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We love a good surprise, and Penelope Road has granted us that joy many times. Musically, they are always shocking, taking elements of sonic familiarity, then oftentimes shifting it into something novel and genre defying. This phenomenon is consistent over their latest album, Maybe In Time, a collage of pop influences that rewards repeat-listening. We had the pleasure of having the boys in studio, and it's safe to say we were waylaid by the fun candor and varied influences the band carries with them. Deep diving over a large table on a sunny day, we dug into the new project, latest vibes and more, here:

OnesToWatch: All right, Penelope Road. Could you please introduce yourself? 

Koan: I'm Koan. I play guitar and sing a little. 

James: I'm James. I play bass guitar. 


Anthony: I'm Anthony. I play the drums. 

Charles: I'm Charles, I play the keyboard, and I co-lead sing. 


Max: I'm Max. I also co-lead sing and I play guitar. 

Co-lead sing, I like that. Democratic. 

Koan/Penelope Road: Everybody joins in from time to time. 

What was the origin story of the band? 

Max: James and Koan and I have known each other since middle and high school. There was a rock band program where we found out we loved doing this. 

There was a program to build rock bands? 

Koan: Pretty much, yeah. 

Max: So we all met through bands. I met Charles at Allstate Chorus, we got Anthony, and then we all split up for a while, college and things. 

James: I went to University of Tampa for a year, and then once I was back sophomore year of college, we started really doing it again. 

So you've known each other for a very long time. How long have you been really intentionally doing this thing? 

Penelope Road: Three and a half years. 

I imagine with a band of this size, the writing process could either be really easy or really hard. Is there a writing process? Do you guys have assigned roles, are there expectations of what you're meant to do, or is it free for all? 

Koan: It's a bit of everything. There's no assigned roles at all. It's just like if someone has an idea, they bring it in, but every song is definitely, at the end, an amalgamation of the five of us. Everybody's writing their own part. People are contributing everything from lyrics to arrangement, especially with this new album. 


James: Yeah, that's really where it changed for the better.

Koan: It was the first time where all five of us were in the room from the very start of a song and worked it all the way through together, which was really cool. Makes it easy and hard, because you get a lot of ideas, but then you also get a lot of debates. 


When you said it made it easy, is this because you guys were writing in the same room for the first time? 

James: Yeah, in comparison some of the early stuff that we had put out, Charles would come in with just about a full song, but for this entire album, we would sit down and do it together. It made it easier to be on the same page from the beginning. 

Walk me through a song. How long does it take to put that together? 

James: It's changed. Some of them have been pretty quick. We wrote with a few outside writers on this album and a lot of the songs came together in around a day. At least a solid demo. 

Koan: We write the song in maybe a day and then we road test it for a while, play it in front of fans, and then when we get to the studio, it takes probably two, three days a song. So there's a lot of time in between the writing and the releasing as well, where we have time to switch it up. 

You mentioned you do some workshopping – when you're writing songs, do you collectively have an idea of who the audience is or what the intention is? Is it just a cohesive sound that makes everyone feel you've nailed it?

Charles: I think we approach different songs differently. There’s a different audience in mind for different songs, which is kind of a core element of what we do in general: making music that doesn't contain itself into one box. We don't really feel a lot of pressure to stay in one direct lane. But what Koan said with the road testing, it can be really beneficial because we find out obviously what songs people are resonating with, but also on different levels, sometimes people really respond to one that we don't expect.
And then sometimes there's songs that we feel really strongly about, we play them and they don't get the reception that we expected. Sometimes that can be indicative of the quality of the song in general, but I think a lot of the time, it just shows us that maybe this song doesn't have the legs that it needs right now. Maybe it's just not as much of a live song as some of the other ones. When you're making an album, you're not bound by what songs perform live. You can roll out some of those low tempo, chiller songs that don't hit us hard and people still like them all the same. 

Who's the wild person in the group? Who brings the craziest ideas, musically? 

Charles: Probably Koan. 

James: Writing style wise, you're probably the most eclectic. 

Who's the most consistent? 

James: I think we all kind of check that box. Well, we will tell each other when something isn't good, you know? So, we all keep each other in check and make sure that everything that we release isn't shit. 

Who has the worst ideas? But very quickly they become the best ideas. 

Max: I feel like there are little mistakes that end up being cool everywhere. Like on one of our songs, there’s a vocal chop from somebody talking and it just goes over the entire song. 

James: On the title track of the album where we're about to release, Maybe in Time, in the musical intro to the second verse, there's late hit that we did, and it came from the demo where we all actually missed the hit, and then we listened back to it and we were like, oh, it kind of works. 

