Who Is Walk The Moon?

You would be hard pressed to turn on the radio or go into any department store in the country and NOT have at least heard the chorus for Walk The Moon's "Shut Up and Dance." The first time I ever heard the song was in a car, and I quickly busted out my Shazam to discover that this song was not by Fall Out Boy, which I wholly expected. The song by this new band was fun and suuuuper catchy, and I had the feeling they would be around for a while. Fresh off a performance and multiple nominations at the 2015 AMAs, I realized I didn't know much about the band, so who are the members of Walk The Moon?

This December marks the one-year anniversary of the release of their heralded third album, Talking Is Hard, which spawned their break-out single. "Shut Up and Dance" was undoubtedly one of the songs of this summer, and peaked at #4 on the Hot 100 Billboard chart. While this is their biggest song Walk The Moon has been around since 2008 and started while lead singer Nicholas Petricca began making music as Walk The Moon while at Kenyon College in Ohio.

In 2011, Petricca shared with Interview Magazine that the band name is an homage to The Police, who have a song called "Walking The Moon," and are one of his favorite bands. He also opened up as to how their current line-up ended up coming together. He said,

I started the band a few years ago. This lineup didn't come together until this year, really. We had started touring with some of these guys summer of last year. We've been playing in our town for a number of years. We've been doing that off and on.

After some line-up changes, the three other current members came on board around 2010 and have remained the consistent line-up ever since. And they made a very smart choice, given all their recent success.

Sean Waugaman is the band's drummer and has been playing drums for over 16 years. Like Petricca, he is originally from Ohio.

Bassist Kevin Ray has the biggest Instagram following of the band, after lead singer Petricca, and I have a feeling it has to do with how ridiculously good-looking he is. Ray also joined the band in 2010, and plays the bass along with providing backing vocals for Petricca.

Eli Maiman is the band's guitarist and backing vocalist. In a 2012 interview with We Love DC, Maiman spoke about the band's musical training, saying,

We are a group of music students. We all went to school to study something different. I personally studied jazz guitar in school. We have a lot of focused practice time and we all spent a lot of time developing our craft as musicians... Another important element in that is that Nick went to school for composition and theory.

And now, well, the rest is history. Petricca shared with Parade earlier this year about the members, “I had all this music and no band members… These guys, they’re the cream of the crop and the most devoted.”

After playing together for six years, Walk The Moon has released three albums together, and after this breakout year, I foresee a lot more success coming their way.