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For their previous six records, they were a band doing their own thing; making a living as best they could without having to sacrifice precious songwriting time for a day job’s slim sustenance. With the release of “Misplaced,” Moshav makes strides toward bigger audiences, choicer venues and celebrity status.
Moshav, named after a cooperative community in Israel between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, moved to The States six years ago to pursue an audience the band garnered through its early tours in Israel.
“We started playing for American college students in Israel, and since we were born through American-speaking parents, English was our main language, so naturally that was our crowd in Israel — the overseas students,” said lead singer Yehuda Solomon. “We wanted to get our music out to a broader audience and we can’t really do that in Israel cause it’s a smaller market, so we decided to relocate to Los Angeles, and we had some friends out here who said they’d help us in the music industry.”
This is five years later, and the group has managed to secure a deal with a Sony subsidiary and record its new album with producer Ron Aniello (Lifehouse, Barenaked Ladies, Guster, etc.), and Solomon says everything feels like it’s falling into place.
Solomon is joined by longtime partners Duvid Swirskey on vocals, guitar, bass and percussion and his brother Yosef Solomon on bass.
“The Moshav is this really artistic, kind of grass-roots place that wasn’t really caught up with the rest of the world; it was this American hippie bubble in Israel. But I don’t want to say ‘hippie’ because sometimes that turns people off. It was a very special place, and we didn’t really grow up watching MTV and playing video games. We spent our time listening to our parents’ records from the 60s, 70s,” said Yehuda Solomon.
The band got its start writing its own music influenced by people like Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchell. Though the Middle Eastern influence is just as evident, as the group lists Qawwali (Pakistan) legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan among its favorites.
“Misplaced” begins with power, and is peppered with Hebrew lyrics throughout. The early vocals are steeped in Persian and diminished scales. As the tracks progress, the wailing vocals turn toward a capella, and there’s a country feel during “When I’m Gone.” The middle tracks on the album slow down a bit, highlighted by heartfelt lyrics, and then the energy picks up again, until the final track, “Dream Again,” which plays like a terse ballad that lulls the listener into the poetry of the final stanza:
<i>In the end who’s to blame
for the dream that went away
So to tell you that I love you
is the only thing to say</i>
When asked about the turmoil in his home country, Yehuda Solomon spoke of another brother who’s in the Israeli Army, and of his family, though they are safe in the countryside, far from the front lines.
“We’re definitely always praying for safety and (for) Israel in general. It’s a crazy place to have grown up in,” he said. “In some of our past records we’ve had some songs. One of my best friends from childhood was killed in a terrorist attack in East Jerusalem. He was murdered, a Palestinian guy shot him in the head. He was working at a social security building, so we wrote a song called ‘Will It Ever Stop.’ But on this specific record there are no songs about the current situation because we recorded it before this specific situation broke out. It’s more about hope.”
To him, the war-torn land of Israel lives up to the hype as a spiritual vortex.
“Every step you take in that land — it has so much history. So many nations have been through it. Growing up, we would dig in our backyard and find like antiques, you know, old coins from the time of the Romans and jugs of pottery that were hundreds, maybe even thousands of years old. It’s such a rich historic place and you really feel it in the air when you’re there. It’s very inspiring. A lot of our music was inspired by just being there.”
Moshav plays Sherpa & Yeti’s Thursday night at 10.
“We just wanna connect with people, and send positive messages through our music.”
<i>Check out www.summitdaily.com/moshav for an MP3.</i>
Moshav, named after a cooperative community in Israel between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, moved to The States six years ago to pursue an audience the band garnered through its early tours in Israel.
“We started playing for American college students in Israel, and since we were born through American-speaking parents, English was our main language, so naturally that was our crowd in Israel — the overseas students,” said lead singer Yehuda Solomon. “We wanted to get our music out to a broader audience and we can’t really do that in Israel cause it’s a smaller market, so we decided to relocate to Los Angeles, and we had some friends out here who said they’d help us in the music industry.”
This is five years later, and the group has managed to secure a deal with a Sony subsidiary and record its new album with producer Ron Aniello (Lifehouse, Barenaked Ladies, Guster, etc.), and Solomon says everything feels like it’s falling into place.
Solomon is joined by longtime partners Duvid Swirskey on vocals, guitar, bass and percussion and his brother Yosef Solomon on bass.
“The Moshav is this really artistic, kind of grass-roots place that wasn’t really caught up with the rest of the world; it was this American hippie bubble in Israel. But I don’t want to say ‘hippie’ because sometimes that turns people off. It was a very special place, and we didn’t really grow up watching MTV and playing video games. We spent our time listening to our parents’ records from the 60s, 70s,” said Yehuda Solomon.
The band got its start writing its own music influenced by people like Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchell. Though the Middle Eastern influence is just as evident, as the group lists Qawwali (Pakistan) legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan among its favorites.
“Misplaced” begins with power, and is peppered with Hebrew lyrics throughout. The early vocals are steeped in Persian and diminished scales. As the tracks progress, the wailing vocals turn toward a capella, and there’s a country feel during “When I’m Gone.” The middle tracks on the album slow down a bit, highlighted by heartfelt lyrics, and then the energy picks up again, until the final track, “Dream Again,” which plays like a terse ballad that lulls the listener into the poetry of the final stanza:
<i>In the end who’s to blame
for the dream that went away
So to tell you that I love you
is the only thing to say</i>
When asked about the turmoil in his home country, Yehuda Solomon spoke of another brother who’s in the Israeli Army, and of his family, though they are safe in the countryside, far from the front lines.
“We’re definitely always praying for safety and (for) Israel in general. It’s a crazy place to have grown up in,” he said. “In some of our past records we’ve had some songs. One of my best friends from childhood was killed in a terrorist attack in East Jerusalem. He was murdered, a Palestinian guy shot him in the head. He was working at a social security building, so we wrote a song called ‘Will It Ever Stop.’ But on this specific record there are no songs about the current situation because we recorded it before this specific situation broke out. It’s more about hope.”
To him, the war-torn land of Israel lives up to the hype as a spiritual vortex.
“Every step you take in that land — it has so much history. So many nations have been through it. Growing up, we would dig in our backyard and find like antiques, you know, old coins from the time of the Romans and jugs of pottery that were hundreds, maybe even thousands of years old. It’s such a rich historic place and you really feel it in the air when you’re there. It’s very inspiring. A lot of our music was inspired by just being there.”
Moshav plays Sherpa & Yeti’s Thursday night at 10.
“We just wanna connect with people, and send positive messages through our music.”
<i>Check out www.summitdaily.com/moshav for an MP3.</i>