There are so many great stories in rock and roll, recording mistakes that end up being the foundation for amazing, generational tunes. Let's dig into the album. When you guys are building an album, is the writing intentional and specific for that project? Are you pulling songs that fit a narrative, theme, a tempo? How do you guys put together an album? 

Anthony: I don't know if it really came about super intentionally. I think it was just as we continued writing with the co-writers we had and amongst ourselves, it became thematic. 

James: Naturally, we would write about the same things or themes. 


Max: It started out with us wanting to be intentional about every song and have them fit, but we just kept writing songs that were so different from each other. We loved all of them. So it was hard to be like, no, these shouldn't go together because in our heads, they all work. 

How many songs were you pulling from? 

Charles: We have 13 on the album and I think we had 15 finished songs at the end of the day. 

Koan: It’s funny, we've all been basically within 20 feet of each other for the last 3 years. So the stuff we would write about intuitively just kind of coalesced. We found ourselves just writing about where we were at the time, which is why I think the sound of the album – while it is all over the place – feels like a group of people at an important moment of their life trying to figure something out. I think that's kind of what we were writing about as well. 


It sounds like you didn't have a lot of editing to do. You weren't leaving a lot of songs to the side. How old is the oldest song on the album? 

Charles: Ooh, a year? 

Is there a theme you were trying to evoke through every song?

Anthony: Most of them, it was coming in, sitting down, and asking what do we want to write today or write about? It wasn't like that for every song, but, I think they all kind of fit together regardless. 

Charles: I feel like the big umbrella that everything in the album falls under is time, and most specifically growth. We have a lot of songs about love (in the bad way), a couple songs about being on the road and how that affects everything. So I think the main point that I, at least, take away from the album, is just what it's like to be 22, 23 today and figuring out how to write an album. Figuring out how to tour, how to deal with all that. We all live a completely different life than our friends and the people we grew up around and just stomaching that that's reality now, I feel like you get that through the album. 

Beautiful. I'd love to go around the table and have you share an ambition or something you hope yourself or the audience takes away from the album. 

Koan: I hope people can hear all 5 of our personalities, because I feel like I get that from the album, and there's just a very exciting, fresh, unique chemistry that the 5 of us have. I hope people can get a sense of that. 

James: Banking off of what Charles said. I want people to realize how much we've grown and hear it through the music as well.The stuff that we've released before is great, but I feel like we've stepped up so much and we've done it at a whole different level than we have before. That was intentional, obviously, but I would love for people to be able to listen to it and be like, holy shit, this is some new, next level stuff.

Anthony: I think I just want people to know that we're not afraid to change, that we're not afraid to take a risk and do something out of our typical comfort zone with a lot of the songs. There's pulls from a lot of different eras of music. I think it comes together in a really cool way, and I hope that it comes across well to everyone else, and we just keep rolling with that kind of thing in the future. 

Charles: I hope that people our age and within our generation can hear themselves in the songs. I feel like what I wanted to deliver out of the album was songs that I would want to hear and songs that I feel would help me if I was uncertain and at this point in my life where everything's changing constantly and friends are moving away. Life is just very fast and hectic and I hope this album slows people down for a little bit. 

Max: Piggybacking off of that, I want people to feel like these songs are as important to them as they are to us. We wrote them in such a way that we really feel that people will be able to relate to them. And the music itself invokes a ton of different feelings throughout the album, and that was super intentional. I want people to feel like the music is part of their world as much as it is ours. 

I love it. I'm going to pivot to some fun questions. 

If you guys are celebrating something, where do you go? 

Koan: A few of us went to Fogo de Chao.
It was so funny. I feel like such an idiot walking in there and spending like two, three hours just chopping it up, but that was fun. That was like a, ha ha, we're doing something funny, randomly. 

Charles: You were wearing sweatpants in there. 

If you guys could put together a dream festival, who would be on it? 

Koan: I'll do a 4 or 5 PM Mk.gee. 


James: Maybe set before that, Slow Pulp. 

Anthony: I would do Nirvana. 

Charles: Throwing The Police on the main stage right after Mk.gee if you pushed him to an 8pm slot. 

Max: Ryman to fit in with the Slow Pulp. 

At your most Zen, your most peaceful, where are you? What are you doing? 

Koan: I am on the beach all day with absolutely nothing but a book and a towel to sleep on. 


James: We were on the road and we were in Denver and I took an Uber up into the mountains and fly fished for like 3 hours and that was probably the happiest I've been all year. 

