Joey Hebdo

First time I ever met Joey in 2003, I played after him at an open mic night. I didn't want to even try to play after hearing him, I just wanted him to not stop. I became a fan.

After hearing several CDs of live shows that he was nice enough to GIVE me, I've grown quite fond of them all. un EP is awesome, a good introduction to Joey's style. He has so many more awesome songs in addition to the five on this album. Track 3, "I Will Find You" is amazing and pretty much genius. Enjoy
- CDBaby.com

What I enjoy so much about your music is your freedom to just "rift on a known score" so to speak. Your music travels like a journey, and when you play its kinda like you invite the listener to hop in the car with you and ride shotgun. The car drives itself, you only appear to be behind the wheel. From an artist perspective, you're just as much the instrument as your guitar. The surrender is rare... No definite notes or road maps. Perhaps, just an idea of things you might like to see along the way:-)

--Rachel Stiller (Long Beach, CA)
- Racel Stiller

Live shows consist of an energetic and magnetizing Hebdo that’s had 10 years of experience on the stage. Using dynamics and vocal acrobats to swoon and cradle his listeners, he can work a crowd like no one else at his level of professionalism. Teens to Geriatrics have been seen attending his show, but those ranging from 18-25 years of age are his largest, most solid, fanbase. - Media

Joey Hebdo; Prosciutto
A Syrupy Album That Captures Ardor And Love

© Ingrid Calderon
Nov 13, 2009

A fresh, young talent that pampers our longing for a little musical revolution

In the quaint city of Columbus, Ohio a bright melodic contribution to music named Joey Hebdo has been born. With his second album, Prosciutto, comes at just the right time. It goes without saying that perhaps the world has fallen asleep when it comes to recognizing good quality music lately. We’re bombarded with Lady GaGa’s and the Kenny G/Weezer atrocity. In that pool of last and lost attempts materializes Joey Hebdo. With an angelic voice and polished style making the soul wake up and breathe once again.

Joey Hebdo’s Prosciutto comes at you like a whirlwind of different textures. From its opening track, Cold in the West, the guitar hypnotizes and swirls in your mind sending you to and fro with no destination; a definite journey of lyrical content and tempo changes. The second track, Triple Stamp, incorporates trumpets and foot stomping reminding the listener perhaps of a typical night out on the town letting the demons loose.

According to an interview on youtube.com, Joey says that Verbal Pool Pass was a jam that was spontaneously recorded all the while being recorded on film. The eerie opening riff easily makes the song uniquely different from all the rest on the album, right up until its abrupt ending. The title track, Prosciutto can easily be the most addictive track on the album. His voice sounds like a stunning bird returning a mating call with tinges of flirtation.

He sends us on a journey that tragically comes to an end. See Things, cools the pulse and reminds us that we never know how we look through other people’s eyes or the impact we leave on other people without realizing. The rawness in some of the tracks in the album come through as if we were there with him. The vintage microphone sound incorporated on multiple tracks eminates a feeling technology long ago killed. The truth is simple and legit; the whole album is absolutely exquisite.

His message is straightforward and appears effortless. He speaks of love and the hurt that comes as a side dish. The mistakes we make when we aren’t ready. The small things that make all the difference and the big things that take the place of the sacred act of loving. He sings for us and to us about the things we forget and the things we wish we could always remember. - Ingrid Calderon

joey hebdo grinds down the elements that resonate around us and then mixes them into his honey-tinged vocals. his music is intelligent, playful and adventurous. it is beautiful.
-elizabeth nihiser
Logan, OH


- Elizabeth Nihiser

Joey couldn't be a nicer guy! And one of the most talented musicians I've ever met. Talking to him only a couple times while he was traveling I could tell he was loving every minute of. Keep on rockin' Joey! I'll support you however I can!
-Jake Doll
Dayton, OH
- Jake Doll

Locals Only: Joey Hebdo
Thursday, December 17, 2009
By Chris DeVille
________________________________
Joey Hebdo

"Once I got away," Joey Hebdo said, "I just personally exploded."

Hebdo doesn't mean his life went up in flames during his West Coast odyssey. The Columbus singer-songwriter underwent explosive artistic and personal growth, and he has his new album Prosciutto to show for it.

Hebdo grew up here and started his music career at Ohio University early this decade. Over the years, his band Gypsy Caravan changed their name to Blackcoin and moved back to Columbus. In 2007, the patchouli-scented rockers relocated to Los Angeles, looking not to escape Ohio but to see the world.

