Hey, this is Paul Martin and Ray the Roadie for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. How's it going today, Ray? It's going good. Nice and cold out still.

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. The sun is starting to shine through, though, it looks like.

Yeah, it's shining, but it's still cold. It's very deceiving. How's things going with our podcast? Things are going extremely well.

We got a good old boy from Orland Park, Illinois, joining us. Is he a country musician? Not at all. Not even close.

You said he was a good old boy. Well, yeah, he's from Orland Park, Illinois. He's paid his dues.

He's made it up the ranks. He's playing with the big people now. Yes, he is.

Yes, he is. We're talking about Joel Hoekstra. Yes, we are.

He was with Night Ranger. He's currently with Whitesnake, and also the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, as well as a number of other projects. Including Cher.

And Cher also. Now, speaking of Cher, don't forget to share our podcast. Not that kind of Cher, though.

A different kind of Cher. He's playing with the other Cher. That's right, because I got you, babe.

That's right. You can believe. You can.

You can believe. So listen, why don't we take a listen to Joel, and see what he's got to say for himself. Okay, that's good.

Let's turn back the hands of time, and talk to Joel. All righty. We're getting those references in there, aren't we? Yes, we are.

All right, here's Joel Hoekstra. Hello, everyone. We're meeting today with Joel Hoekstra, guitarist extraordinaire from Whitesnake, Night Ranger, Cher, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, you name it, guitar aficionado, Joel Hoekstra.

How are you, Joel? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for taking the time out today, guys. Thanks for taking the time to meet with us.

Great to have you. Excellent, Goyal. Good to be here, man.

Nothing like representing Chi-Town. I always appreciate that, the support back there. Well, thank you.

Now, we understand you're from Orland Park, right? Yeah, absolutely, man. Grew up in Orland. That's kind of our neck of the woods, as well.

Okay, cool. Now, tell us, let's start with how you got started in the business. And I mentioned some of your projects, and that's just a few of them.

But it seems like you've got quite a few. How did you get started in the business? Yeah, well, that's a complicated answer, because, I mean, music in general was in my house from the get-go, because my parents are classical musicians. So that is the beginning of why I got into music, because they had me playing cello when I was three, and piano when I was seven.

Like most little boys, I wasn't really that into it. I was just kind of like, eh, can I play baseball? I just want to do something else. Then I saw ACDC on MTV.

Remember when it just started, and they had like four videos on, and they just kept rotating all day? Sure. So I forget which ACDC video it even was. Probably Back in Black.

That's the first cassette I had. And I just obsessed on Angus Young. I thought he was silly cool, and I wanted to be him.

So that ACDC really pulled me into changing my opinion on music, I thought. I was about, I'd say about 10 or 11 at that point. Maybe even a little younger, because I think I was in fifth grade, and I was ahead one year in school.

So probably nine or something like that. And then at 11, I started on guitar. I begged on to that, and everything just kind of baby steps from there.

I obsessed on it. And as far as how I got to where I got, boy, that's a long answer. It's already been a long answer.

But it's just, I guess I did a lot of teaching in the early days, and sort of supplemented it with gigs. And then eventually, gigs became really the main thing. But it took me a while.

Everything was like a real baby steps with me. There was no jumping from point A to point Z. It hit every letter of the alphabet to get where I got. So you didn't have any aspirations to be the next Yo-Yo Ma, huh? No, not really.

I mean, I appreciate the fact that my parents were into it, because it gave me a sense of pitch and rhythm at a young age. So when my friend finally showed me a power chord and how that works on electric guitar, instantly, I was able to put together a lot of songs. I went, you're kidding me.

It was like discovering some magic land, where I was like, whoa, this is amazing. You know, I just move this around and play all those Black Sabbath songs I've liked, and ACDC. So yeah, that was a lot of fun.

And that was a big day for me when I learned a power chord. Now, what school did you go to? I understand you went to a music school at the mall. Yo, yeah, yeah.

