Musicians succeed in combining day jobs with the ‘Cosmos’

Colonizing the Cosmos

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts

Friday, Feb. 26, 7:30… Colonizing the Cosmos

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts

Friday, Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m.

Free

When you hear the phrase “rock star,” an attorney and filmmaker aren’t the typical occupations that come to mind.

However, Josh Moyer and Michael Savisky crossed both sides of the employment spectrum when they formed their indie-folk band, Colonizing the Cosmos, three months ago.

By day, Moyer and Savisky, respectively, work as a general practice attorney, and a filmmaker and writer. By night, Moyer offers lead vocals and plays the acoustic guitar for the band, and Savisky plays acoustic electric guitar and banjo. In all, there are six members of the band.

“Practicing law is a very creative exercise,” Moyer said. “In that instance you have to be a creative thinker on how to help people solve problems, and you have that certain creativity in creating music, except you’re not necessarily solving problems.”

Moyer explained that the stark differences in his vocational passions offer a sense of stability in his life.

“It helps for me, personally, to have balance. I enjoy doing both of them so much that I’m fearful if one of them was removed, I would just completely tank,” he said.

Savisky said that besides its alternate sources of income, the unique way in which the band was created also sets Colonizing the Cosmos apart from other artists in its genre.

“We all come from very different places. I studied jazz guitar, and Josh picked music up all on his own,” Savisky said.

Although the band was only officially created three months ago, Moyer and Savisky have played and exchanged music with each other for about 10 years.

“We started writing music before we were a band,” Savisky said. “Josh and I would send music digitally through the Internet, and he would write lyrics for music that I would send him. Or I would write music around lyrics or a melody that he would send me,” he said. This exchange of creativity became a habit and eventually resulted in their joint goal to record an album.

“Josh and I have been playing together for 10 years in various different forms and venues, so it’s definitely more than a hobby. But this venture was something we hadn’t really tried before,” Savisky said.

The name of the band was born when Moyer and Savisky played a show together a few years ago in The Silk Elephant, a restaurant in Squirrel Hill.

“Colonizing the Cosmos was a name that Michael came up with. He thought it would be cool to name a song or a band after it. He thought he could use it somewhere,” Savisky said.

“Three or four years ago, he and I were playing an acoustic show at The Silk Elephant, and the owner asked us to create a poster. So we put Colonizing the Cosmos on the poster,” he said.

The artist explained that coincidentally, the title fit perfectly with the dynamic of the young band’s new album.

“We didn’t do anything with it for the next three or four years, but when we started writing this material, we noticed the first couple of songs had this sort of cosmic theme happening with them,” he said.

Savisky explained that’s when they decided on their band’s name. He said the band’s name served not only as inspiration for their music, but also as an outlet to reach out to their fans.

“We found out that a lot of people have a negative view of colonization and how it’s been misused throughout history. We asked, ‘What does that word mean and how do we redefine it through the music?’” Savisky said.

“In a lot of ways it means ‘to cultivate’ and ‘to make grow’ and all these very positive things, so we think about how, in a greater sense, does that apply to what we’re doing?” he said.

Savisky proclaimed that making music that speaks to listeners is the main priority for the band.

“A song’s only a few minutes long, and you only sing a few paragraphs worth of words. But how can you use those to say something much larger?” Savisky said.

“It’s like when you have the ability to say something. We’d like to do that through our music,” he said.

Colonizing the Cosmos will celebrate the release of its album The First Frontier in the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts on Friday, Feb. 26, at 7:30 p.m.