Out West, the band fell apart quickly. Hebdo began working as a downtown delivery guy and rented an El Salvadoran family's back room in South Central. It was his first experience in "the ghetto," and he never felt freer or safer.

"It was just like a cell block. There was no way anyone could find me," Hebdo said. "I loved it."

Hebdo did a lot of exploring. Beach walks, museum trips and neighborhood excursions sent his mind racing. He was also spending a lot of time in his room with the guitar, often drowsily letting his creations slip through the cracks of his memory.

That changed the day he bought a digital voice recorder.

"I set it down on the bed, and I hit record, and I just started playing, and songs just started spilling out," Hebdo said. "Seven of the songs that are on Prosciutto were all written in one day."

Hebdo continued to write and refine his new music: airy folk-pop unencumbered by the divergent creativity and crowded sonic space that dragged down Blackcoin. After nine months, he moved in with a friend in San Francisco. Hebdo's "extreme artist" roommate helped him create the stenciled logo that adorns Hebdo's new CD and T-shirts. Then he moved to Portland, a city that reminded him a lot of his hometown.

"Within one week it hit me: I've got to go back to Columbus," Hebdo said. "I got what I need."

So he traveled back down the coast, met his dad in L.A. and drove with him back to Ohio, arriving Halloween night 2008. He spent his winter in Athens, recording in short bursts at 3 Elliott Studio, and emerged with an album unlike anything he'd created. He's been calling it "adventure folk."

"It can go wherever," Hebdo said. And it does, from whispery ballads to stomping rockers to string-laden serenades to jugband ditties with Sufjan Stevens horns. Lyrically, Prosciutto is imprinted with exploration too. The title track's call to arms: "Let's break our watches and forget how time passes."

Since finishing Prosciutto, Hebdo has continued the travel theme, commuting to work as a zipline tour guide for Hocking Hills Canopy Tours and playing out in Columbus as much as possible during the zipline off-season. He's playing two shows this weekend - one with his four-piece band, another solo.
________________________________

copy this link to go to the actual article:
http://www.columbusalive.com/live/content/features/stories/2009/12/17/ca_m_joey-hebdo.html
- Columbus Alive

Joey Hebdo at Rumba Cafe
March 30, 2010

March 27, 2010 - I could feel the energy as I entered the Rumba Cafe. I began the evening as usual, ordering a drink at the bar and perusing the bar for information available from the performers of the evening. As I was looking over the merchandise table, Joey Hebdo came up to me asking if I needed any information or help with the items at the table. Hebdo is very forthcoming and wants to help in any way possible. We had met previously but it had been at least a year, so I introduced myself. I had previously contacted him regarding the review, thus he was well aware of who I was and what my goals were for the evening. He stated that he had already checked over the Ape Wind website and liked what we were doing. I then knew that this man completely carries the characteristics necessary to be successful in an entertainment profession, and he wasn't done convincing me of this just yet.

Hebdo is completely comfortable up on the stage. If he feels nervous or uncomfortable, he shouldn't. He looks like he could be a natural actor, as he looks like he's meant to be up there. The crowd immediately quieted upon his first song. He commands the crowd with his quiet yet powerful demeanor and demands attention with his delicate and grooved out tones. Hebdo is also quite entertaining with his banter, as he talks to the crowd. At one point he stated, "I almost wanna pretend this isn't me up here, it's someone else. It's fun, ya know? Well, here we go then." It was as if there were two people in his head talking to each other and getting ready to play the song.

Hebdo has some excellent whistling abilities, which definitely added some cool parts to his fun melodic sounding vocal tones. I was seriously impressed with the accuracy he kept while quickly switching from a whistling to a vocal sections of certain songs. Along with his whistling abilities comes a knack for switching from very high to low tones and back without missing a beat. Many of his vocal tones would start very light and high and end up in a very low and growling manner, which was very entertaining and impressive. It sounded very natural and proved to be musically valuable within many of the songs throughout the evening. If I had to pick artists of a similar vocal manner, the first names that come to mind are Shannon Hoon, Ben Harper and Jamiroquai; all of which I am very attracted to musically.

The song constructions seemed so simple, yet sounded so sophisticated, while hearing it performed. The selections seemed to demand a depth of meaning portrayed through the complexities within the lines Hebdo sang; but only if a listener takes the time to dissect what he is saying. A personal example for me would be a verse where Hebdo belts out, "Dust and smoke fill our laugh, astrology's now a jar of ash, I think its time we got this man a box. It never really mattered if we shared the same DNA, I really like the way that you see things." It's not only the picture Hebdo paints with his words, but once again the way he portrays it: in a manner that, at points, would obviously not need the instruments backing. There were definitive points when the instrumentation would die down and the club was filled with his voice alone, and it was inspiring.

