Photo courtesy of: Andrew Penland

Penland plays bass live with one of his bands.

Andrew Penland teaches Latin and French, but he has been making music for even longer than he’s been teaching. Though skilled in many instruments, Penland mainly plays bass, keyboards, and guitar. 

   Penland has been playing in bands since he was 14 years old. He currently plays in four.

   “I started in normal piano lessons. Then I played cello in orchestra when I was a senior in high school. I was playing a jazz band for a couple of years on electric bass. That I started in eighth grade. I joined bands with college friends and then out of college, you know, still playing with people all along. So it’s never stopped, really,” Penland said.

   Penland remains in touch with people he met during his time at school.

   “I’ve got the same drummer I’ve been playing with since I was 14. He and I are pretty locked in; we don’t even have to talk. We can read each other’s minds. We start playing something, we just give a look, and we know what we’re doing,” Penland said. 

   Penland has found that music is a source of lasting connection.

   One of his bands is a jazz trio called The Blue Guitar. This band plays most often out of the four, and they perform throughout Virginia.

   “It’s drums, bass, guitar. Sometimes we play as a duo, just guitar and bass,” Penland said. “We play three hours at a time, so our basic clients are restaurants and cafés and bars.”

   Another band started out as a Paul McCartney tribute band called “Band on the Run” that is named after the song of the same name. Over time, they started playing more yacht rock and hard rock.

   “We’ve been playing for a lot of years, and we’re constantly learning new material. We probably have 150 songs on our song list, and then we’d choose from that and the ones that we want to play at the time, and we’ll add new ones,” he said. 

   His next cover band is a RUSH tribute band called Fly by Night. This band doesn’t play often, but they got their start playing for a meaningful cause.

   “We got together during the pandemic first, to play for a benefit concert to benefit brain cancer research, because that’s what the drummer of RUSH passed away from.”

   Learning a band’s discography is a tough but fun challenge.

   “We’re just a bunch of geeks, really, because we get together and we’ll try a new RUSH song and then it’ll kick our butts because they’re hard to play and we’ll all laugh, we’ll giggle,” Penland said.

   Penland’s fourth and final band is a recording project called The Renaissance Cartel. They have three albums available on all major streaming platforms.

   “They’re all very different. The first one is using world instruments, like exotic things from all around the world, and we would just press record. And then we play them together and see what comes out,” he said.

   Their first album, “Freestyle: the Symmetry of Chaos,” released in 2017, shows off Penland’s love for world instruments.

   “I collect instruments from all over the world, and every instrument has its own songs in it. I like seeing how other cultures tune and string instruments, how they modulate them, how they solve the same problems across the globe,” he said. “I’ve got about 170 instruments in my collection now from all over the world. My home has turned into a recording studio-slash-museum.”

   He doesn’t want people’s money, and he won’t prioritize his music over his teaching job, but Penland has always enjoyed sharing music with people. You can give his music a listen here at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsi-HFoiplE7AndjHeRFS8w.