By Jim Barber
Joel Hoekstra has been able to carve a musical career – and a pretty decent living – that is as rewarding creatively as it is diversified. To the general rock and roll loving public, he is probably best known as being one of the guitar players in the last incarnation of Whitesnake, as well as for an earlier turn in Night Ranger. The credibility he has developed as an exceptional musician, but also as a composer and interpreter of music, has allowed him the opportunity to spread his musical wings over the past decade with a special melodic rock project entitled Joel Hoekstra’s 13. The latest album from this impressive project, From The Fade, will be released on Feb. 27 through Italian label Frontiers Music Srl.
It’s not always easy for Hoekstra to salt away time to create the music for his 13 project. And that’s because his professional dance card is about as full as it can get. Each year, he tours extensively as a key member of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and the Monsters of Rock cruises. He has worked with Cher, on Broadway’s Rock of Ages, has filled in as a member of Foreigner and recently for classic German metal band Accept.
As an in-demand session player, arranger and composer, he has worked with the melodic rock supergroups, Iconic and Revolution Saints, and projects alongside Dino Jelusick, current Journey frontman Arnel Pineda, legendary prog-metal drummer Mike Portnoy (Dream Theatre), Billy Sheehan, and has a regular gig playing acoustic shows with vocalist/songwriter Brandon Gibbs (Devil City Angels).
On top of this, Hoekstra loves to share his passion and knowledge, first as a frequent columnist for Guitar World Magazine, then as a teacher at the Musician’s Institute, Rockstars of Tomorrow, Guitar Workshop and as a counsellor at the famous Rock ‘N Roll Fantasy Camp.
So, yeah, fitting in time to create original music takes discipline, scheduling and a deeply held passion for expressing oneself through the sound of music.
“For each of the previous albums, and for this one as well, I figure out a plan and map out the steps I need to take to gradually get it done. There’s never a designated period of time that I can set aside. I can basically never look at my calendar and go, ‘I’ve got nothing to do for a month.’ That just doesn’t happen. So, I start looking at what’s a reasonable time in which I can write the guitar riffs. And then where is some time when I can get the melodies down and I can write the lyrics. That’s the thing with these Joel Hoekstra’s 13 albums – I write everything on it, not just the guitar. I write the lyrics and the vocal melodies. Eventually I also have to sing a guide vocal for the whole album, which takes time too. Once that’s done, everyone else on the project can do their thing,” Hoekstra explained, down the Zoom call from California.
“I might be very controlling when it comes to the writing end of it, but when it comes to the recording and production style, I basically hire the right players and let them do their thing. That’s the philosophy, more or less. I very seldom will go back with any request to change something for them to do something differently when they play, which allows them some freedom and to put their stamp on it. And I know what it’s like to be on that end of it. I get hired on sessions or work with producers and I know that I always feel like my best results come from when people say, ‘just do your thing.’ It allows the musician to become a little more personally invested in the recording. And it’s why I’ve tried to use a lot of the same people from album to album.”
The core of the 13 project features bassist extraordinaire Tony Franklin (The Firm, Blue Murder), legendary hard rock/metal drummer Vinny Appice (Black Sabbath, Dio) and prog keyboard maestro Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater, Sons of Apollo), with additional background vocals done by Jeff Scott Soto (Journey, Yngwie Malmsteen) alongside the project’s new vocalist, Girish Pradhan.
“When it started, and when I decided to start doing this kind of music, which came after I had started to get known for my work in Trans-Siberian and Night Ranger, I was doing another project with Tony Franklin, who is a phenomenal bass player and really cool dude. I asked him who he’d want to use as a drummer if given the choice and he recommended Vinny Appice. I grew up on Vinny’s drumming, and it was perfect for what I was looking to do. I was looking to do something that would pay tribute to the music that made me want to play guitar. So that was perfect, I now had this amazing rhythm section,” he said.
“At that point, [Symphony X and Adrenaline Mob vocalist] Russell Allen was joining Trans-Siberian Orchestra and he fit the bill then to kind of cop a little bit of a Ronnie James Dio vibe, but also sing a little bit of the Foreigner vibe, like Lou Gramm and also Paul Rodgers – he’s another vocalist I am incredibly fond of. I was looking for a mash-up of those three and I know that’s totally technically impossible, but someone who could kind of get with the vibe of those three. And Russell was definitely capable as is Jeff Scott Soto, who has been a longtime friend of mine and he wanted to sing backing vocals. I was like, ‘well, that certainly will make my album really, really good. So I think I’ll do that.’ I mean, I could have plugged away at backing vocals myself, but Jeff is really great at it and it does really give these albums a special sound.
