece piano rock band". I even posted a song the sound of music on youtube:



The next step is to find musicians that'll stretch me in a different direction. I met a girl at Castellana's who's kind of a jazz singer, but she's starting this Mars Volta-esque group, could be interesting. I'm curious what it'd be like in a band where other people are writing a lot. We'll see where things go.

add me on skype

So when skype first started, i avoided it because it was started by the same people who made Kazaa, and Kazaa was headed for legal trouble. But Skype is clean now, and they have a pidgin plugin, so I broke down and installed it. So you should add carpeliam to your skype buddy list if you have such a thing, and let me know about it. I only run skype on my laptop, so I might not be on it very often, but let me know that you've added me.

yes we can

if barack obama's speeches weren't pretty hot already, the guy from the black eyed peas set his post-New Hampshire primary speech to music, along with a whole bunch of other famous people. it's not connected in any way to obama's campaign, though i'm sure he's enjoying it now. i wonder if this will get radio play on clearchannel?



i'm not sure if the youtube video will stay up, but www.yeswecansong.com (currently redirecting to dipdive.com) has the full video.

a blog on carpeliam.com? what's this?

I've been blogging on and off since the day I turned 22 (way back in 2001). When I started doing server-side programming in PHP in 2002, I made my own blog, but after a few months, the GDC (which was housing the website) lost everything on their servers, and i didn't have any backups. After that, I wanted to try something that integrated into LiveJournal so I wouldn't have to worry about a database crash. I tried writing a Flash wrapper around LiveJournal, but that sucked hard. So when I started carpeliam.com, I had a spot for a blog to go, but it didn't actually exist.

Until now. I came up with the cool idea of housing the blogs on my own personal database on carpeliam.com, but simultaneously publishing it to LiveJournal through the LiveJournal API. I plan to add more features soon, like when I finish writing a song, it'll get a blog entry automagically. And of course there is an RSS for the whole thing, which might end up going up on facebook too. We'll just have to see what happens.