The kids of Gen X parents, the ones who still hold onto the CD collection they started building in the ’90s, are starting to make music, and the influence of that decade shows. The Athens, Georgia four-piece Penny Loafer (Emma Barnes, vocals/guitar; Charlie Enter, guitar; Jeb Baker, bass; Seth Parker, drums) isn’t a 120 Minutes tribute act. On their full-length debut, Fixer, they take the noise, the hooks, and the slacker coolness of the ’90s and run them through something that sounds fresh and a little unruly. It’s an album that should appeal not only to mid-twenty-somethings who are fans of bands like Momma, Nine Perfect Lives, and Slow Pulp, but also to their parents, who listened to Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Breeders, and Veruca Salt during their own college days.
Barnes and Parker started Penny Loafer after meeting while working at a grocery store. The two tell me that they spent most of their shifts talking about music, and the idea of creating something became inevitable. They released the Daily Deal EP back in 2025, then brought Enter into the fold to help the band dial in the sound they were looking for. Released in early October, Fixer caught the ear of Jon Garrett (Scrivener Management), who was so impressed that he started working with the band. As a Gen Xer with a massive CD collection amassed throughout the ’90s and early ’00s, I found that Fixer fits instantly into my wheelhouse, and I’m thankful Garrett brought them to my attention.
Barnes, Parker, and Enter recently joined me on a video call to discuss how their parents’ musical tastes influenced the band’s sound, the idea of turning this into a career, and their plans for the future.
Your sound is very, very much in line with everything that I love, so I figured it was born from growing up with your parents’ great ’90s CD collections. What kind of stuff did you guys grow up listening to?
CHARLIE: My parents both listen to all of the really uncool music. I think mine’s from the opposite effect: rebelling against them. My parents were both SiriusXM warriors, so a lot of just radio garbage most of the time.
How did you find your own taste? Was there an artist or maybe even a song that you thought, “I’ve found my own music”?
CHARLIE: Honestly, there was an upright piano in my house growing up that was just there when we moved in. That was my main expression with music until I heard “Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth. That one spiraled me to where I’m at now.
How did you hear that song?
CHARLIE: Just on shuffle, maybe on Spotify. I just heard it, and I’m like, “I’m better off for this.”
Emma, how about you?
EMMA: My dad gave me an iPod and would just put shit on it for me to listen to. There was a pretty wide variety of music. I used to really, really love Sinéad O’Connor. I still do. I hadn’t really heard much like it. Not that her music is weird, but she definitely has a uniquely expressive voice, and I was like, “There’s cool stuff out there.”
Was there something you discovered on your own, out in the world, that you felt was your band, something maybe your parents didn’t know about?
EMMA: My dad’s really into Pixies. He was in a Pixies cover. Then I found the Breeders, and I was like, “Why didn’t you tell me that Kim Deal was doing this really cool thing?”
Did you know right away that Kim Deal had been in the Pixies?
PENNY: Yeah, she has a super recognizable voice. I was like, “Wait a minute, whoa. She has her own thing, and I like it more.”
Seth, what about you? What was the stuff you were listening to, and the stuff that you discovered on your own?
SETH: My dad listened to a lot of early-2000s alternative rock-type stuff. Later in high school is when I started discovering music that really spoke to me. I think it’s probably very similar to Charlie, just via streaming. I found Sonic Youth and The Breeders and just kept spiraling, diving deeper into their discography and falling in love with it.
I love and I hate streaming. I love that I can listen to anything, whenever I want. But I also tend to go through albums pretty quickly. I’ll listen to something, and it’ll be my favorite album, and then two weeks later the next favorite album comes up.
SETH: I find so many albums and I’m like, “I need to find this on a CD or a cassette. I need to get a tape of this album.” I’ll actively search for my favorites. But I know all the songs, because I’ve heard them all at this point, so that’s interesting.
Emma, when you and Seth put the band together, you guys were working together? Were you familiar with each other from a music perspective, or did you meet at work?
EMMA: We just met at work and then we talked and talked and talked about music.
SETH: We started working [at the grocery store] around the same time, I guess, maybe I was a month or two before? I found out Emma was in a band, and I had decided I was just taking a break from playing or practicing or anything. I’d graduated college, and I was like, “I guess I’m just gonna work until I figure out what I want to do.” Emma was in a band, and so we started talking and hanging out, and it just became, in my mind, more of something. Having someone with a shared goal and vision made it more obvious to me that we can do this. We could push each other and just make it happen. Emma encouraged me to start taking music seriously.