As a musician myself, and an avid fan of seeing local live music, I enjoy knowing how the club's employees take to the performers and their needs for the evening. My table happened to be next to the sound booth and at one point I heard the sound guy exclaim, "This is a pain in the ass," as more people came up including the other artist for the evening to collaborate with Hebdo. Joey had invited three more people on the stage with him. One picked up an upright bass, one just had a shaker and was using some kind of vocal pattern for percussion, and one sat down at the drums. I think it may have been at this point where the sound guy became a bit flustered and maybe he just wasn't aware of this setup during the first set. For all we know Hebdo wasn't aware either but it worked out quite well.

This setup, along with the full Hebdo band setup during the third set of the night, was very patient with their music regarding crowd chatter as they would build their songs. No doubt they were well aware that by songs end they would have most of the crowds' attention. At times Hebdo seemed to just carry on a conversation with the audience just as he had previously in the evening while walking around before the performance. He seemed to treat everyone there as if they were genuine friends that go way back, and after this evening most of them probably felt like this, even if it wasn't completely true. The entire night was a feel good music extravaganza. If you are into a fun night listening to very talented and friendly musicians, this is your show.

If you would like to check out Joey Hebdo, buy some merchandise, or find where you can catch him next check out: http://www.facebook.com/joeyhebdomusic or http://www.myspace.com/joeyhebdo and also http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/hebdojoseph.
- www.apewind.com

Jaye Effe
Joey Hebdo & Megan Palmer, 3/27 Rumba Cafe
Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2010

“What would you do if you knew you could not fail”? So asked the foil wrapper of a Dove Promise that capped my lunch on Wednesday, 4 days after. Honestly, if I knew the answer to that question I suspect I wouldn’t be sitting here writing a music review that nobody will read, about a show not 200 people saw, but that has nonetheless haunted me since. But there you have it.

Joey Hebdo, on the other hand, would play music. In front of people. And that he did last Saturday night at Rumba Café, sharing the stage for a night with C-Bus’s Megan Palmer and her Hopefuls. Hebdo, though, plays not like he knows he cannot fail, but like failure could not be further from the point. When you see him working the bar before a show – uncontained benevolent energy in a clearance-rack track top and trademark fedora, hocking the requisite CDs out of a vintage-any-day-now white suitcase – you could be excused for mistaking his apparent ignorance of failure for naivete. That excuse would have lasted you precisely one note into Hebdo’s first song on Saturday night.

I‘ve seen Hebdo a number of times now, but heard the hush just twice. The first was at Grandview’s Thirsty Ear, Hebdo debuting his current album, Prosciutto, alongside once seeming sidekick, now emerging pillar Mike James – coincidentally another Megan Palmer bill. I was there on the recommendation of a friend I didn’t know well, and along with the rest of the beers-to-chins crowd – much more than half of whom were much less than halfway in command of their halfwits – I was more interested in extending a night of raucous merrymaking than in listening to anyone who might step up on stage and imitate a jukebox.

The duo started with the ghostly Cold in the West, and a slow wave of awestruck sobriety swept through the bar, a gentle hand turning first heads, then bodies toward the source of the sound. It won’t surprise those close to me that I experienced the moment as pain. I looked first to the stage, the diminutive Hebdo to the left of the scruffy, skeletal James, then unconvinced, undone, looked for my Laura. Bless her, she knew my search, was waiting, and caught me gently; her eyes telling me it was there, she felt it too, and it was okay.

Saturday was, if anything, a more subtly forceful and mature demonstration of this same gift. Hebdo started with a song I’d not heard before, nor could scarcely make out against the modest murmur of those gathered at Rumba. Barely chords, barely words, just scattered notes, here and then there: some plucked, some barely touched, some sung, some softly breathed, some achingly left to the listener to imagine, inevitable, perfect.

I was reminded of a game I played when I was young and couldn’t sleep. I would imagine myself climbing into then closing the lid on a box of perfect darkness, which box was then placed inside a box of yet more perfect darkness, and so on, in paradisum. Such was the longing for perfect silence at Rumba, to serve as the only fitting context for this elemental sound. And Hebdo had his way. Conversations broke abruptly in jagged halves, chairs rocked and rustled peg-legged into stage alignment, sweat stopped dripping halfway down beer glasses, and before the song was even half done the silence was so perfect, so echoingly total, you could have heard the Spikedrivers’ Jesse Henry fart on the back patio – which, incidentally, I think I did.

