Joey Mayer talks sobriety and songwriting on "Drunk Words"
By Tiara Grace
Joey Mayer is an independent artist based in Twin Cities, MN. Mayer, who has been putting out tracks since 2018, combines hip-hop, pop, and rock elements in his releases and his most recent album is no different. Mayer’s first album, ‘Drunk Words’ is centered around his experience with addiction and the human condition. We spoke about how much of his life is intertwined with his writing process, his favorite artists, and what program he used to create the awe-inspiring visuals on his album’s track list. Read on to get a look into Mayer’s music.
EU: I did a little bit of a deep dive into you, but basically I wanted to ask you directly, who are you? How did you start making music? More specifically, when did you start feeling comfortable putting yourself out there and taking it seriously?
JM: Sure, Yeah. I’m Joey. Joey Mayer. I’m 22. I’m initially from a suburb about 30 minutes outside of the Twin Cities called Lakeville, Minnesota. I was living in the cities for a couple of years. Right now, I’m living back out in the suburbs temporarily. Yeah, been back and forth quite a bit. Music has been a big part of my life since I was pretty young. I started taking piano lessons when I was seven or eight years old, and then I moved from that onto the drums. I was never super strong on piano. Like, I was okay, but I wasn’t consistent with practicing. I was far from a child prodigy or anything. I just kind of was like, a kid who took piano lessons and then stopped. Then later, I came back and just learned contemporary songs. Some by ear, some through YouTube tutorials and stuff. But drumming was what I really fell in love with right away. I started doing percussion in fifth grade in school, and then I very quickly started doing jazz band. And then in high school I joined percussion ensemble and marching band.
JM: Because of this focus on drumming over piano, I understood rhythm in a much more nuanced way than melody. Now, years later, I love both quite a bit, and I try to incorporate both extensively into my music. There’s some singing on the album, and there’s some more melodic hip-hop in the first half. And then towards the end of the album there’s this whole song where I’m just like singing and stuff, which was pretty scary to me because I had never been all that confident in my singing voice, and this was the most exposed it had been due to the minimal instrumentation. But in terms of my background, I really started writing songs in middle school in a very casual sense, and then got more in depth and serious about it during high school. But before that, the first song I ever wrote was in fifth grade. We were reading Homer’s “The Iliad,” and my buddy Isaac and I, we were supposed to put together a project on it.
JM: I don’t remember exactly how we were doing it, but we were reading it in class and we got bored, so we were joking that because it’s supposedly an epic poem, it should rhyme. It doesn’t really rhyme, it’s just a book, but we were trying to, like, I don’t know, rap it. It was very dumb. Our project was an Iliad rap and neither of us were very good at all because we were in fifth grade. I put it together and then my dad freaked out because, and I didn’t know this at the time, but he used to make music when he was in high school. He went by the name “Crowbar”, but he had made a song that was basically about Greek mythology for a class that my mom was in. I don’t know if it was necessarily where they met, but she put all this effort into her paper, and got a B, and he wrote a song and got an A. So it totally messed with her head. But yeah, I did a handful of songs as school projects, through middle and high school, wrote songs for a few of my friends on their birthdays, and started experimenting with very simple chord progressions and melodies, as well as trying my hand at writing lyrics.
If you listen to any of my older stuff on SoundCloud or my first single, my love for rhythm and percussion really overshadowed the quality of writing. I loved fast, complex rhythms and cadences, so I fell in love the first time I heard Worldwide Choppers by Tech N9ne, or the Busta Rhymes verse on “Look at Me Now”, or the Sama llama duma llama stuff from Rap God, any of the super technical flippity hippity stuff. I figured out at some point that I could rap along to those verses. There was definitely a time when that took priority over the lyrics themselves, especially when I didn’t have bars at all. Like, I couldn’t write good content. The only time I could make my friends go, “ohhhhh” is when I was rapping too fast for them to understand. So there was definitely a real love for the technique that pre-dated a nuanced passion for the craft of lyricism, like, I wasn’t a very good writer. I was a super hyperactive kid who talked really fast and figured out he could rap really fast. That whole mindset that I needed to grow out of is why the first lyric on the album is “I used to always put the rhyme before painting the picture”, which is what I really feel like I have been able to do in recent years, especially on this album. I started transitioning out of that sort of phase when I really started to develop an appreciation for language as a form of expression, as well as a love for what the art form could do.
JM: In terms of transitioning to a point where I felt like I could really put stuff out, I technically dropped my first song in 2018. I was doing a lot of these Instagram cyphers, which were fun because you could write a 16-20 bar verse and just record a video for it. It didn’t have the same pressure as, like, “Oh, this is my first single.” It was just like, “Okay, put some fun word-play and punchlines and don’t worry about, like, having to have the strength of being a song.” Then the first track I put out was barely mixed. I didn’t know how to mix. I just had a beat and I had a Blue Snowball mic and I recorded it. I know I should be proud of my work, but that first single I really look back on and cringe at because I was still in that “Look how many words I can pack into a verse” phase.
JM: It didn’t age super well, at least in how I perceive it. I definitely possessed the confidence to release music at the time, but I don’t think I really had written much music that was worth releasing. I think to some extent my confidence was good, because I was driven enough to put music out, even if I wasn’t putting my best foot forward. Like, if I had held off a few years, I could have had a better jumping off point, but my output was just so inconsistent. I released that one song in 2018, kind of towards the end of high school. I released another song in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, right after my freshman year of college. Then I didn’t release any more music in the two years after that. It’s not that I wasn’t writing, like, I write constantly. I have, like, five notebooks over here that are filled.
JM: My phone is filled. My notes app is, like, literally thousands of notes. Not all of them are full songs, but a lot of them are because I just do it, like, borderline compulsively.