In terms of where you are today compared to two years ago, does it seem like it’s taken you forever to get to this point, or is it going super fast?
SETH: It doesn’t feel like we’ve been doing it for too long. I still feel very fresh and excited. We had a lineup change and went a different direction with our sound, and that’s where Charlie joined us. Ever since then, it has felt like we’re really getting into a good groove of things and on a roll with writing.
Things are starting to feel like they’re moving a little bit faster, but it’s not to the point where it feels like too much. I feel like we’re all super excited, and we just feel really good about the music we’re making, and we have fun playing it. That’s the most important thing: enjoying what you’re making and being excited about it.
Charlie, when did you join?
CHARLIE: I joined a little over a year ago. Early September of last year.
Listening to the record, it sounds to me like there are four guitar players. It’s just this big wall of sound. I had to look at the lineup and be like, “How many people play guitar in this band?” It’s a full guitar-sounding record, which is awesome. How has the sound has changed by adding Charlie and making some lineup changes. I listened to your older stuff, and it sounds like Penny Loafer, you didn’t go from an acoustic duo to a full-fledged rock band.
SETH: For sure, yeah. It’s still a full band, and we still have the same influences.
EMMA: We always had an idea of what we wanted, and then this has just been two years of sort of getting there. And I feel like we’re there.
Charlie, you’ve been in other bands?
CHARLIE: Yeah, Seth and I have played in another band called Chairs for a little over a year. It’s kind of a rotating crew of members that we’ve been fairly consistent in. I’m in another band called Race Car 44, which, apart from Penny Loafer, is the only other serious project I’m in. They saw me doing a screamo track with them, I think, and were like, “Let’s hang out with this guy!” I’m really fortunate for that, because it’s been a whole lot of fun.
Emma, have you played in other bands?
PENNY: Yeah, I had a band that ended about a year ago, just because people moved away and stuff. It was called Neat Freak. It was definitely super different, and less of a focused thing, but it was definitely super fun. Super awesome.
Were the bands you were in before Penny Loafer just college bands without any real goals other than to play a few shows here and there and maybe throw something up on Bandcamp?
EMMA: Neat Freak was never anybody’s goal, except for maybe mine. Not in a bad way or anything, but people had career goals that didn’t include the band. I did not have other goals other than this.
Don’t sell yourself short. This is a career goal.
EMMA: Yeah, besides this career goal. That’s what I was wanting.
I know Athens from the early ’90s. Is the scene still thriving?
CHARLIE: Very, very active scene, for the most part.
SETH: There’s still a lot of music, a lot of bands. There’s live music, literally, every night.
CHARLIE: Pretty much any night you can go see at least a three- or four-band bill somewhere.
Can you take a step back from the band itself and tell me whether you feel like Penny Loafer is a little fish in a big pond within the scene, or the big fish in the little pond?
CHARLIE: Probably the latter. We’re a pretty decently sized fish in this pond. It feels like we know everyone in Athens and have all of our pre-established feelings toward them, whether good or bad. That makes it feel like the pond is kind of small, and we’re a little large.
You’ve done some touring. Is the thinking that you’ve played everywhere you can play in Athens, there’s not a lot of goals left to achieve within Athens, so now let’s take it outside and see what we can do?
CHARLIE: Definitely. I think we tour also to explore scenes that coalign with our interests and what we produce. It’s a chance to gain exposure to even more cool bands.
SETH: I feel like there’s a very small number of bands in Athens that are actively touring. A lot of people are scared to take that first step, go out and do it, and be willing to risk whatever you have to make it happen. But we’ve done three tours this year that have been more than five days, at least, so it does feel like we are putting in a lot of work.
Are you at a place in your lives where you can hop in a van and go play two or three weeks?
CHARLIE: Yeah. We’d be eager to. We’re foaming at the mouth.
Are you playing DIY spaces? Smaller clubs? Are you opening for bands in the cities you go to, or headlining shows?
SETH: We’re not playing any big clubs or anything. It’s definitely a good mix of DIY shows. We play a lot of house shows. They’re probably our favorite ones on tour. We play a few clubs, depending on the city. In New York, the most recent show, we played at Nightclub 101, which is a bigger venue. We just try to build a local bill around us. We don’t usually headline, we don’t usually play last.
CHARLIE: We’re to play shows with those bands whose sound we enjoy, who are around our age, who we can just be friends with. For the most part, it’s worked out really well.
Do you have mentors, a year or two ahead of you, who have done the touring and can say, “Here’s what you should do, here’s what you shouldn’t do”?
