Joey Hendricks remembers having his first panic attack when he was 11 or 12. “I didn’t really know what was happening,” he says. He was out to dinner with his family when he felt his heart pounding in his chest. “I kept having to leave to go to the bathroom—to literally collect myself and breathe.”
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“In the moment, we didn’t connect the dots, but looking back on how I’ve gone through my whole life, it definitely started to make sense that it was anxiety,” he tells American Songwriter over a recent phone call. “It’s been such a prominent part of my life. It’s something I’ve learned how to deal with. The brain is really good at making you believe that any time you’re going into a panic attack that you’re dying.”
“After talking to a therapist, she said if you were dying, your heart wouldn’t start racing and you wouldn’t freak out. That put it into perspective. Writing songs has been my saving grace. It’s a way for me to step outside of myself.”
His debut EP, Between the Clouds, containing songs written nearly four years ago, has been a long time coming. Lead single “Yours or Mine” is only a primer for his particular brand of nostalgia-packaged music, zipping from deep yearning of “Hollywood” to the slick and groovy “Drifter,” the latter depicting his “fear of commitment” in relationships. “It’s that inner fight I’ve had with myself where one side of me desperately wants to find real, true love. The other side of me wants to run as fast and far away as possible,” he says.
Smack dab in the middle, “Top Drawer” waxes nostalgic for his youth, as Hendricks lists off various personal items, like a Zippo lighter emblazoned with a Playboy Bunny, from high school. That top draw is a time machine, he sings, letting the past whisk him away again.
Lighters up, sun setting over Red Rocks / With old friends I don’t see as much, he continues, memories burning hot on his mind. I’m kissing Janie in the middle of ‘Dream On’ / Swore we were never breaking up.
Hendricks had returned home to Anacortes, Washington for Christmas two years ago and wandered back to his childhood bedroom. Waves of emotion flooded him. “I don’t think this stuff was in my top drawer when I was trying to hide it from my parents because that would have been a terrible hiding place,” he laughs. “I literally still have the Zippo lighter, and old pictures of me and my friends from high school, and old concert tickets, and bottle caps—all that stuff.”
Upon returning to Nashville, he immediately set out to work writing the song with go-to collaborators Michael Whitworth and Michael Lotten. “We were talking about those items,” he says, “ and how they really take you back to that 17-year-old version of yourself. I literally have an old car key I used once to open a can of beer that snapped in half. I can’t get rid of that. There’s no way.”
With “Going Home,” Hendricks continues drowning in nostalgia, reflecting back on numerous other homebound visits over the years. “You realize how much so much has changed about it and how absolutely nothing has changed,” he says. More importantly, he realized how much he had changed as a person, no longer fitting into what his hometown had to offer. “It was eye-opening. You go back home trying to reconnect to that kid, and it’s impossible. It doesn’t feel the way that it did when you were a kid. I figured I’m not the only one who’s felt that.”
Admittedly, Hendricks has always been “a pretty nostalgic person,” he says, with a laugh. “I grew up thinking that way a lot. I’m always looking back on things. There’s a restlessness in my heart. When I started writing songs, that was the theme that naturally happened. It wasn’t something I was aiming for, but when we put all these songs down, it made sense. It had a story I wasn’t even necessarily aware of.”
It was the summer between his freshman and sophomore year in high school when his father brought home a book called “How to Play Acoustic Guitar for Beginners.” That changed everything. “Before I learned any cover songs, I naturally wrote a song about my hometown. I remember I was pretty nervous to play for anybody. I hadn’t sang my whole life up to this point, so I played it for my parents. I had them turn their back to me. Afterward, my mom turned around, and she was bawling. I’d never experienced that type of feeling before. It felt like I had found a super-power in a way.”
And he fell in love with songwriting right then and there.
Kacey Musgraves’ 2013 debut record, Same Trailer Different Park, also struck a chord with him. “I was just obsessed. It made me realize you can be in country music, and there’s a place for a lot of different varieties of the sounds,” he says, referencing his father’s love of artists like The Beatles, The Doors, and Led Zeppelin.
Hendricks moved to Nashville in 2017 and quickly signed a publishing deal with Parallel Music. Fully intending to pursue a career solely as a songwriter, he never had ambitions to be an artist himself. But when he wrote “Drifter” and “Top Drawer,” a switch flipped inside him. “I realized it was my story to a T. I didn’t know if I felt comfortable letting anybody else sing them,” he says.
Two years later, his debut single “Yours or Mine” did something he never anticipated: it hit big on streaming. With nearly 800,000 streams on Spotify alone, it became clear an audience was hungry for his music. “I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t have much of a social media following or anything really going on. When I put out that song, and it got that response, it was validating for me.”
With producer Daniel Ross’ guidance, Hendricks transports the listener like all good country music should do. Between the Clouds grounds itself in the present, with production that fits snuggly on radio, yet there’s a timelessness to the lyrics. Having co-written quite a bit together, and hung out on many occasions, he knew bringing in Ross was the right idea. “He’s a relatively new producer in town and just extremely talented. I’ve always envisioned that if I do have any form of success as an artist I want it to be with my friends. I couldn’t have anybody else do it.”
Photo by Matthew Berinato
