Brad Penuel Goes Back to His Roots With Friday Night Traditional

Picture a kitchen table, jammed with musicians playing together over beers on a Friday night. There’s something cooking on the antique stove, and the old piano in the corner is holding together the guitar, the bass, the violin, and the drums. That’s the ambiance infused into every song unrolled by Brad Penuel and his Friday Night Traditional.

This project has been a labor of love for Penuel, who started the journey after losing his dad to COVID in 2021. Even the name “Friday Night Traditional” is a nod to his dad’s way of being in the world, down in Alabama where Brad grew up.

“He was a worker,” Penuel said. “He enjoyed hanging out with his buddies and rewiring their houses or demoing a wall. Every summer it was something: Friday Night Electricians. Friday Night Demolition. Then, when my parents left Birmingham and moved back to the Chattahoochee River, he started doing concerts: He called it Friday Night Productions. So when I wanted to start my own project, I chose Friday Night Traditional.”

Penuel’s journey to becoming a musician began in Alabama, poring over Willie Nelson albums and singing in the choir at the Southern Baptist Church that served as the social spine of the town. But that’s also where he almost lost music completely — when he was 12 years old singing a big duet at the Christmas pageant. His partner got sick, and the choir director decided little Brad could sing both parts.

“I start off with my part and I’m killing it,” Penuel recalled. “And then we get to her part, and I completely blank out. In my mind, there were thousands of people staring at me. I’m this 12-year-old boy in husky jeans and a bowl haircut. I just froze, didn’t know what to do. And with tears in the eyes, I just walked offstage, out through the middle aisle, with everyone turning to look at me, crying out the back door of the church. I get out there and my dad was already waiting for me. I got in the car, left the church, and I didn’t sing again until I was living in Nashville after college.”

A decade passed, and by the time Penuel moved to Nashville, he had surrounded himself with amazing musicians. He spent his evenings drinking beers and listening to his buddies play, until, finally, they encouraged him to pick up a guitar himself.

“Then I went after it,” he said. “When I reengaged, it was like no holds barred. Once that gate was opened, I knew this was what I always wanted to be doing. After that, every nonworking moment, I was going after music.”

Friday Night Traditional harks back to Penuel’s roots. He listens to all types of music and doesn’t consider himself a purist in the realms of bluegrass or country. But in focusing his attention on this project, he asked himself what he was compelled to express. And it was a return to his origins.

“Maybe it’s true that there’s a phase in your life in those early teen years when what you’re listening to creates your ballast of musical taste for the rest of your life,” he said thoughtfully. “I remember riding that Snapper lawn mower, covered in sweat with the big orange foam headphones over my Walkman, listening to Hank Williams Jr.’s ‘All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight.’ … Maybe now that I’m creating music that’s solely my own, I’m finding I’m pulling from those influences more than any others.”

It’s more than the music itself that has these influences — it’s the process of creating the music, and the process of capturing it. As Penuel wrote and produced the songs of Friday Night Traditional, he brought that essence into the experience.

“It’s about hanging out socially, picking tunes informally, that vibe,” he said. “I’d bring the musicians together and make a big pot of soup, or we’d have a meal, then play two or three songs together. I think that element came through in the recordings.”

As casual as Penuel makes it sound, he has a crystal-clear vision of where he’s going with this body of work. One song at a time, he’s been rolling out the collection with images and video to accompany it. His gang of creative friends have all contributed to the multimedia approach to capturing a live experience.

Over the past six months or so, he’s been launching the songs on social media and across streaming platforms and playing them at the local establishments where he has standing gigs.

And it’s all building up to the Sag Harbor American Music Festival, which Penuel has been a part of for many years as part of the duo Hopefully Forgiven, with Telly Karoussos. But this year, he’ll be performing as Friday Night Traditional, on Sunday, October 1, at 1:30 p.m. on The Sag Harbor Express Alley Stage.

“Hopefully Forgiven is still alive and well,” Penuel said, “but this project is an opportunity to present and explore things from a more personal and singular perspective.”

That doesn’t mean he’s working alone — collaboration is key. These recordings were produced with the help of collaborators like Josh LeClerc on lead guitar, Joe Lauro on bass, Dan Koontz on keyboard and Fred Trumpy on drums. He also brought in Greg McMullen on pedal steel and Chris Tedesco on fiddle for certain songs.

“Because the spirit is in the hanging with musicians, it was an opportunity to work with some of the top shelf guys out here,” Penuel said. “We’d just get everybody in the same room and take this old school vintage approach to recording. That’s what lends the vibe and the excitement — you can hear everything, and it captures the energy in the room.”