SETH: Not any friends, but our engineer, Nate Nelson, for sure. He’s done a lot of touring. He had a band called White Violet, and they toured a bunch, so he’s definitely one of the only people I go to for advice on most things, and just keep him up to date on what’s going on with us, because he’s been a good mentor.
Some of the songs on the album were also on the EP and you re-recorded them. Were the rest of the songs written specifically for the album or are they songs that you had been building for a couple of years?
EMMA: A couple of them were songs that we were working on that we sent to Charlie before he joined the band and we were like, “Do these interest you? Would you want to write over these?” I think we sent him two songs.
CHARLIE: “Crystal” and “Bug”.
EMMA: Two of them were songs that me and Seth wrote before, off the old EP, that we reworked with Charlie, and the rest we wrote together.
SETH: We wrote “Waffle” and “Rock 2” in the studio and recorded them pretty instantly after writing them.
There’s some spoken stuff in “Rock 2.” What is that from?
CHARLIE: It’s just me. I just wrote it. We recorded my vocal through an older 110 guitar combo. The first tour we went on was during the snowstorm at the beginning of the year, and it got me feeling emotional, so I was writing stuff every night just to remember it. I used a lot of that as the foundation for these two pages of text that became the whole spoken part.
How does the songwriting happen? Does it start with the music? Does it start with lyrics? Does it start with the title?
CHARLIE: Usually, guitars almost exclusively. Either Emma comes with a guitar part, or I come with a guitar part, or they’ll come with something together. Or I’ll write two guitar parts, and then we just mess around, and Seth always locks into something really quickly that fits well.
Emma, does lyric writing come easy to you? Do you spend a lot of time figuring out just the right words or is it “I’ll throw down whatever comes to me and not try to figure out if it makes sense”?
EMMA: It honestly depends on the song. Sometimes it’s really easy, and it’s just, Boom, this just came out of my brain.” Then sometimes I feel really stuck, and not smart, but then I’m like, “Wait, I can do it.”
There’s that old saying, you have your whole lifetime to write the first record, and then six months to write the second record. When did you record this album, and do you have more songs that you’re ready to record?
CHARLIE: I think for the most part, we all feel that if someone told us tomorrow that we couldn’t play anything from the record again, we’d be like, “Oh… okay.” We’re definitely very exicted about the newest stuff we’ve been writing. We started the album in November 2025 and finished it in February of this year.
SETH: Mixing took some time. We thought about searching for a label and stuff, and I did my own reaching out, but never heard back, so we put it out independently. During the time that it was in the mixing stages, we were writing new stuff, and we have a full EP ready to be recorded. I think we’re gonna start on it next month.
Does that stuff sound like the album or have you evolved and are going to try something different?
CHARLIE: I think it’s more focused. Yeah.
What do you mean by that? What does your vision of “more focused” mean?
CHARLIE: I think the record does feel pretty cohesive. But knowing some of the tracks before being in the band, being presented some of the tracks when joining the band, and then writing some of them, all three of us have so many concrete opinions on the songs that don’t represent how they sound to other people. A lot of it can feel very skewed to the idea that “this sounds old”, or “this sounds new.” Everything we’ve been writing recently, each song sounds different and contrasts really well. But stylistically, we’ve really found what we want to explore.
The new record, at least, is only streaming right now, digital?
SETH: We’re selling CDs locally right now, just friends and family. I’ve posted that if anyone wants one in the Athens or Atlanta area, we’ll bring one to you. We sell them at shows. I’ve yet to put them up on Bandcamp. I tried to do it previously, and I just couldn’t figure it out, so I just need to sit down and figure that out.
Is your hope that somebody comes along and finds the album and wants to sign you? Or is this almost like your résumé, where you hope people are interested in this so that they will take a chance on you on the next thing? Would you like this to get bigger, broader distribution, and more attention?
SETH: That’s tough. I feel like we’re really open to it getting picked up and being re-released, but we do feel very excited and ready for this next thing, and I don’t want to put off doing this when we’re in the groove of it. We’re feeling really excited about this next one. Getting people to hear this record, being interested in it, and taking a chance on us for the next one, I feel like that represents how we’re feeling.
Does it feel like you’re getting more attention now? Have any labels reached out yet? I know you’ve been getting help, that’s how I heard about you.
SETH: No labels have reached out yet. Jon’s been a huge, huge help. It’s been a lot of him setting us up for success in the future. We’re doing a lot of, I guess you’d call it, housecleaning stuff: getting everything set up to present ourselves. There is a feeling that it’s catching on, and things are happening to the point where we’re excited.