“And then Derek Sherinian is an obvious choice on keyboards. Not only does it give me a secondary soloist on the album so people aren’t tired of listening to me take guitar solos, I now have a secondary option that can surprise listeners, but which also just sounds great. So that’s how it came together. Now Russell’s schedule got kind of challenging. He was able to make the first two albums, Dying to Live [2015] and Running Games [2021], but he wasn’t available when it came to doing Crash of Life in 2023, I got [Indian singer] Girish Pradhan on board. He was recommended by the label and is a great singer, so I got him involved with From the Fade as well and he knocked it out of the park again.”
Each of the four Joel Hoekstra’s 13 albums were written at different periods of time, different circumstances, influenced by different things happening in the world as well as by Hoekstra’s natural evolution as a musician and creator of original music. So they each have their own vibe and tone, but what unites them is obviously Hoekstra’s artistic voice, and the musicians who play on each song.
“The personnel being consistent has been important. I think when you’re doing something that isn’t really going to tour – we did a single live show on the Monsters of Rock Cruise to support Dying to Live – but it’s basically a recording project. So having the same people on each record is important. It means there’s a sound to the project so it doesn’t get completely scattered from record to record. That allows me to have a little bit of versatility when it comes to the writing. I think if you really look at the lighter end of some of the tracks on the new album, some of them can get really poppy for somebody like Vinny Appice to be playing drums on them. And then you can look to the heavier side of it, and there’s some really heavy stuff that’s happened along the way – the bonus track on Dying to Live, a song called ‘Kill Or Be Killed,’ was like, serious metal,” he said.
“So it had a liberating result for everyone by being consistent with the personnel, as well as keeping the gear simple. I tend to pretty much just go Les Paul, and maybe I’ll put another guitar here or there. Having a consistent drum sound on each record, a consistent bass sound on each record, it helps it fit together. That way you can kind of write whatever you want, and it’s still going to have some common ground, or connective tissue as you said. In terms of the more emotional or lyrical themes of each record, I tend to get myself on a roll and a theme will develop when I start writing lyrics. So Dying to Live was basically about me getting sober. A lot of the lyrics are about that, but it’s done in such a way that people can interpret it their own way and fit it into their own lives and their own experiences. For that album, when you listen to it, a lot of times you can hear my voice, but a lot of times the lyrics are the voice of alcohol. Every album comes from its own experience. Running Games came from a situation in 2019, before COVID, where I was on the road all the time when I came up with the lyrics. I looked back and saw that I was on the road 285 days that year, so that album was a lot of reflection about how and why you develop that lifestyle, where you’re basically alone in a hotel room for 285 nights. It’s an experience where all of sudden it clicks in and you wonder, why is it like this?
“From the Fade, which is coming out at the end of the month, it’s more or less a reflection on a lifetime of grappling with making a living in music. Sometimes it’s similar to Dying to Live in that what you’re listening to with the lyrics singing at me and other times it might be me with the lyrics in my own head. So, that’s how they develop as their own theme. I do have to say that there is a bit of a difference between this new album and the previous one Crash of Life. Crash of Life was written in terms of the melodies where it could have been still Russell Allen or Girish singing it. I wasn’t sure who was going to be doing it. From the Fade I wrote it a little more in terms of taking Girish’s voice, especially his screaming into account. And a lot of the guitar stuff, especially the riffs, have a heavier edge because I was writing those parts when I was filling in for Accept, meaning the album inherently took on a more heavy metal sound. It’s still defined as melodic hard rock, but it’s really apparent when you listen to it that it is a little heavier than the other three records, and that’s because of writing to suit Girish and because of the vibe I was in while playing with Accept, which has made the process of the album kind of fun for me, to see what the theme became and what the overall sound would be.”
The promo for the album began with the release of the powerful single ‘The Fall,’ which really gives you a sampling of Pradan’s exceptional vocal dynamism, as well as some incendiary guitar playing from Hoekstra.
