As a much in-demand and versatile guitarist, Joel Hoekstra has played with everyone from Whitesnake and Trans-Siberian Orchestra to Cher, as well as appearing on Broadway for six years in the musical Rock of Ages. Using the moniker Joel Hoekstra’s 13, he’s also released solo hard rock albums, the latest of which, Running Games, comes out on February 12 via Frontiers Music Srl.
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“The Joel Hoekstra 13 albums, that’s definitely the big deal with me to be able to really write the songs, not just contribute,” Hoekstra says, calling from his New York City home. “So that’s what sets these apart and makes them fun for me to do. Most of the bands, I’m a piece of the puzzle. It’s nice to be the boss once in a while.”
Free to make whatever type of music he wishes for his own albums, Hoekstra chose to highlight his hard rock chops on Running Games. “I usually call it Dio-ish at its heaviest and Foreigner-ish at its lightest,” Hoekstra says. “The songwriting style is entirely classic rock. Under this name, Joel Hoekstra’s 13, I want people to be able to expect this kind of vibe. I’m not going to hit them with a progressive rock album or whatever.”
Hoekstra enlisted several of his accomplished musician friends to help him perform the tracks, including vocalist Russell Allen (Symphony X, Adrenaline Mob), drummer Vinny Appice (Black Sabbath, Dio), bassist Tony Franklin (The Firm, Blue Murder), and keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Sons of Apollo, Dream Theater), with backing vocals by Jeff Scott Soto (Sons of Apollo, Trans-Siberian Orchestra).
When writing his music, Hoekstra says, “I try to strike a balance between songs that are melody-driven and songs that are riff-driven, being in the genre that I’m in. On this record, I would write the guitar riffs and then write a melody to it and construct it that way. Other songs, I’m singing the melody and I’ll have lyrics first, and then I’ll go to the guitar and figure out, ‘Okay how does this go?’ So I think, in the end, I’m looking for a balance of that on these records.”
For the album’s lyrics, Hoekstra says, “I didn’t really intend it to have a common theme, but a lot of the stuff is about being on the road and travel, [which] ties back deep into my life and who I am. Hence the title, Running Games.” In the year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he says, “I was on the road for 285 days out of 365.”
Ironically, the pandemic is what actually enabled Hoekstra to finish this album. “It’s not ideal going hotel room to hotel room trying to do an album,” he says. But forced off the road due to show cancellations, he suddenly found himself at home with the time to focus on his own songs. He says that it didn’t occur to him to use this non-touring time to take actual time off.
“I think work creates work,” Hoekstra says. “You have to be always busy with stuff, otherwise it just dries up in a hurry. I think ultimately, it’s about trying to move forward and be productive every day. At least for me, that’s what it’s about.” To that end, Hoekstra has also been staying busy doing session work, as well teaching an average of thirty master guitar lessons a week via Skype. “I’m playing guitar seven or eight hours a day right now. It’s definitely intense, in terms of the workload.”
Teaching guitar is, in a way, a return to Hoekstra’s roots. For years, he worked as a guitar teacher in Chicago, while playing in a wide range of local bands at night (including a wedding band, a swing band, and an acid jazz band). “I think all that stuff, it just makes you a better musician in the end,” he says, “so I did a lot of different things to end up at this point. I just rode the wave of, ‘Where is life taking me?’”
From the start, it seemed likely that Hoekstra’s life would lead him into a music career. “My parents were classical musicians so they had me going really early on cello and piano,” he says. “I was three and seven [years old], respectively, when I played those instruments. I’m really glad that my parents had me do all that because it developed my sense of pitch and rhythm at a very young age.”
When Hoekstra was eleven years old, though, he discovered AC/DC. Their guitarist, Angus Young, inspired Hoekstra to begin guitar lessons. “I obsessed on it—I played it all the time,” he says. By the time he was in high school, he’d begun playing in bands with his friends. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and attended GIT (the Guitar Institute of Technology), where he continued learning advanced playing techniques. He says he never considered any other career options.
“I never wanted a Plan B because I watched all my friends have their Plan B, and their Plan B became Plan A immediately,” Hoekstra says. “As soon as you have any other kind of option in life, it’s going to happen so much easier than music, because music is a blood sport to try to make a living in.”
After GIT, although Hoekstra spent several years teaching and playing in local bands, he says he still didn’t lose faith that he was on the right track. “I was so excited over the simplest things,” he says. “Like, ‘I’m traveling out of state to go do a gig. Oh my gosh, this is amazing!’ Stuff like that was a big deal to me. Every step along the way has been that way for me.”
Finally, in 2001, Hoekstra was hired to play guitar in a New York Off-Broadway theater production of Love, Janis, a musical about Janis Joplin. “I was thirty [years old]. It took me that long to be only performing and not teaching,” Hoekstra says. That show ran for two years, and by the end of that time, his profile had raised enough that he was hired to play with Night Ranger. From there, he’s gone on to work with Cher, Whitesnake, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, among others.
Hoekstra says he likes working with all those different artists, but it’s a special thing when he can put out an album of his own. He admits that he’s feeling quite a bit of anticipation as the release date for Running Games approaches. “I mean, I don’t know what it is we’re all expecting,” he says with a laugh. “Maybe musicians somehow magically expect we’re going to release something and every single person on the planet is going to like it. It’s inevitable that there’s going to be dissenters. But you put your heart and soul into things, and hope for the best.”
