Not Just the Boy Next Door

Joe Haydel may look like a boy next door, but his music speaks to a repository of experience that surpasses age and music genre. His self-titled EP features heartfelt songs about his “personal journey and the many obstacles” he has encountered.

article by Vanelis Rivera | portraits by Hunter Romero | performance photos by Andrew Bailey

From across the room, Joe Haydel may look like the kind of guy you take home to meet the parents—well-dressed, well-spoken, and suave. His “all American boy” smile harmonizes with his “boy next door” charm. While his style is understated with a patterned button-up and jeans, his thick-wavy black hair is one of his most visually captivating qualities. Overall, he keeps it simple, but when it comes to his music, Haydel proves that he is a local wellspring of guitar chops and baritone vocals.

Born and raised in Houma, Louisiana, Haydel grew up in a music household. When Haydel would go missing as a toddler, he’d be found under the family grand piano while his father played, hard hitting Toto and Elton John tunes, among other notable eighties anthems. Intrigued and naturally drawn, he began piano lessons around age five, but underwhelmed by beginner ditties like “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” he sought zippier beats. “My dad taught me the rock stuff,” he says. At seven years old he picked up the guitar and joined one of his buddies who owned a drum set. “We would just mess around in his garage. We didn’t know what we were doing,” he laughs. His guitar playing snowballed when he was gifted his first electric guitar and amp by his godmother. He plugged in to basic blues chords, mostly by ear and drew inspiration from his first “guitar hero,” Angus Young from ACDC. In the midst of fleshing out guitar fundamentals with teacher Amos Rodriguez, he felt the itch to play drums, further fueled by his “drum hero” Travis Barker from Blink 182 and Incubus drummer, Jose Pasillas. When he landed his first drum set at nine years old, it only took three lessons for Haydel to improve on his own.

It reached the point where he was teaching himself, focusing mostly on guitar and drums. By the age of twelve, he extended his prowess into a friend’s punk band, practicing nineties staples like skater punk tunes from then favorite, Blink 182. Somewhere along the way, between the soft rock of John Mayer’s ballads and Jack Johnson’s beach-chill songs, he realized he wanted an acoustic guitar. His purchase of a Taylor 314 CE, a solid wood acoustic, had Haydel exploring a more melodic style. The drums quickly dissipated, and the acoustic became his staple. By the age of twenty-two, Haydel was fully immersed in Mayer’s body of work. Listening to the artist’s blues influence roused Haydel’s curiosity. He dove into BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jimi Hendrix, absorbing the intrepid style of the blues guitar which quickly ignited his interest in attaining a music career.

I didn’t do well in college. Never knew what I wanted to do,” says Haydel recalling the “sh*t show” that was his late teens and young adulthood. At that point of hitting a rough patch and in dire need of a positive change, Haydel followed a friend’s advice and moved to Monroe. His goal was uncomplicated; he wanted to find a way to better enjoy his life without having to constantly look for a job that “wasn’t as bad as the last one,” he says, adding “The biggest inspiration was having cruddy jobs.” Trudging through what didn’t fit allowed him to affirm his music calling. Though a capable musician, Haydel only discovered his voice three years ago, singing along to songs in his car striving to emulate experienced vocalists. In the process of self-vocal coaching and learning songs to cover, he started to think that life as a full-time musician could be attainable, even if he had to embarrass himself the first few times on stage.

His first ‘big break’ was cemented at Enoch’s Irish Pub & Cafe when fellow local musician Josh Love invited musicians in the crowd to join him on stage. Love suggested Haydel as a substitute musician at Ruston’s Portico for a gig Love couldn’t make. That’s when Haydel realized he was filling up his week with performances. Quitting his job was a no-brainer. He was twenty-three when he placed both of his feet in the pursuit of a music career. His journey has been one marked with persistence. Fervently networking with venue managers, he relied mostly on word of mouth for employment. He still wrote music throughout the hustle, performing original songs between his covers. He remembers thinking at the Ruston Peach Festival around 2017, “Man, it would be cool to be up there.” The next year, his band opened for the headliner, a New Orleans based quartet called Bag of Donuts. “Things just started happening. My gut was telling me to keep going with it,” he says.

On February 8th, Haydel released his debut EP, which was recorded at Dockside Studio, a successful recording compound located on the banks of the Vermilion Bayou. His self-titled EP features heartfelt songs about his “personal journey and the many obstacles” he has encountered. It’s influenced by alternative rock sounds of the late 1990s and early 2000s, soft and melodic with a few burning tunes that edge on blues-rock, New Orleans-style funk, and his “church stuff.” “I always had a dream of having an album. I wanted to have my own music for me to listen to,” he explains. By July, he had ten songs when he began at Dockside Studios. Under the mentorship of Joe Stark, guitarist for ‘Bayou Soul’ singer and songwriter Marc Broussard, Haydel narrowed it down to the six on his EP. Thanks to Stark and Haydel’s guitarist Matt Breaux, recording lasted only three days. “I was really blessed to have really good musicians,” remarks Haydel recognizing the work of his producer, Justin Tocket, also producer to Marc Broussard. The rest was packaging, scheduling a photo shoot with Hunter Romero in the New Orleans Bywater area, then ordering three hundred physical copies of his CD from CD Baby.

The songs on his EP are about two years old, and though each touches on significant challenges from Haydel’s life, he keeps descriptions vague and open to interpretation. Even songs that seem on-the-nose, like “The Otherside” (which he wrote in one sitting) with lyrics that point to the importance of acknowledging wrongdoings and not knowing how to address mistakes, still allows listeners to relate on their own terms: “It’s been a while since I’ve been home, man I miss my friends. How heavy is the telephone? Am I too proud to make amends?” His catchiest and most relatable song is “Love That I Haven’t Found,” a mellow alternative rock tune reminiscent of crash-and-burn relationship songs: “Empty hearts remain. Can you recall what I can’t explain? Tell me there’s more to love than pain.” Every song features Haydel on drums and, arguably the frontrunner of most of his songs, his surf green, early nineties, Japanese made, Fender Stratocaster. In “Life is Good,” the Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron (an effect pedal) provides a distinctive choppy sonic flavor to Haydel’s colorful, smooth, and bluesy guitar licks. “I can say that all my music is personal to me. It’s real. I’m not writing about fantasies or hypotheticals. It’s the most vulnerable I’ve ever been,” says Haydel, finishing with “It’s the most vulnerable I could see myself ever being.”

“As a kid, I dreamt of being a rock star,” reveals Haydel. Though it was the one job he envisioned pursuing, he didn’t consider it achievable or responsible. But now he sings a different tune. “I’m just getting started,” he says, “This is the beginning. I’m going for the recording artist. I don’t just want to play around town.” His music is an outlet and a means of expression that he hopes inspires others to become more vulnerable and seek intimacy. “I think there is a big misunderstanding of intimacy and love. The world I live in, to surrender is to win. The way that I get by is surrender,” he affirms. Being relatable means not needing to “run the show” or caring what other may think of what he expresses in music. Joe Haydel may look like a boy next door, but his music speaks to a repository of experience that surpasses age and music genre.