For lessons, I went to Musicland, it was called. Or not Musicland. It was Musicville.

Mario Ortegura's Musicville. Oh, sure. Do you remember that? Sure, yeah.

And all the pianos up front and everything, and the organs. It was mainly that kind of store. And then in the back, they had guitar lessons.

And so I had a great first teacher that showed me nothing but songs, which is awesome. Great way to get started, and that really got me hooked. More than like pounding fundamentals on me and making me feel like it was torture, which that was cello and piano for me when I was younger.

So just learning all songs that I liked was great. It made it like fun. So it just made me realize that music could actually be something enjoyable.

And then as things progressed, and I needed to really learn how these guys put together their songs and put together solos, I had a great second teacher there too, T.J. Helmerk, and he really taught me a lot of how to play lead guitar and play solos, which were immensely popular at the time. Everybody was trying to emulate what became known as the shred guys. But, I mean, when I was learning, it was like Eddie Van Halen and then Yngwie broke through, and everybody had to learn how to play a million miles an hour.

And so it was a fun time to actually grow up and play guitar, because it was a competitive environment, and we were all putting in a lot of time. And so it was, I mean, maybe slightly backwards to a degree the way we all learned in that era. It was a lot of lead guitar before you could really play great rhythm guitar.

But in the end, it all evened out for me. What were some of the bands that you played with locally once you got your licks down? So my first band was called Outcry, and that was when I was 15. And we would just do, it was more like we would play at Katz.

Do you remember Katz? They had the All Ages Club on, I think it was on Harlem. Right. Either Harlem or Southwest Highway, something like that.

But there was a great little local scene there, and we just kind of played a lot of Dokken. We had our own tunes. But it was the type of thing where you really wouldn't make much money.

It was more or less to promote a show every couple weeks or three weeks, and you'd flyer, and you'd have the show. And it was more about like back then you'd have band practice two, three nights a week or whatever, and I'll talk about making it big. But it was cool.

We had some of those bands in that scene, had players that got out, like Danny Donegan from Disturbed was in Vandal back then. So we had some real players that came up through the scene, and the bands were good. So it was a good thing for me, and I was the youngest out of everybody.

I just kind of was the kid who didn't have long hair yet. My mom wasn't really letting me curl my hair out. So I think I still had short hair, and I was really short back then.

I think I was 15, and so I'd show up to these things, and everybody had long hair and was about a foot taller than me. I'd make up for it with how much I'd practice, because I'd practice like crazy. Yeah, I guess from there, the next bands, I just had some, I'd say the next step in terms of talented musicians locally, but we didn't gig that often.

We just kind of did like a handful of gigs, because I was more or less like studying classical too in college at that time, like my first two years of junior college. So I was really without cry through high school, and then did some local band gigging here and there, but a lot of studying classical in college, and I just wasn't that motivated. I was making like four-track demos back then.

I thought that was more the path to get somewhere. Then I went to GIT in Hollywood for Institute of Technology, and stayed out there one more year after that to work at a recording studio. Then I came back to Chicago, and that I'd say I gigged in some bands.

I had my own bands at first, a band called Black Bison, and then a band called The Resin Diggers. We were a lot of fun in bars. We'd just play anything that was completely off the wall and wacky.

We were playing funk and disco, and people started to dance, but we'd also play some hard rock stuff. It was just kind of all over the map, typical of that age that we were at, young 20s, and just kind of having a blast. Sure, you had to probably play some of the funk and whatever if you wanted people to enjoy your music.

We were just kind of into it. For me, I don't know. I've always been pretty open-minded as far as styles, and my bandmates are always the ones to kind of be a little more finicky about what style.

I just like to play, and whatever keeps everybody happy is cool with me, and that still kind of holds true to a degree. So hence my gigs being all over the place and playing all different stuff. So gosh, after that, I'd say my first local break was hooking up with Kathy Richardson and her band, and that was a nice step forward.

She did some covers, but it was mainly her own original music that did well. So that was cool, and right around that time, Jim Peterick then pulled me in, and that was a big step for me later down the road, because he had me join his world stage band where we'd play those events once a year. He'd have his friends come out and sing hit songs, and so through that, I got to play with a lot of nationally or internationally known classic rockers.

That down the road turned into the Night Ranger gig for me, because Kelly Kege from Night Ranger was one of the people to come out and do two or three songs with Jim. And being in the house band every year, even though by then I had moved to New York City, it actually led to an opportunity to get the Night Ranger gig. So that made a big difference.

But you can see how everything kind of baby-stepped up. It's just kind of all the way through these local bands to playing with Jim locally. Right around that time, too, the Nelsons saw me doing that and had me play with Scrap Metal.

That was really through Kelly, too. Kelly brought me into Scrap Metal, and that was similar to world stage, except everybody in the house band was also international known stars. They just kind of needed a keyboard player and a guitar player to kind of flesh it out, someone who could play the fancy leads.

But that was the Nelson twins with Kelly and Mark Slaughter. The Nelsons did some time with Jim Peterick, too, didn't they? Yeah, I think they did world stage once as well, once or twice, right? So they're great guys. Gunner and Matt are good friends of mine.

They're great guys. I love those guys. I've done some gigs with them as Nelson as well, which I think maybe we're going to try and do at some point this year, too.

I don't know. We'll see. But they're great guys.

Love them. Able to work with them a bit. So when would you find the time to do this? I was looking at your schedules with Whitesnake and stuff.

You're very, very busy. Whitesnake's got a big year, but I just give schedules like that to the rough outline at least to Gunner and Matt and to anybody that's interested in working with me. Like I do acoustic shows with my buddy Brandon Gibbs, and I also play with the Rock of Ages, Broadway's Rock of Ages band we call it, which is not the show.

We go out and play like the full-length versions of the songs just as the band that did the Broadway gig. So all those, they just kind of see my schedule and they kind of book and do what they can, and that helps me fill out my year. It's really helpful when I find people that are flexible because there's only so long you can kind of juggle everything with major gigs.

There's always going to be schedule conflicts, and I try to avoid having like, oh, I'm just down to this one gig because it's a lot to ask of anybody to fill out your whole year. Like if I said to David, hey, can we gig for 11 months this year? Right, right. That's a lot.

That's a lot to ask of anybody. I play with two bands and I have a hard time juggling their schedule. Right.

So I think the key is finding the things that you can sub out of or that are flexible where I don't need to be there every time. Like the Broadway's Rock of Ages band now, that's ideal because if I can't make it, they just call one of the guys that subbed for me on Broadway to do it instead. Right, right.

So it's really no problem. They're not really promoting that I'm there. They don't use my name in it, so to speak.

So it doesn't really matter if I'm there or not. So things like that are great because you can kind of go in and out and not have it be that big of a deal. Do you have any conflicts with any of the Cher shows with the White Snake Tour? This year, yeah.

It's an issue this year. I think for each side we're just going to lay low this year and just take it from there because, yeah, I think, I mean, in fairness to them, I'd probably be able to make about 20% of the shows this year. Right.

Just at a point you've got to choose. Right. So White Snake's got a great year ahead.

I mean, there's some stuff that hasn't been announced yet, so I think we're really looking at about five, six months of being on the road, and then, of course, I'll have my two months of TSO at the end of the year. So you're already talking eight months on the road for me, and I do have a family at home and everything too. Right.

So I have to be able to balance my life out a bit too to have it make sense. I can't just grind out. Last year I just went for everything, and Cher was fantastic about letting me just kind of hop in when I was available.

But I think that there comes a point where there's only so much of that they should have to deal with and I should expect them to deal with. And, honestly, I think White Snake is more my home. I've been there longer, and it's something I really enjoy, like being a part of a rock band.

It's fantastic. It is a place for an icon like Cher. It's really great to be in a rock band for me where you're on the shirt, you're on the album, and I just love all that stuff.

Right. Because you guys are heading to Australia and New Zealand pretty soon and then over to Europe. Yeah, we've got an amazing start to the year.

With the Scorpions we're going to do Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore. Then we do Japan on our own, and then we're back for a little bit, and we're going to do Europe with the band Europe. Okay.

Coincidentally enough. Okay. And then we're going to do the U.K. with Foreigner and Europe.

And that's not everything. There's more dates to be announced yet, so there's stuff coming. So it's really going to be a great year for us and I'm really excited about it.

It's a good bunch of guys, and David's fantastic to work with, and I just really enjoy it. That's great. That's great.

Now, any of the new White Space stuff, did you help with any of the writing on that? Yeah. I think if you include the bonus tracks like the Deluxe Edition, I co-wrote seven, and then I think there might be a compilation album with an unreleased one coming out too. So technically eight co-writes with them, I think.

So, yeah, we spend a lot of time together working on songs. I think on the basic version there's six co-writes with them, but there's a couple more. So, yeah, we co-wrote all together, I think, eight songs so far in my tenure in the band.

Obviously when I first joined, we were working on the Purple album. They had already begun that, so it was really more about me just laying down my guitars to stuff that David had written with Deep Purple back in the day. I see.

And with Night Ranger, did you have any hand in the writing there? Yeah, a bit. Not quite as much as Whitesnake, but there was a few songs, I think, on the Somewhere in California CD that I co-wrote with them, and then maybe a couple on High Road, I think. Are you still doing anything for yourself? Any solo work? Yeah, I'm working on – in 2015 I put out a CD that was technically from my Rockside project, and that was called Joel Hoekstra's 13.

I've heard that. It's really good. Thank you.

I appreciate that. Spread the word. Dying to Live was the name of the record.

Don't watch outside my head They might try to reach me But they'll never see Anyway, so there's a follow-up in the works. I've been waiting on Russell Allen like an eternity, the singer. He's fantastic.

He's worth the wait. But he's a busy guy. He's got a lot on his plate.

It's family and music like I do, so just kind of waiting on that. And once that works out, it should be pretty quick in terms of being able to get it out. Excellent.

Yeah, it's a very good album. I really like that one. Thank you.

Tell us about the 13 acoustic songs. Yeah, that was just – I'd say an era where I just did a lot of – I'd pick up my acoustic and I would write these – I'd practice in open tunings, and so I wrote some fingerstyle things and different open tunings, and then I had some songs that were just kind of pop songs that I wouldn't necessarily sing the melody. I was just kind of playing it while I'd play the chords as an idea.

It was kind of how I'd write like hooky songs. So they're not necessarily – some of the stuff on there isn't really hard to play on guitar or complex. It's more or less just simple songs, simple lines intertwining, if you will.

That's a Spinal Tap reference if you didn't get it. Yeah, it is. So that's – yeah, that's the gist of that record.

I decided – I was like I should really document these, like lay them down and be able to release it because I had so much material. There's even some that didn't make it on there. I think I had 16 songs or something.

So I laid them down, really one guitar, and then I would – I overdubbed stuff to that. So like any percussion or bass guitar or I did a lot of like banjo or mandolin or little keyboard stuff, all kinds of stuff. All that stuff was overdubbed to kind of accompany the basic acoustic pass, if that makes sense.

Sure. So all instrumental. But I love that I have that back history.

My first two CDs, Undefined and The Moon is Falling, are a little more when I was in the rock fusion scene, which was very much TJ Helmrich and Brett Garsid influenced stuff for me. Those guys were my mentors as well as just growing up a rocker. So eventually I ended up kind of using all that stuff, having a little bit of that in me as a player but falling more into the rock world than those guys, I would say, and just playing in a band, which that's ultimately what I enjoy.

I like rock songs with guitar solos that are reasonable, not necessarily songs that are entirely guitar solos, if that makes sense. Right, right. I've always been more into – I guess there's a pop side to me that just likes songs and just wants to hear a good song and have a guitar solo.

I've always enjoyed those people that were in bands. When people ask me, like, who are your favorite guitar players or who are your influences, I always inevitably name bands over guitar players, if that makes sense. Sure, sure.

Who do you like? I'm always like Rush or Zeppelin more than saying Jimmy Page or Alex Lifeson, if that makes sense. Right. You're more into the style of the music, the actual music itself, than an individual.

Yeah, exactly. I grew up definitely listening to those guitar records too, and that's definitely a part of what influenced me. But I would say more when I was younger.

If I had to choose as a listener right now, I definitely enjoy just listening to rock stuff with a little bit of cool guitar work to it. So I would say I patterned that Dying to Live CD after that thought process, if that makes sense. I tried to put on an album that would be more for me as a listener than as a showcase for me as a guitar player.

And that was, I'd say, the reason that I needed to give it a different name. I didn't want to call it Joel Hoekstra as a solo album, because I think people would have been expecting fancy guitar work, or I was trying to prove something on guitar. And that just really wasn't the case.

It was more about me writing the lyrics and writing the vocal melodies and all that stuff, and finally getting to be a boss on an album, so to speak. Because most of the time with that rock world, I had been playing only with Night Ranger, a little bit of writing, but also taking their production notes on what to play. And same thing really with Whitesnake, to a degree.

Not as heavily, but more or less still, you're part of a band at that point. You're not just calling all the shots. So Dying to Live was fun for me, because I got to call all the shots, so to speak.

Now, they say you wrote the lyrics, but you don't sing, right? Or you sing background, I noticed, on the album? Yeah, I sing background, and I can sing marginal lead vocals. I sing some stuff here and there. I always sing on the Monsters of Rock cruise on my acoustic set.

I have that coming up shortly here. That's actually my first thing of the year. So I do sing a bit.

But yeah, in general, it's more or less writing the melodies for other singers. So if I know what a singer's range is, I can write a melody line within that and pattern it. Like for the new album, I actually laid down while I was with Cher in Australia.

I was in my hotel room with a microphone laying down, just a guide vocal for Russell, for all the songs. So I had basically a track of me singing the entire album, which is very poorly compared to him. And I noticed you did some work with Toby Hitchcock as well.

Yeah, Toby helped me out on singing to some of the stuff. With the first record, there was some schedule conflicts with Russell that was going to delay, and I really wanted to get it done. And so I ended up having Jeff Scott Soto sing half of the songs, lead vocal.

Because he had helped me out singing backgrounds to Russell, which he's overqualified for. And Jeff's a great singer. But he's also a wicked background singer.

He's great at adding harmonies and layering. So he did that as more or less a favor to me. We've worked together so long.

And then I was like, well, hey, dude, do you want to sing the rest of this? Because Russell's got this going on and that going on. I'll just put out with two different singers. It'd be awesome.

I'll have two of the best singers in rock on there. And so he was into it and did it. And so put it out that way.

And then there was some stuff that we needed a high harmony for him on there. And Toby was really the guy. Toby's an amazing singer.

Yeah, well, he's another Chicago boy. That's why I bring that up. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I know him through Jim Peterick. So all these things kind of tie in somewhere. And I've always been a fan.

I mean, I was blown away the first time I heard Toby. So I really tried working him into the TSO camp a year or two ago, too, when they needed somebody. But I think it just wasn't necessarily in his wheelhouse for being away from the family and stuff like that.

But, yeah, he's awesome. I love his voice. He's amazing.

So to go back a little bit, tell us about the Love Janice off-Broadway thing in Arachovages. Yeah, so Love Janice was a really big deal for me because that was the first time Kathy Richardson, who I was playing with in Chicago, we got about that far with the story. She landed a role of playing Janice Joplin in a show called Love Janice in Chicago.

And I didn't get the guitar gig because they'd already hired everybody. They just asked her to do the gig. And then it really only ran a couple months in Chicago.

But then they were taking it to New York. They were going to do this little run in Sag Harbor first just to get investors and things like that. They tend to do that, put a show up at a retail place and let investors come and see it.

Their plan was to take it to New York City, like off-Broadway. And it turned out that the band just out there, they had hired people locally, and they just weren't quite good enough. So they wanted to get someone in there last minute to kind of help things out and be able to hold the band together a little better.

And that ended up being my gig. Kathy suggested me and got me in the door there. So that was cool.

And then part of the deal was, well, look, you have to ask me to do it in New York if I'm going to go do this. So they said yes. Did Kathy go to New York to do it in New York? Yeah.

So then when it ran in New York, Kathy and I went and did that. And that was really my first time where I didn't teach guitar anymore. So I was 30 years old then.

It took me that long to get to the point where it was only gigs that were paying the bills for me, so to speak. So I came to New York. And again, I told my students, all right, I put my stuff in storage.

And I told people I'll see you in a couple of months because it only ran two months in Chicago. But it ended up being this really crazy run out here that went two years for various reasons. But it lasted two years.

And so by the time it closed, I was really moved in. And I just felt like I was here to stay. And I thankfully just kind of continued on.

I did a little bit of work with that on the road. But also the same director had a show called It Ain't Nothing But the Blues. So again, the theater thing really called for me out here in New York.

So I did that at regional theaters around the country. And I also started filling in for the Turtles. At first, I subbed for the guitar player.

And then their bass player quit. And they liked me as a person. So they were like, hey, do you play bass? Because we need a bass player.

And I said, yeah, I could do it. Thankfully, the Turtles' bass lines are pretty just like quarter notes, pretty simple. Yeah, right.

Not a lot of crazy funky bass lines with that or anything. So I was able to cut the mustard with it. I just went out and did my thing.

And it was a lot of fun. Did that for like a year. And then I ended up, their guitar player left.

So I ended up switching over to guitar. And they got a bass player in. So the old bass player came back.

So I did probably another year like that, filling in with Big Brother and The Holding Company. And again, always being out at regional theaters doing Love Janice or It Ain't Nothing But the Blues. So that stuff kind of tied in.

And then I had a buddy who lives a couple blocks from me here that does pit stuff. And he asked me if I'd be interested. I think it was maybe around the time I was mixing The Moon Is Falling or something, somebody recommended that, I forget what it was, something audio with him.

I met him and went over to his place. And then he said, well, hey, if you ever want to sub, just let me know. And he kind of talked me into it.

So I first subbed for him on The Boy From Oz, which had Hugh Jackman in it. Oh, sure. And then I did La Caja Fall, which had like a lot of tenor banjos, so it was a lot of work to get this stuff down.

But I liked the fact at the time it was pushing me as a musician. It was making me learn to read better because you get whatever, a couple hundred pages of music, whatever, 300 pages. So that's the stuff that keeps you – when people ask, do you read? And you go, well, none of my gigs call for it.

But every once in a while you get something like that that does, and then it's nice to brush back up on all your music fundamentals from back in the day. I had my church ask me if I could play something, and they gave me the music, and I said, well, give me a day to work on this because it was just one song. But I hadn't written in so many years that it took me a while just to sit and figure it out.

Well, that's kind of where I am now, honestly. I mean none of my gigs call for it, so when am I going to do it? When people ask you if you do it, it's like, well, define do it. I read.

I can definitely read a chord sheet, and I can definitely read single-note lines and all that stuff. But at the same time, if you threw something really difficult down in front of me, there's no way I'm sight-reading it at this point in time. I would be like, all right, let me poke my way through this and rehearse it.

I was just going to say you mentioned that when you hooked up with Kathy and then went off to do all these new projects, you left all your students behind. Now I get the impression that you really enjoy teaching. I did definitely back in the day.

I think I do now, but it needs to be limited. I could never do what I did back then. I used to teach 70 students a week.

I mean I just really worked hard at it. And I would just, again, that was nice because I could take off when I needed to go do a gig or a show. Right.

Now what about the Guitar World? Are you still doing anything with them? I know you've got quite a few videos with them. Yeah, there's some in the can. We did a bunch of stuff for the new Whitesnake album, and I think they ran only one of them so far, which is a playthrough lesson.

But there's monthly columns, I believe, coming for I think another six. So that's really six more columns in the magazine, and those all come out on YouTube. So you tape all those in one shot when you go in.

So when you're in the magazine for six months, you've really done it all in one day. Okay. It's just they break it down and basically write up the column for you, and they make it easy.

The only thing that's tricky with those is that's not really teaching in a sense because you have to limit your content to about 12 bars of music. That's really hard to do. So it just kind of comes down to sometimes only showing like three licks or something, which is not.

Obviously, if I was going to give somebody a lesson, like I do Skype lessons right now where I do totally the opposite. I charge a lot, but then I just load people up with stuff and just say, here you go. That should hold you for about three months.

Check back with me in three months if you want to take another lesson. So that's more my method nowadays because I just don't really have the time or the energy to do, I'd say, hours a day of Skype lessons. I just don't have it in me anymore.

I do dig it. I know how to teach. I enjoy helping people and working with other people genuinely.

But as far as the energy level, man, I don't know. I'm raising two kids right now, dude. I was going to ask you how you balance your family life with your musical life.

Yeah, well, very carefully. It's certainly hard because one way or another, I'm always going. People often say, I don't know how you do it when I'm on the road, and I'm thinking, man, you have no idea.

It's way harder for me at home. I get home, and that's the challenge because that's all of a sudden having somebody who needs you all day long every day. And when do you find the time to pick up a guitar and play? After they go to bed.

So, yeah, music for me happens. Thankfully, they're still young enough so they go to bed early. So I have about 8.30, I would say, or 9 o'clock to midnight or 1 in the morning every night if I need to get anything done.

So the goal is to try and find the time during the day to cram in the workout so I don't have to exercise then at 10 at night, and then I can just focus on the music and the things, which is honestly when I'm at home, that's fine. If I can get a couple hours in on whatever I need to do, then that works. Now let me ask you, I know you play many guitars.

But what's your go-to guitar when you're at home and, like, late at night at 9 o'clock when you pick up your guitar and play? What's your go-to guitar? Well, a Les Paul, one of my Les Pauls, and usually it's my gold top. That's my number one, I would say. It's been with me so long, and it's been around the world with me, and I just have a lot of attachment to that guitar.

So that's probably always my number one, but I have a black custom and a white custom here at home that see a lot of action and are kind of played to smithereens at the moment. They each need a new nut on them, honestly, and probably some fret work too. So, yeah, they've each been beating up pretty good.

Do you take those on the road with you as well? I don't usually. You know, with TSO, the white one saw action this year. I've been getting into crazier guitars with TSO lately, and less of the Les Paul thing, just doing more of, like, the crazy fun-to-look-at guitars.

Right, right. And White Snake, I have a black and a white custom that are, I guess, customized. I know they're already customs, but customized for me with a white snake stencil on the top and a medallion mounted in the body.

So those are my guitars that I just play with White Snake, and they just live out there with White Snake's gear in LA. So when I show up to White Snake, I'm pretty much good to go. And I just always bring one guitar from my hotel room or backstage to warm up on and to record with if I have any kind of session.

Sometimes people hire me to do guest solos on their stuff when I'm on the road, and I have a little portable rig, and I like to at least have a good sounding guitar with me. And I don't want to be a pain in the ass to the techs by saying, hey, can I take that away from you for the whole day, and I'll show up right before the gig and give it to you. So that stuff becomes an issue for your techs to be able to do the best they can, too.

So when you're touring, the thing to do is always just have something you can warm up on. And for me, nothing better than warming up on an actual Les Paul backstage when I'm going to go out on stage and play a Les Paul. Sure.

Sure, but the necks can be a little bit different. I know that. They can.

They can definitely be a little bit different, but the customs between the two, if I bring one of my customs on the road, they're pretty identical. My R7, the gold top has a different neck on it than the customs for sure. So, so now when you were back here in Chicago, did you, I understand that you worked or did some recording at Star Trax.

Oh, yeah. When I was a kid. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Outcry recorded there. And then I had a singer that I used to work with and we did some recording there.

And then I had some instrumental stuff with the guys. I told you about that. I was a little bit more into recording, I guess, back then than playing a lot of gigs because those, those shows at cats.

And I think even back then when we were kids, we knew that that wasn't going to lead anywhere. It was just kind of like, okay, we could just do this every few weeks, but it's just going to be the same people and the same things. It's not like we were going to make it big out of doing those gigs.

I think there was a sense of that. So I was into trying to work on my, my skills a lot back then. Like I said, studying classical and recording and coming up with instrumental tunes or vocal tunes with that singer.

I told you about. Right. So you ever get back to the Chicago land area anymore? Is it good? You still got family here? Yeah.

Well, my step mom and my step sister, but my half sister, I guess I would say, but, um, I mean, it's really for gigs. Right. Right.

Sometimes gigs usually take me back there though. I usually find my, my way through there once a year. So white snake hasn't announced us stuff just yet, but there might be some this year.

So if that happens, hopefully I'll be through Chicago. Awesome. So, so where can, um, where can anybody find out more about the Joel Hoekstra? uh, well, I'm old school and have an actual website.

Okay. Amazingly enough, a.com. So you can go to, uh, Joel, J O E L Hoekstra, H O E K S T R A.com. And you can link over to all my social media stuff from there. I have a YouTube channel.

I'm on Facebook and Twitter and yada, yada, Instagram, the whole nine yards. I'm pretty good about writing people back. If you get me on an inbox or anything like that.

Uh, but the website itself is pretty, pretty good. If you want to get a education on me, David calls it my encyclopedia Britannica. He says, he's like, there's more information on me there.

It's like, I have quotes from reviews written for every single act and I, it's pretty ridiculous. I've compiled a lot of information on there. So in fact, I have every year I write an annual year review and you can read, I haven't done my 2019 one yet, but you can read like everything I did in a year in 2018 with, uh, pictures that go to it and you can read up on all my music.

And so there's a lot of information on there. Very good. Very good.

Well, we appreciate your time and, and, uh, for speaking with us, talking with us today and, uh, appreciate it. Good conversation. Good luck on all your tours and hopefully you'll find some downtime.

Yeah. Well, like I said, I think there should be about four months of it this year, realistically. So that's not bad.

Not too bad. I can, I can hang with that. That's easy.

There you go. There you go. Alrighty, Joel, thank you very much.

Cool. Thanks so much guys. Thank you.

Have a good day. Have a good one. Bye.

While that Joel hookshot is a busy guy, isn't he? Oh my God, I'm tired. I got to take a nap. Oh my God.

That guy is so busy. Yes, he is. Yes, he is.

He's an extraordinary guitar player. And, and, uh, he's, uh, he's keeps himself going with, uh, all kinds of projects all the time. Yeah.

He's got some great music. You have his solo stuff. I, I've listened to some of his stuff and it's really, really good.

I definitely recommend checking them out, uh, getting, buying a CD or checking them out somewhere. Go to iTunes or wherever you can find, uh, his music. Uh, definitely listen to it.

I want to thank, uh, Paul Braun for hooking us up with Joel Hoekstra and, uh, thank you, uh, Paul Braun. But be sure and, check out, uh, check out the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast whenever you can. And, uh, and, uh, we've got, uh, several episodes now out there and, you can share, you can find us at, uh, well, where can they find us, Well, they can find us at the Road to Rock Radio through the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 who is providing us with this wonderful studio.

Yes, indeed. You can catch us every Monday on the Road to Rock Radio at 6 p.m. where they replay one of our podcasts. But you can also find us on Facebook, on our website, on iTunes, on, you name it, we're out there.

Yes, we are. So, uh, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next time.

Talk later. Rock and Roll. We're the best here all around.

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