“In ‘The Fall’ I am giving nods to a couple of influences that are definitely there in the guitar riffs, which I’ve often ignored, or not really brought up before in interviews. You often go through a list of bands or guitar players that influenced you and I often forgot to mention Queensryche. The main riff of the song is very Queensryche with the harmony guitar lead at the top. And the verse riff is definitely Dokken influenced – definitely a George Lynch influence there, and he is also somebody that was a big influence on me. But both of those, Queensryche and Dokken are ones I seem to always fail to mention. So I’ve been trying to mention them on this press cycle religiously. And that song is a great example of that. I think it turned out to be a good combination of those influences from the label’s perspective: it’s hooky, but the overall sound, and that of the album, is heavier,” he said, as he, indeed began to talk about more of his musical influences.
“I have included Rush sometimes in my rap when I talk through the initial heavy metal bands that made me want to play guitar. And then I’ll talk about lighter bands that kind of came in after that, those being the likes of Journey, Foreigner, Boston and then I’ll talk about the classic rock acts like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Hendrix, as well as a little bit more about the guitar albums era: the Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Steve Morse stuff. I was the kind of guy who listened to them, and then a lot of the Tony McAlpine and Vinnie Moore albums when they were coming out. And definitely, like I mentioned, the progressive stuff like Rush came. They’re probably my favourite band of all time, and I don’t talk about them a ton either, but I usually mention them when I get to my progressive influences. I enjoyed everything Rush did, and with Yes, because of my age, it was all about the Trevor Rabin era. I get judged a lot for that, but like I said, it came at the age I was at. The Big Generator album [released by Yes in 1987] was one that I wore out and I also played Trevor Rabin’s Can’t Look Away [1989] all the time too.
“The progressive thing, for me, is always there. But with the style on these Joel Hoekstra’s 13 records, I think the personnel isn’t right for that kind of statement. So, basically, when it comes to the writing, I’m looking to do stuff where I am wearing my influences on my sleeve a little bit – tips of the cap to what made me want to play guitar. You’ll even hear things like an AC/DC influence poke through, or a Zeppelin influence at times. Going the prog route with the current personnel probably isn’t the right move. It’s not music where I want to write odd meter throughout and try to prove that I can write math rock. People can go listen to my first solo albums, when I was more in that headspace. The Moon is Falling [2003] was a record where I did a lot of odd meter and a whole lot of, I guess we would call proggy music, including a lot of weird guitar sounds. I spent a lot of time back then just trying to avoid a normal guitar tone on the record. I might go back to that style someday, where I kind of write that really progressive style. But right now, I am really enjoying making these records. It’s classic rock. And even for that particular style, I’m not a huge fan of the long-winded guitar solo that carries on for two or three minutes. I don’t really do much of that on these records at all. They’re kind of fashioned to be really good classic rock songs, great sounding songs that you would enjoy listening to as just a fan of good music, rather than hearing me go, ‘hey, check me out on the guitar.’”
‘Start to Fight’ is one of the more anthemic pieces on From The Fade but started out coming from a place of introspection.
“I guess it’s really about grappling with self-discipline, as it relates to being a professional musician. A lot of times in this business, you have to create your own work by working. If you’re inactive, then everything will be inactive. A lot of times you have to push yourself to that point where you start to fight if you feel the tide is turning against you. You’ve got to stand in the face of that and continue to work with music one way or another and find avenues that help you make a living. That’s one reason why so many guys like me are doing more than one project. Making a living is definitely an important thing with that. But the other thing that I really like about doing a lot of different things is that it keeps you on the instrument and helps you be a better player as you go. So, the more reasons you have where you absolutely have to play better, the better for you in the long run. The ultimate goal with that, for me, is Jeff Beck. If you look at him, he was getting better and better all the way until he passed. He just continued to improve on guitar until the day he died. That’s really important for me,” Hoekstra said.
“One thing that’s tricky about it is, yes, you can do that in different ways, but for me I always try to do that in the real world. And by real world I guess I am referencing mainly playing lots live, recording music and writing albums – anything where it’s about the real world and not necessarily, like, shred content creation, where I’m going to spend eight hours practicing chops and maybe post a 30-second clip of that at the end of the day. That’s just not appealing to me and my lifestyle isn’t really set up to accommodate that. I live in New York City in an apartment. I’ve got kids. I don’t really have a great video studio to do all that, which I guess means I’m a little behind in that department. I mean, I have done some collab videos that have seen a lot of success with Dino Jelusick, that have millions of views and all that great stuff. But I don’t do the daily posting of me playing a shred lick on Instagram. I don’t really have the lifestyle or I guess even the desire to even want to do that.”
