Meet Roderick Trujillo | Bassist/Song Writer of Pull No Punches

We had the good fortune of connecting with Roderick Trujillo and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Roderick, what is the most important factor behind your success?
We believe that Pull No Punches has found success in large part because we strike a good balance between working hard and having fun. It’s an important balance to strike because working without any fun can remove the personal value one experiences when trying to succeed and, at the same time, focusing exclusively on enjoyment/fun can really hamper productivity. Pull No Punches focuses heavily on making sure that we’re doing enough work to accomplish what we’d like to without sacrificing the joy and pleasure of performing/creating. Without the hard work, Pull No Punches would never find any real success at all. Without the fun, Pull No Punches would implode because the success wouldn’t be worth pursuing anymore.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
While it’s certainly true that every band is unique, Pull No Punches enjoys a little extra dash of peculiarity because nobody can seem to place us in a genre. Because we pull from such a broad array of experiences (two classically trained instrumentalists, a self-taught instrumentalist, and a fully degreed classical/operatic singer), Pull No Punches’ sound is simultaneously chaotic and controlled. As for the difficulties in creating the art, the self-taught instrumentalist certainly had a lot of bad days before he started having any good ones. The two classically trained instrumentalists and the classical/operatic singer all had to work to bend their stylistic approaches to the grungy/punk rock style of Pull No Punches. Everyone on PNP had to learn (or relearn) something. One thing Pull No Punches wants to tell everyone is that each song has a piece of each artist so when a melody or rhythm catches someone’s ear, they can be sure that it’s the voice of one of the four members of Pull No Punches they’re hearing.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
That’s a difficult one because the Atlanta area has so many amazing places to visit. To start, we’d make sure that we went to Darkhorse Tavern for some live band karaoke at least once. After that, we’d bring our friend to Furnace 41, Pull No Punches’ favorite venue, to listen to some awesome Rock and Roll. Because almost everyone in Pull No Punches grew up in the Marietta/Woodstock area, we’d love to show them the little nooks and crannies of the area, including the Marietta Square and Woodstock’s Park at City Center. We’d love to introduce them to Kennesaw Mountain for some exercise and history.
On top of that, two of Pull No Punches’ members (Andrew Kwapil and Roderick Trujillo) attended Oglethorpe University. We’d definitely bring our friend to Oglethorpe’s beautiful campus then explore Buckhead. After that, the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coke, and the Van Gogh Museum are all absolute winners.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Well, the entire band really deserves all of the credit in the world. Andrew Kwapil kills it on the guitar, Jordan Layne has the voice of an angel, Zachary Boeck is a beast on the drums, and Roderick Trujillo puts work in on the bass. We love to share credit, but it can be difficult because we recognize that we need to have a face (and we largely rely on Jordan Layne, our lead singer, for those purposes) but we like to make certain that our entire group receives credit. That said, Pull No Punches couldn’t be what it is without the help of our families, namely the Trujillo’s, Laynes, Kwapils, and Boecks. Our influences include The Offspring, Nirvana, Sum 41, and Blink 182.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pull.no.punches/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WePullNoPunches

Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vT2T2b7hrsDDCUCLuviFV?si=xDYXWWrUQEWf_vbefYJiNQ https://music.apple.com/us/artist/pull-no-punches/1497627533

Image Credits
All art done by Svetlana Kurkalova https://www.instagram.com/kurkalova_art/ Photographs by Jeffrey Layne, Melissa Trujillo, and Marty Trujillo