Before Returning Home, Parrotfish Reflects on the Personality Behind their Music

Ahead of their July 11 Crowbar show, the band discussed the connective tissue between their creative endeavors

Ask four different Parrotfish fans to describe their sound, and chances are you'll hear four different genres.

The Tampa-born, Nashville-based quartet has built a catalog that comfortably slips between alternative rock, pop-punk, reggae, and funk, often within the span of a song or two. Despite the band's stylistic range, the music never feels like it's trying on different identities.

In a recent conversation with band members Conor Lynch (vocals), Matty Rodrigo (bass, vocals), and Trace Chiappe (drums), I asked what connects all those influences. Chiappe didn't mention a songwriting structure or musical philosophy. Instead, he pointed to the people in the room.

“They're all different songs, but at the end of the day, it's Conor and Matt singing, Joe playing the guitar, me playing the drums, Matt playing the bass, like people are going to hear it as Parrotfish regardless.”

For Parrotfish, the music doesn’t seem to ever start with style. It starts with the personalities behind the instruments.

That perspective has become more apparent as the band has grown. Since their early days, their songwriting has become more adventurous, but not because they've set out to reinvent themselves. If anything, they described the process as becoming more comfortable trusting one another.

“I feel like we put such an emphasis on each of us having our imprint on it and pushing our individual musicianship and styles as far as they can go within a song, while trying to serve the song” Matty Rodrigo added. “But I think we try to really trust each other and let each other move into spaces and develop each of our parts in a way to where we all feel good about the song.”

Rather than arriving with full concepts, ideas are often brought into the room unfinished. A lyric, a melody, or even a riff can eventually become the foundation for a song after passing through four different perspectives.

The band laughed while describing the process as "Frankensteining" songs together, but underneath the joke is a willingness to let individual ideas evolve into something larger than any one member originally imagined. Sometimes that means spending weeks refining a single musical part.

“The guitar part isn't just, you know, 1-5-6-4 pattern,” Chiappe said. “Joe has his very specific riff that makes the song specifically what the song is.”

“Yeah, that he's shelled in the basement by himself for sometimes a month,” Rodrigo added. “We're not just throwing a guitarist in the studio for two hours, you know?”

It's an approach that explains why Parrotfish's catalog feels so cohesive despite constantly shifting stylistically. The band doesn’t seem concerned with what genre a song belongs to, they're asking whether it still sounds like them.

That philosophy has taken on even greater importance as the band prepares to release its long-awaited debut album this November.

After years of singles and EPs, Parrotfish said they wanted their first full-length album to feel like more than just a collection of songs. The goal was to wait until they had enough material that reflected who they had become as writers while still embracing the stylistic freedom that's always defined the band.

“We were told a lot, like releasing singles was kind of the way to go for smaller bands. I think there was part of us that were worried about certain songs not shining if they were buried in an album, and we never had a full, cohesive collection.” Lynch said.  “This feels like the first time everything was intentionally made together, so it feels really, really cohesive.”

Rather than narrowing the styles in their sound, the band seems to have found cohesion in the messages and personalities behind the songs. That same idea resurfaced when the conversation shifted away from music entirely.

For younger musicians, building a career today requires more than writing songs and playing shows. It also means constantly creating content, maintaining an online presence, and finding time to engage with listeners between tours and recording sessions. Parrotfish spoke about this the same way they spoke about songwriting, with a focus on authenticity to themselves.

“We've done music videos in the past, and the video aspect of things has always interested us as like an extension of the art of the song,” Rodrigo said. “I think that should always be its primary focus, and I think we're trying to figure out how to blend that with the marketing aspect of social media and mixing in trends. It's a delicate balance, and I think we're still trying to figure that out. Social media is a fucking mess.”

The band admitted balancing content creation with work, touring and everyday life can be exhausting, crediting their manager, Dominic Sodis, with helping capture moments that feel genuine instead of manufactured.

“I think that we all know we have to do it now,” Lynch added. “It's definitely something where we all have super busy schedules in general. We all work jobs on the side of this, so doing social media stuff is always the last thing we want to do when we have time to get together, versus playing music, or writing, or playing shows. But it is so necessary, so we've definitely been trying to put more of a focus on that.”

Rather than trying to manufacture an online persona, the band's social media feels like an extension of the personalities driving the music.

Those personalities are perhaps most obvious when the four of them are on stage together. The band rarely presents itself with rock-star seriousness. The jokes between songs, playful mistakes, and loose energy all feel like an extension of the same chemistry that shapes the writing sessions.

“It feels like this balance,” Rodrigo said. “We're trying to take the show and the music and our output very seriously and hit that for people, but then still just be goofy, and not to take ourselves and the egos of it too seriously.”

It's an attitude that makes the band's increasingly adventurous catalog feel surprisingly grounded. Whether the topic was songwriting, social media, the upcoming album, or live performance, every answer seemed to return to the foundation of the people making the music.

Genres change, songwriting influences come and go, but nearly a decade after first forming, the band's most defining characteristic isn't any one sound. It's the trust they've built in one another and the confidence to let that be the one constant while everything else continues to evolve.

Parrotfish returns to Tampa on Friday, July 11, for one of the final Crowbar shows before the venue closes its doors at the end of the month. For a band that has spent years refusing to settle into one musical lane, the hometown performance arrives at an especially fitting moment. Their debut album is finally on the horizon, but rather than presenting a new identity, the band hopes to capture the one they've been building together since their teenage years.

Tickets to see Parrotfish at Crowbar in Ybor City on Friday, July 11 are available for $17.67.

Written by J.C. Roddy