CSI: New York actor Carmine Giovinazzo (Danny Messer) channelled his love for music into the band Ceesau.

The name of Giovinazzo's band came out of his experience growing up in a diverse neighborhood. "That has always been a thing inside me that sort of bleeds into my daily life and the books of philosophy I've read," he told SI Live. "It's about balance, equality and universalism and the way the world ticks--I don't think people think about that very much. Well, now they do I guess, with the way the world has gone, with a black-and-white president, is exactly where Ceesau came from. Ceesau started out as a drawing with black and white stick figures sitting on a see-saw looking at each other from the same angle."

The actor started the band because he wanted to record some of his music. "I got together with this drummer (Michael Brasic), and we'd go to the rehearsal space and mess around," he explained. "The lead guitar player, this young kid--I call the lead guitar player Johnny Passion (John Patrick Amedori) and the drummer Mikey Drums--it was pretty much the three of us rehearsing in our basement. It felt like it was a minute but it could have been the whole summer. We had 12 songs and narrowed them down. That's how the EP (Era Of The Exposed) came about."

Giovinazzo enjoys making music, but he can't devote a lot of time to it because of his work on New York. "We can't really play live, you know, because I'm really busy with the show, and the guitarist is doing his own thing as well with music and acting," he said. "It got to a point where I just had to say, you know, I'm not doing that right now. We're just rehearsing and playing." Despite these restrictions, things have been going well for the band. "[W]e've sold a decent amount of records for not one sign or ad or anything," the actor revealed. "We're selling records in Denmark, Japan. I want to get to that point where we're playing out and have a really good set of songs, but my current job really holds that up."

Working on CSI: NY is very different than creating music, Giovinazzo explained. "Music is a little bit more personal because I can do it by myself," he said. "I know now how hard it is to just get three guys together, let alone 500 together to make a movie or a show. But you can control music to a certain extent. It all came out of an interest in making something from nothing, just creating."

The original interview is from SI Live. Era of the Exposed can be purchased from the official Ceesau website.

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