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"   Photo: Getty Images  Shortly after gates opened and Budweiser Made in America festival attendees raced to the main stage&amp;#039;s front row, The Lion King&amp;#039;s opening song blared through speakers to everyone&amp;#039;s surprise. Walk the Moon, Cincinnati&amp;#039;s fun-loving indie rock band, then emerged to the tune with their faces painted and instruments at the ready. The youthful foursome, featuring Nicholas Petricca, Kevin Ray, Eli Maiman, and Sean Waugaman, started the weekend with a pumped up set of heart-tugging, harmony-rich jams including their popular hit, &amp;quot;Anna Sun,&amp;quot; and their newer songs from their Tightrope EP released this year. We caught up with Maiman, the band&amp;#039;s guitarist, to chat about performing live, wearing leopard print, and their special gift from Jay Z. How did you feel about playing this festival and opening the main stage? It was such an honor to be asked to play. When we showed up, there was actually a couple bottles of booze in our dressing room with a note that said &amp;quot;To Walk the Moon, From Jay Z,&amp;quot; which pretty much blew all of our minds. Then, to [know we&amp;#039;re] playing on the same stage as Phoenix and Beyonc\u00E9, is wild. How does Made in America compare to past festivals you&amp;#039;ve done? MIA was definitely one of the more patriotic festivals we&amp;#039;ve done, as well as one of the most musically diverse. It was super cool to go from seeing Haim to A$AP Rocky to Imagine Dragons and Beyonc\u00E9. How do you prepare for a live performance? Any out of the ordinary pre-show rituals? We have a secret huddle that we do right before the show. Also, a lot of panicked application of face paint goes on. How would you guys describe your onstage style? We just try to keep it colorful, fun, and relaxed. Since the festival was called Made in America, some of us went for the red, white, and blue thing. What is a song you&amp;#039;ll never get tired of playing? &amp;quot;Quesadilla&amp;quot; is a great song to play live, since it involves so much crowd participation. Usually, though, I find my favorite song at any given moment is the newest one. What is your songwriting process like? How do you find inspiration? The songwriting process is all over the place. Sometimes Nick brings in songs fully formed and ready to go. Others begin as band jams in the rehearsal space and develop from there. We actually are just coming off of two months of writing and demoing songs for our next album, which we&amp;#039;re really excited about. At the festival on Saturday, we got to meet Luke Steele of Empire of the Sun, which was amazing for us because they were a big influence as we wrote the new record. What are you looking forward to most on your fall tour?  We love meeting our fans and seeing their smiling face sing along. We&amp;#039;re also really looking forward to debuting some of the new material at the shows. We&amp;#039;re doing our biggest, most colorful shows to date. You guys are pretty fun on social media, how has that had an effect on your audience growing? Social media has been huge for us. Like I said, we love interacting with fans, and it&amp;#039;s so easy with the technology that&amp;#039;s out there right now. We can communicate directly with people who are checking out our records or coming to our shows, and the feedback and support really means a lot to us. As a nod to your song, when have you &amp;quot;walked a tightrope&amp;quot; or done something dangerous? Taking the plunge into being a professional musician is a pretty dangerous decision. Literally, anything could happen. Falling in love is dangerous, too. So is wearing leopard print pants with a red white and blue tank.  Photo: Getty Images  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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