It did not take a master performer, which surely Joey Hebdo threatens to become, to understand this crowd was now his, cunningly primed and begging for deliverance. Thankfully he and his woefully unnamed BAND were well up to the task. For fans of Hebdo – which I am most unapologetically – it is interesting to observe the transition of his arrangements from the raw, folky Un EP, to the adventurous and playful Prosciutto, to current band shows before audiences who demand more variety and energy for their hours of attention. At their best, as they assuredly were on Saturday, Hebdo’s band – backed by the irresistibly goofy and relentlessly precise rhythm section of Larry Cook (bass) and Tom Lasky (drums) - pulls this off in varied and surprising ways, with several of his old numbers achieving their highest expression in this context. Think You comes to mind, a song I’ve heard performed numerous times and never found less than thrilling. As does Badge, now a gratifyingly gritty rock tune complete with throwback rebel lyrics:

-"Pressure never bothered me like it seemed to bug my parents
With an axe held in my one free hand I understand why they would fear us"

One notable exception, regrettably, is Come For Me. On Prosciutto, it is given a simple, ironic treatment – including synth bass drum and asynchronous electric guitar in the chorus – but the full band has yet to capture or improve on this. I would add that none in attendance, myself included, were noticeably distracted by the deficit. Finally, Hebdo’s charmingly simple coming of age song Triple Stamp benefited hugely from a Megan Palmer cameo, her fiddle lending noticeable texture and warmth, and now a transition.

What is there to say about Megan Palmer’s performance Saturday? She was warm, precise, endearing, immensely gifted – in other words, she was Megan Palmer. New York City seems to have been good to her. Her vocals are better - the emotion more convincingly conveyed - and noticeably stronger in the high end, and her fiddle playing more riotous. For my money she was even better Thursday night, playing a Rumba Cafe happy hour with the Spikedrivers. Her playing on their climactic Hard Travelin’ was filthy, enough to leave a nun on her knees, stank faced, playing air fiddle on a turkey leg. And her solo on Cakewalk had front man Henry foot-stomping and wailing, while Palmer writhed to a crescendo that left her disheveled and flushed. The bashful smile she surrendered in response to the crowd’s rapture was heaven, and suggested nothing so much as that she’d been caught doing something very private indeed in a very public place. Which, of course, she had. But we’d all been caught watching, and for my part I feel like I got much the better of the deal.

I’m sorry to admit we left Rumba before Megan Palmer’s final Saturday set ended. Several of my party had achieved, through sustained and determined effort, a level of drunkenness that was increasingly at odds with Rumba’s floor and walls. So we ruefully slipped into the sleeper hold of a southbound cab, and began the cozy transition from living this show to reliving it.

I’ve relived it for several days now, and in the end I suppose what has troubled me most about the show is its glaring incongruity. How is it possible to enjoy this level of musical talent, this surreal intimacy, for a simple $5 cover charge? ($5 which, incidentally, is somewhat less than the expected value of the property damage resulting from parking one’s car in proximity to Rumba Cafe) One very real possibility is that I’m an awful judge of musical talent, and was in fact swindled badly on Saturday. I am emboldened in my rejection of this hypothesis by the chorus of praise I’ve heard for the show, from veterans and first-timers alike.

Two more likely possibilities are that we’re just lucky and caught these two at a ripe moment, on the cusp of a wide and welcoming road, or perhaps that the music industry is just so strange and broken that we’ll be mysteriously graced by their presence in our funny town always and forever. I suspect it is the former, but with apologies to Joey and Megan, I deeply hope it is the latter. Joey has made his first trip to NYC, though, and has confessed a growing sympathy for the devil. Megan, it seems, has well and truly bolted our cozy barn. One fears that her June show at Rumba Café, in addition to being a CD release party, will be a farewell, both to Columbus and her Hopefuls.

If it proves so then we ought to count ourselves lucky nonetheless. In talents like Joey Hebdo and Megan Palmer we have, for the moment, a triple stamp nickel buried in our hands. I can feel its warmth today as plainly as I did Saturday night, descending dreamily from the Summit, a synth drum and asynchronous guitar chords repeating in my head….

-"Come for me
I’m lost at sea"
- www.apewind.com