Forming in August of 2024, Ladder to the Moon was born out of the ashes of another band that both lead singer Emme Rene and drummer Rodrigo Gonzalez were members of. Despite leaving the original band, Emme and Rodrigo knew they still wanted to be part of another band together. So, they got together with guitarists Leo Lavallee and Daniel Klaus as well as bassist Lauti Salazer-Casajus to then form Ladder to the Moon. In the short time they’ve been together, they’ve already performed at Oacher’s Halloween Music Bash as well as the Austin Youth Music Festival, where they came in 1st place.
After Emme and Rodrigo formed the band, they were then faced with the task of getting members, “we were like, okay, well, we need a guitarist and then I said I knew Daniel, and then we invited Daniel and then he was like, yeah.” Emme continues, “and then we needed a bassist, so we asked Lauti.” With Leo being added to the band later as, “We needed a fill-in bassist for the competition, and then we were like, ‘hey, join the band’.” Overall, finding bandmates was easy for them because “we all went to School of Rock together, except Rod.”
We can also look forward to some original music from them soon, as Rodrigo tells us, “We are currently working on some songs right now.” “There’s one in particular that we’ve really been eyeballing. It’s almost finished. We’re just um, I’m just tweaking some things,” he continues. With the music they’re putting out being, at least the way Emme puts it, very “Paramore influenced, just because like–I don’t know–that’s just my all-time favorite band. It’s kind of what influences my writing.” while still taking inspiration from “Punk culture, rock in general” and she also revealed that “We do plan to release soon.”
The lead singer of the band, Emme, takes heavy influence from the lead singer of Paramore, Hayley Williams, “vocally she has so much, like her range is super huge and she’s able to sing all these different genres and techniques and like as a lyricist. She’s able to paint these pictures that are, like, so good, like she just she has such a way with words, and that’s really inspiring for me.” She has also been singing for almost her whole life, “At family parties, I would get up on like tables and I would just make up random words and sing to my family.” She has been training her voice since elementary school, and currently gets formal training through School of Rock, “I’ve been doing School of Rock for like 6 years, so I’ve basically been singing for like ever.”
Rodrigo has been drumming since he was a kid, “I picked up the sticks when I was two actually.” But he didn’t start working on it until later, “I started putting all my effort into the drums like 12 years ago.” However, he has also picked up a few other instruments, “I’m very passionate about music, I love drums, that’s the first instrument I learned. Then it was guitars, bass, everything else.” He takes a lot of his influence from Green Day, Blink 182 and other “punk, pop punk bands like that that have, you know, kind of revolutionized that style of punk.” He then continues, “before though, you know, my dad really, he kind of introduced me to everything. He showed me the Beatles, he showed me Chuck Berry, all those 50s and 60s artists.” And you can hear that in their music, “either in the lyrics or in just the music in general, except it’s more distorted and faster and stuff like that.”
He performs because he loves entertaining people, quoting his reason for playing being, “It’s entertaining people dude. I love going up there and playing the music and stuff, even though I don’t have the microphone I love just interacting with the audience.” Continuing with, “I just love, like, just performing and just being there and like showing these people that we are passionate about the music that we play, and I don’t know, I just love it”
Despite having just been playing guitar for over two years, Leo has been into music for a long time. He first started getting into music early, reminiscing about carpooling with his best friend from Florida. “Every single morning his dad would drive like 95, playing slayer at full volume,” he recalls, “I would be like, turn it off, I hate it, I hate it.” He eventually grew to like punk music though bands like Slayer and Pantera, “when you’re in a really bad place in life, music that like saved me. I don’t know, it changes everything.” He then elaborates on what his favorite part of performing is “I like how I can put a certain emotion into a song, somebody else can perceive it completely differently.” However, he still enjoys “writing more than playing live.”
Daniel began playing guitar in December of his freshman year of high school and has been playing for a little over three years now. He is influenced through “collaborating with other people. I don’t know, I don’t get to do a lot of like collaboration with other people during the day, so it’s cool to like to interact and connect with people through, like, making up. this sounds.” He performs because he likes “Seeing how other people react to music differently, because like, you know, no two people will have the same sort of response to it.”
Unfortunately, we were unable to get an interview with Lauti, the bassist for the band, but he is, as Emme describes, “Hi I’m Lauti, I play bass and have gorgeous hair.”
You can find Ladder to the Moon’s next performance at Volume Music, 418 Sawdust Rd, Spring, TX, at 8pm on Friday, February 7th.
If you want to get updates on the band, follow their Instagram, @_laddertothemoon_, and if you want to listen to Rodrigo’s music on Spotify, click here.
