Joe Hawley

Joe Hawley
File:Joehawley.jpg
Current Member of Tally Hall
Date of Birth:	September 23, 1982
Hometown:	Detroit, MI
Current resident of:	Miami, FL

Biography

Joining The Band

In Joe's words:

"Sophomore year in college, film school acquaintance Andrew Laurich and I were out videotaping a wedding. In the car on the way back, he played me a CD of his housemate’s high school band, called “ListedBlack.” I thought it was OK, but didn’t think much of it.

I had been to a few parties at their house, but the only person I really knew there for a while was Laurich. During Fall Semester 2002, Rob formally introduced himself to me (”I live with Andrew Laurich”) at a Musicology lecture. We began to get lunch after class semi-regularly, swapping e-mails and so forth. He sent me a few recordings of himself, Andrew Horowitz, and Zubin performing a small concert in the basement of the Frieze building, which used to be an academic facility on campus. I e-mailed him a couple of experimental tracks I had made over the summer for fun with my high school friend Andrew Kurtz: Covers of “Lady Madonna” by the Beatles and “Space Oddity” by David Bowie.

I was very surprised when Rob invited me to practice with his band one day; I had no intention of joining or committing to the project whatsoever. The idea of being in an actual band had never occurred to me. Steve Gallagher was invited around the same time (maybe a practice later or so), and Rob later told me that he thought I’d be an adequate lead guitarist based on some of the stuff I did in “Space Oddity.” I played a couple gigs with them (first as “Gallagher,” then as “540,” the address of their house) as a backup musician, but I didn’t really feel like part of the band until I suggested that we name it Tally Hall and Rob actually listened. He subsequently proposed it to the group (Tally Hall was one of many names I suggested via e-mail), and it was unanimous after some explaining to Andrew Horowitz, the only out-of-stater. I was basically Rob’s very inexperienced hired gun until we covered “Blinded By The Light” at the Blind Pig. Then Andrew wrote “Good Day,” I wrote “Ruler Of Everything,” etc."

On the 2006 website, Joe's bio read thusly... When Joe updated the website later on, he elaborated a bit, re-copyrighted himself, and took out one of his pet deaths. And it read like so...

"Where's Joe?" Controversy of 2010

In March of 2010, Joe was not present for the tour with Jukebox The Ghost and Skybox. Casey Shea filled in for Joe (vocals and guitar), whilst wearing a black necktie. The band told the crowds that, due to unforeseen circumstances, Joe had to back out of the tour at the last minute, but nothing was said after. Curiously, in the months leading up to this surprise, Joe cleared out his Twitter posts and deleted (or well-hid) his Facebook page. The March tour went on, and more questions arose than answers. It was discovered that Joe was in fine health, but no one provided a clear explanation on his absence. Months went by, and in September of 2010, a show at Denison University occurred with Casey Shea in lieu of Joe, once again. This controversy began feeding the anger amongst fans who were already riled up over the delayed release of Good & Evil, which had its ETA pushed back multiple times.

October 2010 brought more curious changes to the as-yet-untold story of Joe Hawley and his involvement with the band. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee. The short story there was that his lease was up in Brooklyn, and a friend of his was moving to Nashville and invited Joe to stay with him. A few months later, he moved back to Michigan, where he currently resides.

Joe, officially, addressed his "disappearance" on Tally Hall's June 15 Ustream, over a year after his original disappearance occurred. "My personal life and my professional life intersected in a way that may have been considered unsavory," he explained. "Given that conflict, I was unable to tour." No band members have given a further explanation to this statement.