Are you still playing every show that is offered to you in Athens or are you slowing down so as to not dilute the brand?
SETH: We’ve definitely, for months now, toned it back on local shows. But we’re gonna keep touring, because we love it.
If we hop on a call a year from now, look into your crystal ball and tell me about what has happened between this conversation and that conversation.
EMMA: Gosh. So much awesome stuff. We have cool stuff lined up already, sprinkled through the first half of next year.
CHARLIE: Some cool short runs and tours with friends. Hopefully at least two releases. We want the EP out by March, ideally.
SETH: We’re gonna be playing New Colossus Festival in New York in March. And then maybe we’ll be at a point where we’re talking to labels. I think that’d be cool.
CHARLIE: I want to hold a Penny Loafer 7-inch in my hand.
I saw on Instagram you guys did your 2025 favorites. It made me feel old and a little bit out of touch, because I recognized three bands out of all of them. Do you have 2026 favorites? Is there something right now that’s really sticking out to you, something that you loved this year?
CHARLIE: bloodsports. sour tooth.
SETH: Did the Total Wife record come out this year or last year?
CHARLIE: I think it was last year, but the remix EP came out this year.
SETH: I still listen to that album.
CHARLIE: The new TAGABOW collaboration album is really good.
SETH: There’s this one record that just came out, Swapmeet. I’ve been listening to that one a lot, and also Form Affinity. I’ve been listening to that album a lot. It’s called Needling, from Form Affinity. They’re from the UK, I think.
CHARLIE: And feeble little horse’s Bitknot, for sure.
What about going to shows? Do you only go see your friends’ bands or are you going to see touring bands?
CHARLIE: I think it’s both for all of us.
SETH: I do tend to go to more of my friends’ bands. When friends come to Atlanta, I’ll drive there and watch and hang out with them. But we do both. I’ll definitely go see Hum in March, because they’re coming to Atlanta. It’s right around my birthday, too. And then we went and saw Feeble Little Horse. That was a bigger show. It’s a good mix of both, but definitely more local shows.
I like looking at who you follow on Instagram and trying to see if we had any common connections. There are four or five that I wanted to ask you about. Robber Robber?
CHARLIE: I played with Robber Robber. My other band, Race Car 44, played with them upstairs at the bar I work at. We love Robber Robber.
I think that’s my favorite record of the year. What about Basically Nancy?
SETH: They’re from Savannah, and we have a lot of mutuals with them. They came to Athens not too long ago, maybe six months or so, and we played with them.
MX Lonely?
SETH: Just fans. I actually played a showcase with them, an unofficial showcase at South By Southwest, with a different band. That’s when I was first introduced to them. I met them, and they were super nice and cool, but we’re just fans of their music and think they’re awesome.
T. Hardy Morris? I’m assuming it’s probably because of Athens.
SETH: He and Nate Nelson, who did that record, are good friends, so I’ve met him through Nate at friend functions. We follow each other because we’re both Athens musicians.
Tell me about a song, album, or artist that, when you hear that song and you close your eyes, you are transported back to something very specific.
CHARLIE: One I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, because I just started really listening to them again, is Astrobrite. The album pinkshinyultrablast. This is my second year in this house. Three years ago, in my first-ever proper house that I lived in that wasn’t a dorm or an apartment or my parents’ house, you could walk at night with two street lamps lighting the whole street. I’d be listening to that, just blaring that at max volume, walking around. When I hear that album and close my eyes, I see dusk, sidewalk, short grass. It vaguely smells like a cigarette for some reason.
SETH: I have a song. It’s kind of funny, but it reminds me of my dad taking me to elementary school in his red Jeep Grand Cherokee. The seats were so soft and comfortable, but he always played the radio, I think it was 90.5, Bulldog Rock, in Athens and the song is Creed’s, “My Sacrifice.” Those early mornings, I did not want to go to school, but thinking back on it now, I’m like, those were good times, sitting in the car with my dad, listening to the radio.
Emma, you’re on the hook.
EMMA: I guess the one that I think of, I’ll go back to Sinéad O’Connor, and I remember this because her song “Three Babies” is the first song I can remember ever making me cry. My friend and I were on the bus, and it was on my iPod, because my dad put it on my iPod, and we each had an earbud in, and we were both just crying and crying, listening to this song. Now when I listen to it, my eyes well up, and I think about crying on the bus, for the first time, to a song that I can remember moving me that much.
