Walk The Moon

“One Foot” is the new single from the Cincinnati, Ohio band, Walk The Moon. It will be on their third full-length album, titled “What If Nothing,” set for release on November 10^th via RCA Records.

The year they would begin writing this forthcoming collection, the band would experience several major life events, including a wedding, a potentially career-ending injury, and the death of parent. “One Foot,” is an undeniable banger about walking into the unknown that Walk The Moon front-man, Nicholas Petricca says ties in to the album’s themes.

“There’s no guarantee of any particular end and you’ve just got to keep moving forward. So it felt really relevant to my life, but also related to all the upheaval and unexpected turns our country has taken. It wasn’t too dissimilar from what we were experiencing as a band, like, ‘What’s all this coming to? Where are we going from here?’ This album is about owning the question and not having the answer.”

At the peak of all of this, Walk The Moon announced that they were canceling their “Work This Body” summer tour so that Petricca could go home and be with his father, who was in the final stages of Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease after a 14-year illness. “It was getting a lot worse and my family needed me,” he says. “We canceled the tour, which I thought we’d never do. That’s not who we are.”

Needless to say, it was a very tough time. “We had spent six years doing something nearly every day, then it all changes, so adapting was hard,” says Ray, who was also sidelined by a serious shoulder injury, with doctors telling him he may not be able to play bass again. “So I was confined to my bed for two months, trying not to get addicted to painkillers and isolation. It’s very easy to get depressed while trying to recover from an injury.”

“It’s not what we all signed up for,” Petricca says of the hiatus. “We wanted to take it to the finish line and I kind of forced the race to a close a little early.” Facing a blank calendar, with no plan for their return, the band members took time apart, communication between them dwindling to a minimum. "It was the first time any of us had a moment to consider life outside of the band," Petricca remembers.

In the silence, tensions began to surface. “Some people questioned whether the band would break up,” Ray says. 

Petricca says. “This phrase, ‘What if nothing,’ started coming up. ‘What if all of this vanishes?’ So it was an opportunity for us to step forward into the unknown. We could have remained in that shadow place and stayed estranged from one another, or we could come together with honesty and try to work it out.” Hence the title of their new album, What If Nothing. “We love it because it forces the listener to determine what the hell it means,” Petricca says. “’What if’ is like the beginning of all fears and also of all possibilities. ‘What if this is all for nothing?’ or ‘What if there’s nothing stopping me?’”

In the fall of 2016, a few weeks after the band members reunited at Ray’s wedding, they met up at a studio in Austin. “It was just an engineer and the four of us in a room,” Petricca said. “We hadn’t gotten together to write like that in years. It was fun. We were just stumbling around this little space making noise, but some really powerful stuff came out of it.” “It was like, ‘Oh, this thing is going to happen again,’” Ray says. “We’re still friends. We can still make music.’” “The studio was in this warehouse filled with boxes of lightbulbs,” says Maiman. “It was definitely not a luxurious experience, but there was something grounding about being in a studio that shares a garage with an electronics company after having a worldwide hit. It was nice to be back in a grimy and unglamorous space.”

The result of their effort is “What If Nothing” — an inspired, futuristic, and fearless showcase for all the ways Walk The Moon has grown and reclaimed who they are. Working with producers Mike Crossey (The 1975, Arctic Monkeys) and Mike Elizondo (Eminem/Dr. Dre), the band have augmented their gleaming blend of New Wave, indie-pop, and dance-rock with hip-hop, punk, psychedelic, and reggae influences, while Petricca pushes the melodic and rhythmic quality of his singing further than ever. Some of the album’s more unusual sonics were influenced by Petricca’s listening to producers Mura Masa and Photay. “I also reconnected with reggae through working with Wyclef and listening to Steel Pulse, Bob Marley, and Gregory Isaacs,” he says. “I love the way the music can express so much pain and sorrow and longing in the lyrics and yet still be chill and uplifting.”

In February, Joe Petricca’s conditioned worsened. An upright piano was rolled into his room at the nursing home so Nicholas could sing him his favorite songs. “His energy perked back up and he stuck around for another week,” Petricca says. “It was a long goodbye, full of music. That was his biggest influence on my life, his pure love of music and his encouraging me to explore that passion.” Petricca’s family and friends from all over came to the funeral and wake. “There was a slideshow and every other photo was of him making a goofy face,” Petricca says. “There was so much love in the room, it felt like a party — with a coffin in it. The band and their families were there. I am an only child and they just showed up so hard for me. It was an amazing experience to have alchemized all that sorrow into a sense of joy and freedom because he was no longer suffering. The celebration that ensued felt like a release, a catharsis.”

Walk The Moon is made up of singer/keyboardist Nicholas Petricca, guitarist Eli Maiman, bassist Kevin Ray, and drummer Sean Waugaman.  They independently released their debut studio album,” I Want, I Wan,t” in 2010, receiving airplay for the track "Anna Sun." In 2012, they released their first major label studio album, “Walk The Moon” and then in 2014, the band released their second studio album, “Talking Is Hard,” which included their breakout #1 hit single "Shut Up And Dance."

Walk The Moon is gearing up for an extensive run of tour dates in support of “What If Nothing” which begin in November.

« back to Alternative Artist Info