Did you catch anything? 


James: Oh, yeah. It was awesome. 

Anthony: If it wasn't at my drum set at home, I would say that we went to this one venue in Redmond, Washington, and they had a really nice park you could walk through and a botanical garden. It was really quiet, really peaceful. 

Charles: Probably a tennis court. It's my life outside of music, I grew up playing a lot of tennis. It was the opposite of a peaceful place for the first 18 years of my life, but now that I'm not competing, it’s a complete reset. 

Max: Probably in front of a fireplace at a ski and scout house after a day of skiing. 

I love this. That was a great range of answers. Between you guys and Florence Road, who wins in a fight? 

Koan: They know how to do it in Ireland. We're probably getting our asses handed to us. 


Charles: If they weren't Irish, I’d say us, but they got a bite that we don't have, man, out there. 


I would love a non-music recommendation. 

Koan: I have to say it. Nathan Fielders, You Can See Everything. So, so good. Nathan Fielder's entire career is worth watching, but this is Zenith, in my opinion. 


James: I'm going with Woody's cheesesteaks in Atlanta. 

Love a local rec, great. 

Anthony: I would say just visiting Seattle. 

Charles: I would say go bowling. Everyone stops going bowling after you're a kid having your birthday party there, but it’s so fun. And then you get to turn 21, you start drinking at the bowling alley. 

Max: If you haven't seen the Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul universe, you have to watch. 

Last question, I’d love a music recommendation. 

Koan: This band called Smush that, actually, Charles ran into on the road one night randomly outside a hotel. We just went to their show in Atlanta. It's like shoegaze meets a bit of modern experimental production stuff. They have this cover of Don't Know Why by Norah Jones that I've been listening to nonstop this year. It's so good. 

That wasn't the cover I was predicting. 

James: My first is Frank Mastra. He's opened for us at a few shows and he's just now starting to release his first few pieces of work and it's incredible. He's an old soul, he's 21 years old, and he's badass. Also Sam Freibish and Corey Fawnville. 

Anthony: I would go with a feeble little horse. They've been around for a little while, but they've struck a record this year called Bitnot, and I just think they're pushing the edge of alternative folk music and female-led band. It's a good combination of sounds. It also just feels super in the moment. 

Charles: I also have two. One, and I feel like she's starting to get her flowers, Jackie Evans. She's done some stuff with Vulfpeck recently, but she's got a couple songs that I see like all the time on my feed and it's like Billy Joel, but with like… I don't even know who to compare her voice to because it's insane on its own. She's crushing it. And then the other one's this girl Ruby Plume in Nashville. Her songwriting is so unique. I don't know what has to be going on in your brain to lead you to some of the chord changes and crazy stuff in her songs, but it's so pretty.

Beautiful. 


Max: Mine is Benji out of Nashville. He's like a Southern soul kind of artist, but he's one of the best vocalists I've ever seen live. He opened up for us for a few months this winter. And he's just ridiculous. On top of that, he's an incredible guitar player as well. It was just him and a guitar, and it sounded like a whole band every night. 

Before I let you guys go, do you have anything to share. 

Koan: Listen to Maybe in Time five million times. It gets better every time you listen to it. Real life bots, just be human. 

James: Put it on while you sleep. 

James: We were talking about advice for bands earlier, and I would just say, take all of the gigs you possibly can. Just keep playing and building the chemistry between everybody in the band because that's the only way to do it, really. The rest will fall into place. You just have to take all the shitty gigs you can until they start getting good. 


Anthony: I would piggyback off that and say, take opportunities even if it's scary. If it makes you feel nervous that’s what you need in order to push yourself forward. 

Charles: Mine's kind of the opposite of James. Don't take the shitty gigs… no, what I mean is take care of yourself. You want to push yourself really hard, but I think you have to give yourself grace as well, and you have to give yourself space sometimes from music to be able to come back to it with a fresh brain. Any career that you're constantly putting forth incredible amounts of energy into, you need to supplement with making the time for yourself to just, like, make the time for yourself and take care of yourself because it'll catch up very fast. 

Max: The product will only be better if you do that. 
Yes. Um, and we're so good at that. So we're going on tour again. 
Yeah. We're gonna tour the album in the spring. We're doing like our opening show in Atlanta at the Tabernacle, which will be our biggest ticket event ever.
So we're super pumped for that. play the whole album. It'll be an awesome night. Yeah, grab tickets, come meet us. 


All right. Yeah. Love it, guys. 
It was a lot of fun. Thank you. 

Penelope Road: Thank you for having us.