It’s record-release week for Atlanta’s rising pop ‘n’ soul quintet Penelope Road, and they’re sitting at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records, where they’ve just unboxed the vinyl for their debut album, Maybe in Time, for the very first time. It’s a big moment for the band, who — as vocalist/keyboardist Charles Eastman notes — have had a “weird trajectory” since their viral covers of Hall & Oates, Tears for Fears, and America hits have amassed them a social media following of more than 1 million fans.
“We went two years or maybe a year and a half of ‘no one knows who we are,’ and then we’ve gone a year and a half of like, ‘Oh, we actually mean something,’” Eastman marvels.
But unlike some artists who’ve broken through to the mainstream via TikTok or YouTube, Penelope Road are really just a good old-fashioned band — raised on their parents’ vinyl collections; bonding in college over their favorite classic artists; and honing their live skills by playing 40 cover songs during their residency at Atlanta nightclub the Blue Martini, Beatles-in-Hamburg-style.
“We did play live a lot for a couple years, and we really did what you need to do to understand what it means to be a band,” says Eastman.
For Penelope Road, it really all comes down to the concert experience; their press release even declares that they’re on a mission to “bring live performance back,” and they seem to be succeeding. For instance, on the afternoon of their Licorice Pizza in-store, fans brave a rare torrential L.A. storm to see them do an intimate set (their first Los Angeles gig since selling out the legendary Troubadour in July) — including one father who surprised his tween-age son by picking him up after school and whisking him away to the event.
“I think with COVID especially, I mean, you couldn’t perform live really for a long time, and I think our generation really took a hit there, once everyone was restricted to the confines of literally their phone or their living room,” Eastman muses. “I think it’s been just tough to impress that on our generation, that [live music] is still going on. It’s still alive.”
“But I think it’s coming back in a big way,” says vocalist/guitarist Max Moore, wearing his famous thrifted vintage Oprah T-shirt that has apparently become part of Penelope Road’s lore. “Even since we’ve started, we’ve seen an excitement around any live music at all levels, whether it’s social media or people playing a small show or somebody playing a huge show. It’s much more in demand than it has been in our late teens/early twenties lives.”
“We’re also lucky, coming from Atlanta and being so close to Athens, that there’s such an important live music scene in where we’re from. The music history, the creative history of that area, is in the live music scene,” adds guitarist Koan Roy-Meighoo. “So, I think there’s always been, at least in my head, [the idea that] you can’t be a band without that. You have to do it live and people have to come out and support live music and all that. It’s just part of the culture.”
“That’s what people were doing, and didn’t have the option to not do back in the ’70s!” says bassist James Kopp. “We’re just trying to carry on that tradition of musicianship and just good music in general.”
When Penelope Road first became famous for their ‘70s song covers (John Oates even followed them after they went viral with “Rich Girl”), that was intentional, because they knew that was a smart way to draw people to their concerts — and eventually get attention for their soulfully soft-rockin’ originals. Once they had that attention, it was important for them to capture that live feel on Maybe in Time, which they recorded with Mikey Freedom Hart (Bleachers, Lana Del Rey, the Chicks), Daniel Tashian (Kacey Musgraves, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Real Estate), and Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, the 1975, Foals, Muna, Wolf Alice).
“I think a lot of it was natural,” says Kopp of the recording process. “We road-test the songs pretty heavily before we go into the studio, so a lot of it is hashed out onstage. When we go into the studio, there’s not really a whole lot of difference between our live performance and what we do on record. We obviously add and layer a bunch of synths and textures and stuff like that, but the base of the song is, for the most part, just there already. We’ve played it a million times on the road and made sure it’s where we want it to be before we get in the room.”
“It’s kind of a delicate balance,” says drummer Anthony Smith. “There’s been times when when I’ve come in and just want to give energy and do everything all at once for a performance, and songs sometimes don’t need that. … That’s definitely something I feel like I’ve learned a lot over the past year or so — just giving the song what it needs, and not doing too much.”
“But I’ll also say there is something nice about the studio version being different — the song that you’ve heard in your head finally happening,” says Roy-Meighoo. “Because there is a physical limit to what five people can do at the same time, so getting to add 10 people screaming in the background or strings or brass somewhere, that is really cool. Finally, something clicks in your head and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, this is what I was imagining!’”
Maybe in Time obviously just came out, so Penelope Road are trying to savor the moment. But, as ambitious and detail-oriented as they are, they’re already looking to the future and hoping to improve their already-excellent musical skills, by egging each other on as they go on tour to support the album. “I think everybody around me is an insane player or singer, and it keeps you at a level that you have to be at to match the energy,” Kopp explains.
“Working harder and getting better is a really driving force here. There’s a lot of healthy competition between the five of us, to make sure that all five of us are pushing each other to stay at the same level and grow,” Roy-Meighoo agrees. “I think it’s cool that we’re getting better. I’ll listen to anything from any iteration of any period, even three months before, and every single time, it sounds better and better. The music we were writing got better and better. We were collaborating with more interesting people. Getting to walk into a studio with Mike Crossy in L.A. or getting to write with Daniel Tashian, it’s made us grow as musicians, and that’s just crazy to me. I wince watching videos of us from a year ago, honestly, at this point.”
