The Penske File
The Penske File play a style of thoughtful, paced punk that forms a strong connection with their audience. The band, who released Half Glow one year ago, share about their songwriting process and their ongoing evolution.
Scene Point Blank: First, how many times have you played The Fest? How many times have you personally attended (if that # is different)?
Travis Miles: This will be our fifth time playing Fest!
Scene Point Blank: What festivals have you played? What makes The Fest stand out?
Travis Miles: We’ve played a whole bunch of festivals over the years. Many smaller festivals, some bigger ones. I think Fest stands out because of the community of people built around it. It’s like the most lovely cult in the world.
Scene Point Blank: What are your memories about playing Fest last year (or your last time there, if my memory is wrong about 2023)?
Travis Miles: Last time we played fest was pre pandy… 2019, I think.
Scene Point Blank: Who is a band you discovered at Fest last year?
Travis Miles: Wasn’t at Fest last year, but I remember falling in love with Caskitt after watching them at Loosey’s the first time we played Fest, I think it was FEST 15? We had played a pre-Fest show with them in Talahasee a couple nights before, but I only caught a couple songs. I watched their full set at Fest that year and was blown away. They’re not a band anymore, but yeah, they rip! And I feel like I really discovered that while watching them at Fest. Criminally underrated in my opinion.
Scene Point Blank: Share a random memory from Fest, be it seeing a favorite band, running across an old friend, or just some weird thing you saw in the crowd.
Travis Miles: Our set at Fest 2018 still goes down in history for me as one of the most fun shows of our entire lives. We were the last slot on the Sunday at Rocky’s Piano Bar and had been living it up all weekend (and the week before on our tour down with Red City Radio and Pkew Pkew Pkew). I remember waking up very hungover on the Sunday and thinking to myself, “It’s a long way to 1am.” There was a lot of aimless walking and intermittent van naps throughout the day to bide the time before our show. When we got close to game time, I remember the buzz of the room and the lineup outside and just feeling that end-of-Fest celebratory energy in the air. At some point during our set there were suddenly dozens of pool noodles being waved around. I had no idea where they came from haha. Everyone was screaming along, crowdsurfing…all the fun things.
Scene Point Blank: It's been a year since Half Glow came out. As you play the songs live, have any of the songs taken on new meaning or new significance to you?
Travis Miles: Absolutely, I feel like songs are always changing. They get loaded up with different things as time passes. There’s the stage when you are writing an album and they are these things that live inside your head and in the rehearsal space or whatever and are a welcome refuge from other concerns of daily life. When you’re working on a record and going about your day, you can always jump into a song in your head, and think, “What if we did it this way,” or “What if we did it that way.” I love the sense of escape that working on songs offers. I also love the puzzling nature of working on tunes. I often joke that some people like doing crosswords or sudokus to relax or focus, and I feel like I get the same thing out of working on songs in a lot of ways.
Once a record comes out, I can let them out of my head: the puzzle is complete and then comes the catharsis of playing them live. The songs become collaborative in a whole new way in a live setting. In the best case, there’s now this wild energy exchange between 50 or 500 people rather than 3 or 4. Inevitably, some songs get loaded up with new memories of live performances, as well as the information of others interpretations of them, and the meanings change in relation to that.
Scene Point Blank: Do you have an example of a song that’s changed a lot in a live setting?
Travis Miles: ”Come What May” off of our 2018 record, Salvation is definitely one of those songs for me. We typically close our set with it, and it’s now loaded up with memories of all of my favourite shows. There’s one line that specifically hits hard and different for me after our long break around the pandemic: “When this life feels like it’s about to run away, it mostly turns around to feel the same.” Alex wrote the lyrics for that song and I always liked them, but now that line is so loaded up with overwhelming positivity for me. There was a time during our break where I looked at a lot of the highlights of being in this band as something that existed only in the past tense, and a lot of those memories played to the soundtrack of this song in my head. Now when we play “Come What May” at a great show and that line comes up, I can’t help but smile. Sometimes it can feel like you’ve lost positive forces in your life and hope of their return can be fleeting. This line reminds me that such forces have a way of coming back around in one way or another at one time or another and that fills me with joy.
" I think Fest stands out because of the community of people built around it. It’s like the most lovely cult in the world."
Scene Point Blank: Related to that, it feels like the world is moving at a million miles per hour these days. I don't personally view your songs as topical, but how do you approach songwriting? Do you seek to capture a specific moment/mood, or a more universal and timeless element?
Travis Miles: The approach to songwriting, to me, feels like a natural part of my life. It’s just always there. There isn’t so much a conscious goal of trying to capture or portray one thing or another. It just feels like a side effect of being alive: channeling experiences, memories, thoughts and emotions into new creations.
Scene Point Blank: What are you working on now?
Travis Miles: We have an EP that comes out October 18. We’re also halfway done a new record and are very excited about getting that into the world when it’s ready.
Scene Point Blank: What is your songwriting process? Do you sit down and crank out an album's worth of material at once, or are you more random / less methodic?
Travis Miles: I’m always writing songs. Alex writes a lot as well. James usually has a song or two. When its time to start working on a record, there’s usually a lot of raw material to work with in getting started. Speaking for myself, there’s usually a lot of waste. I’ll write like 20-40 songs between albums, and only 5 will end up on a record. So the writing is constant, but when it comes time to do an album, we kinda take stock of everyone’s best ideas and see what fits together and then run with it from there.
Scene Point Blank: How has that songwriting approach changed as you've been a band for a decade plus?
Travis Miles: When we started out I wrote the vast majority of the songs, but as time goes on its become a more even split between me and Alex, which is great because he’s probably my favourite songwriter. Beyond that, I think we’ve just become better collaborators in the room once we start working on things full band. I think we all know each other’s strengths after so many years writing together, and we know how to play to those strengths in collaboration.
Scene Point Blank: I think your general style has caught on a bit more in recent years with the popularity of The Menzingers, etc. How do you describe your sound -- what terminology do you like? Has it gotten easier to explain now that people get that this more personal angle a little better due to its (semi) popularity?
Travis Miles: I mean, I usually just say we’re a punk rock band. People are usually happy enough with that description, aha. Music is so accessible these days with streaming and all that, that I feel if people really want to understand our sound they can listen to us and decide upon their own descriptions.
Now, a rapid fire Fest-focused Q&A:
