We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joey Villalobos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joey below.

Joey, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

My wife and I moved to LA in the middle of Covid with a newborn baby and a preschooler. How’s that for a risk? I got the ball rolling on my musical career and hit an all-time-high in December of 2019 and had already been making moves to follow my wife from Texas to LA to pursue more artistic opportunities before the pandemic. With the slow down of live music, it was a massive risk to leave when we did. I only had my Gibson rep and the band that I had been playing with was based out of San Antonio, Texas. We picked our home from pictures on the internet and arranged a multistate move over the span of a few weeks from my couch in Texas having never been to the area. I literally saw our home in LA for the first time while I was moving boxes into it.
At first, I was flying from LA to Texas consistently to start tours with The Heroine and was hopeful for a revival, but the bills were getting smaller and so were the checks. I had to leave my family right before my son’s first day of kindergarten and it just didn’t feel worth it anymore to sacrifice so much and still feel so stagnant as an artist after making this huge leap of faith. While playing the second to last show of that tour, the band and I had creative conflict and I finally lost my patience and flew home from Portland. I felt resentful toward everything; the scene, feeling creatively unsatisfied, the long term effects of Covid on live music and the shrinking stages. As much as I loved and still love the band, I just was not happy with what my experience as a musician had become so I decided to find a better fit for myself. The pool in LA is massive, so it seemed perfectly doable to find the right placement in no time. It wasn’t though. I went months without any prospective opportunities. It was humbling to go from being the hottest commodity in my element pre-covid to feeling like nobody had a need for me.
I was able to make some great connections with bands and artists that I really admire but just stepping into the local music scene as an independent guitar player for the first time in a really competitive area and seeing the bands that I resonated with being established without a need for me, while inspiring, started to get discouraging. It’s easy to tell people to “just put yourself out there” but in application, it is a lot of rejection, a lot of disappointment and takes a lot of hope to find yourself on the other side of. Networking means watching everyone else do what you want to be doing with optimism and continuing to grow your artistic abilities without any positive reinforcement.
It took a long time to get permanent offers. There were a few times I thought I’d just get a full time job and leave the music scene to be a normal dad and husband. The wait got to be a lot more than I anticipated. I am a badass blue collar worker, too and could, apparently, jump right back into that a lot easier than I could jump right back into live music.
I finally got noticed by a band that had already picked up some steam and joined (for a day) but walked out of the first practice I showed up to because they wanted me to play their music, note for note, how they had written it. That was not what I took this risk to do and was a big commitment that I couldn’t stomach.
It wasn’t until almost a year after leaving the Heroine that my inbox is starting to really flood with the offers that I have been hoping for. I just finally found the project I will be working on so make sure you’re following me on Instagram for the reveal. It took two years of being in LA, though, and feels almost too good to be true. Through this experience, leaving my safe space, parting ways with the band that got me there, and turning down the “great” opportunity I was offered, I didn’t sacrifice my artistic integrity, stayed true to myself and finally am making the dream work with the newborn I flew to LA and the preschooler who I can now take to his first day of first grade here in SoCal.

Joey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Maestro specializing in technical progressive guitar. Inspired by Queen, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Remember that you are supposed to benefit from partnerships. Whether you are working with other artists or venues or products, they are benefiting from you and you need to, at very least, mutually benefit. Know your value as a creative and try to give up the imposter syndrome so that you don’t burn out.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

You would be surprised how much overlap there can be between massively stylistically different musicians and genres and how much you have to offer people that you sound nothing like. I take a lot of influence from my homies on the gram and we work together and challenge each other to get out of our comfort zones which has always paid off. I am always pleasantly surprised by the conversations I have had with strangers that I admire and fans of my own. Some of the musicians I have met online have turned into real friendships that I treasure.

Contact Info:

• Website: Joeyvillalobos.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/kitties_cars_guitars
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@joeyvillalobos5986

Image Credits
Stacey Lovett