The From the Fade album concludes on a potent emotional crescendo with the compelling, reflective track ‘Quite the Ride.’
”I guess it’s a narrative on things taking off for me and at times things collapsing in my life and my career. There’s some stuff that’s fictional man. If you read the lyrics it comes across like me murdering someone. Obviously, I’m not a murderer, but sometimes songwriting is about fantasy and fun, so there’s always fictional elements in the lyrics. It’s not always autobiographical in nature, but it is in the sense of the overall meaning which is that it’s been quite the ride so far. It’s about that arc of finding things taking off and then having things slow down or go down and then reflecting on all of it. To me, I feel like I’ve had a lot of really cool experiences, but when my name comes up to the average person they would say, ‘who?’ So there’s that. But then within the music scene, there are totally people who know who I am, but our scene is also like a small pond. We’re not mainstream, which is just fine. I’ve never claimed to be the cool guy or the trendy guy. I’ve just worked at guitar and followed what has worked for me. If you work hard, certain things stick and certain things open up and then you try to do the best you can when that happens. That’s been my approach, but that doesn’t mean everybody needs to take that approach. It’s just my experience,” he said, before the conversation veered a little bit into the subject of AI and its involvement in the creation of music.
“It doesn’t scare me. I am just going to keep doing what I do and then try to control the things I can control. I feel like if you do that, maybe it’s wasted energy because AI might take over anyways, and there’s nothing I’m going to do that’s going to change it, so I don’t spend a lot of time being scared. I see the reality of it and anticipate things slowing down for all of us. But simultaneously, I will just keep about my business, make sure I’m working hard every day, and you never know. Listen, I am old enough to remember the advent of the ATM machine and everybody thinking that’s the end of bank tellers. But you can still walk into a bank and there are still tellers. So, hopefully, I’ll be one of those bank tellers.
“There’s a lot of awful stuff happening in the world, especially if you’re on the internet for any length of time, that falls under the same category. There are a lot of things that are a constant narrative online that are out of my control, and that I try to tune out. Obviously, that’s hard to do because you open social media and there it is. But for me, maintaining a focus on keeping things simple, like making sure that I’m working every day to move forward, is more my focus. If I can stay in that headspace, that helps me keep going and not let what’s happening in the bigger picture, things that I can’t control, weigh me down or take me out of that headspace. For me, the best way to serve, and to try and do my part, as a musician, is doing what I do to help give people an escape or make people happy or whatever, or feel any kind of emotion. To take them on some kind of a ride with what I am doing musically to help them try and tune out a lot of stuff no one can control. I think all musicians and songwriters feel that way.”
As with the other three Joel Hoekstra’s 13 albums, From the Fade will be coming out on Frontiers Music srl., the label that also worked with his former employer David Coverdale and Whitesnake.
“I want to give a nice shout out and say how grateful I am that they’ve not only released these albums, but they’ve always given me full artistic freedom. There’s never been a point where they’ve said, ‘can you make an album that sounds like this?’ or ‘we don’t like this song, can you write a different one?’ They’ve really just gotten behind everything I’ve given them, and I want to thank them for that. This is the fourth album and it’s really been a nice thing for me. I do these as a creative outlet and something to, I guess, continue that artist side of my career for the entire body of work when all is said and done, not to just be a sideman who had some cool gigs. And I love that I’ve had a great career as a sideman, if you will, or a member of different bands. But it’s nice to release your own music sometimes,” he said, talking about where the 13 project fits into his life and career.
“It’s my statement as an artist, and I guess how I’d like people to see me, or at least one part of my career. If you listen to my first solo albums [released in the early 2000s], you’d really understand how odd my path has been. You’ll see a lot of the different styles I’ve run across, or different phases in my playing. It was interesting because basically when I set out in the professional world, the whole landscape changed. I was really into instrumental guitar records and wanted to be in a band, basically, where I could be a good guitar player, playing hard rock music. But the 1990s music and Grunge thing kind of hit as I was set free to go out into being a professional guitar player. So everything changed. I realized if I were to always play that style, I’m not going to work; I’m not going to be able to make a living doing this, and that’s obviously first and foremost. I mean, I wanted to spend my life being a pro guitar player. That was my goal, not to be a rock star. So anything that I’ve achieved in that domain has been a pleasant surprise for me.
“I came from a very poor family, to put it bluntly, in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. We had no money, no connections. And for me to say I was going to do any of the gigs that I’ve been able to do in my life, coming from that area and that background, was laughable. So, I take a lot of pride in the fact that the hard work and being diligent with guitar has paid off in that regard. I just don’t ever want to turn a blind eye to the initial dream, which I think all of us start out with, which is making your own music. And I may not make a living off these records, but that’s not really the intent. It’s not a money-making endeavor. It’s strictly creative and something that at the end of the day can speak to, I guess, the overall picture of my career. And I could mention a lot of the sideman gigs that would really start to make people go, ‘whoa!’ There’s a lot of stuff that people wouldn’t know about in my trajectory in that department, including playing for The Turtles, and playing in Big Brother and the Holding Company, playing in Hip-Hop bands, playing in acid jazz bands, all kinds of weird stuff that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from the guitar player in Whitesnake. Now, I’m not alone by any means. There are certainly other players that are very versatile and can play different styles and have been through different phases. It just doesn’t run across the board. There are some people who found early success doing the rock guitar thing, the prodigious guitar work thing, the shredding if you will, and they just kind of do their thing. There’s a lot of that as well. I definitely fall under the category of guys who went through a lot of stuff to finally have things open up for me and find success. And I don’t regret that. I think it’s awesome because it’s helped me become a more well-rounded musician in the end. And it will help me as some of the ‘rock stardom’ thing dies off or falls away, because I can still enjoy making a living as a guitar player.”
And speaking of David Coverdale. At the end of 2025, the former Deep Purple frontman and founder/songwriter/lead vocalist for legendary hard rock band Whitesnake announced his retirement from the music business after a 50-plus year career. Hoekstra had been in the final iteration of Whitesnake, from 2014 until they stopped touring in 2022, working on The Purple Album, The Purple Tour (live album) and the band’s final studio album, Flesh and Blood, which came out in 2019.
“I’m happy for him. I feel like he’s earned it, certainly. He was a great boss, great to work with and work for. And I genuinely wish him happiness for the rest of his life. Did I see it coming? Yeah. Our farewell tour [which began in May of 2022] had the plug pulled [mostly because of Coverdale’s health, but other band members also had medical issues] a fraction of the way through, so at that point in time, it entered all of our minds that, ‘well, is this going to be it? Are we going to regroup and do this?’ But honestly, anything to do with the future of Whitesnake is definitely David’s call. And anything he decides to do, I respect and wish him nothing but the best because when I think back to shaking hands with him and joining the band, he lived up to everything he said he was going to do for me,” he said.
“And I’ve never seen a band leader, which is corny thing to say, it sounds like I am talking about someone from the Big Band era, but I’ve never seen a band leader get behind his players the way David does. He would tweet about them, and support everything they were doing. I mean, if I was doing a small acoustic gig with Brandon Gibbs, there was David Tweeting it out for me, or putting it out into the world. He was always tweeting pictures of us on a regular basis and being supportive. When we were touring or recording, he was always telling us to play like ourselves and follow our hearts with everything we did. It was a really great experience. I didn’t know what to expect when I joined. I was a pro, and prepared for anything, but it worked out really well, as far as my overall experience with David and being in Whitesnake.
‘When I joined, they were doing the Purple Album [revisiting Coverdale’s time in Deep Purple] so a lot of the acoustic stuff, like ‘Soldier of Fortune’ and an acoustic version of ‘Sail Away,’ which was a pretty big reimagining of that material, he basically turned a lot of that over to me. So, when we were doing ‘Soldier of Fortune’ and I was playing the main track, David came in to sing a vocal and we cut that live together. And most of what you hear on the record is what he sang right there in that first pass. So it was a really awesome moment for me, where I just joined the band, and here I was playing ‘Soldier of Fortune,’ kind of the foundation track of what I was going to be doing acoustically and he was right there singing it live. I remember thinking, ‘this is a legendary guy in rock music right here singing along with me. This is a really cool moment.’ Then he ended up doing a remix for the music video, where he kind of repackaged it with strings. I think the video credits even say David Coverdale, Joel Hoekstra and the Hook City Strings. That’s pretty cool to have a video out there where you’re the only player accompanying him, and you’re both being accompanied by a string section.”
For more information on Joel Hoekstra’s 13, the new album From the Fade and his other various musical activities, visit his social media accounts or http://joelhoekstra.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