EU: Yeah, that was actually what I wanted to ask you because I know this album holds a lot of value to you. Not only is it, like, your most recent release, but I know you said your songwriting process followed, maintaining your sobriety. Yeah. So I want to ask what was the process of crafting this album while keeping that theme in mind?
JM: Sure. So that’s a great question. And I’ll try to not, like, ramble so much so you can ask those really good questions. What was I going to say? Oh, yeah, I’m blanking on the term for it, there’s a really good podcast called Dissect that breaks down music. They do like, one album per season. They’re doing one on Igor right now, it’s a great podcast, and last season they discussed the term that I’m struggling to remember. Basically, it’s a term to describe a narrative that is about the creation of the narrative. So, it’s a story about writing the story, essentially. To me, to some extent, the album feels like that because all the songs were written pretty much in the first three or four months after treatment. I’ve been in the recording and mixing and all the postproduction processes and stuff for the last few months, but all the songs were written by May or June.
JM: So, all of them were pretty raw in the sense that it was the first time in a really long time that I had words spilling out of me constantly. I had so much more to say than I had in years, to be entirely honest, probably ever. Which is why I felt the need to stop and say “Okay, there’s enough stuff here that’s really worth saying that I should really put it together in a project.” So, there are definitely a few of the songs that really just kind of happened. Like, a few of those songs were written within a couple of hours of hearing a certain instrumental or having an inkling of a melody. The first verse of the album, off the track “Going Home” featuring vocals from my incredibly talented friend Jordan Adams, came about right at the start of my sobriety. I was quarantining with my girlfriend and her family after getting COVID at rehab, and her mom gave me a notebook. This notebook says the word ‘Thoughts’ and I wrote the word ‘Sober’ on top of that. Now it says, ‘Sober Thoughts, which, when I was writing my album in high school, was supposed to be the name of the album. This album is called Drunk Words because, you know, “Drunk Words are just Sober Thoughts”, it’s a whole thing. But the first verse of the album was actually the first thing I wrote on the first page of this notebook.
EU: Wow.
JM: It was one of the first things I wrote just coming out. A lot of it was centered around the headspace I was in due to everything that was going on, and I’m really glad I’m not in that emotional state anymore. It’s interesting now because I’m in a better place mentally than I was fresh out of treatment, and so listening back to some of the music I wrote then is a tad painful to me. I was definitely in a fundamentally different place, and the process of creating the record was largely a product of circumstance, while also helping me work my way through it. I was really just writing about my situation as honestly as I could, whether it was exactly where I was physically or just how I felt mentally. Like the second verse of “Where Did All the Time Go?” Half of that verse is me just describing being on a plane that’s about to take off, and that’s because I was in a plane that was about to leave. I was about to head to California to see my sister. And I don’t know why I felt the instinct to like, “Oh, I’m going to write about exactly what I see and feel”, and I just happened to finish the song right there and then.
JM: I feel like it ended up tying together pretty well thematically. There are a few other instances on the album where I really just listened to my instincts more than I usually would in music, because I’m definitely hyper critical when it comes to my own ideas. I tend to overthink and overanalyze every gut instinct I have, but I tried to just trust my gut as much as I could with the album. It was a really interesting process, and although I’ve written a lot more than eight songs in the last several months, I really wanted to keep it concise. I wanted to keep it focused on that journey, and on what early sobriety was for me, so that it could hopefully speak to other people who are in similar situations, whether it’s for alcohol, or for other substances, or whatever vices they may be dealing with. “We both got a mountain in our way, but we ain’t staring at the same summit.”
EU: That also kind of leads into when you spoke about a couple of tracks just now. If someone heard a track on the radio, which one would you want it to be? And what three words would you like them to use to describe that sound?
JM: My answer to that now is probably different than it was when I dropped it, just because I’ve had so much feedback from friends and family, and I know which ones are people’s favorites. The one that has been getting the best reception is track three, ‘Go Easy’, featuring my good friend Cade Eliason. What’s special about that track is that nearly the entirety of it, at least on my end, was done in one take, which I almost never do because I’m just so critical of my own delivery and vocal tone. I almost always punch in a lot and record, like, five or six takes. In terms of three words to describe it, I don’t know. To me, I guess it’s not an emotion, but one key feeling would be driving at sunset. ‘Flower Boy’ by Tyler the Creator is one of my favorite albums ever and that’s like my favorite album to drive to. If I can be listening to, like, I don’t know, ‘November’ as the sun is setting, I’m having a good day. I would say a deep sense of calm is what I hope people feel when listening to that song.
JM: As for the three words, I would say calmness, sunset and fulfillment. I was very fortunate to work with the guest vocalist that I worked with on that song. I think he has an incredible voice and his harmonies did wonders for that chorus. And then the way we ended the song, taking my vocals out, and just making it an acapella rendition of his voice singing the chorus, is my personal favorite moment on the album. Like, it’s weird for me to hear myself telling myself to calm down, but to hear him in that last leg of the song, it brings me a lot of peace. So I hope other people can find that.
EU: Awesome. I also wanted to say I went to your socials and it seems like half of the track album artwork is seemingly taking up your page. Yeah. What made you decide to choose that artwork for your track list and your album?
JM: Sure, yeah. I appreciate you mentioning the visual stuff because that was an aspect that was important for me to get right. I’m far from a visual artist, but I did put a lot of thought into it. On Spotify, they have the whole canvas thing where there’s like a little eight second video and I was like, “Man, it would be really cool to have these for the album. To be 100% honest, the main reason at first that I felt like I needed them at first was because of the song ‘Jealous’. The whole album is very mellow, and then ‘Jealous’ is just like a banger, it stands out. I like the song enough and people seem to enjoy it and it still fits in thematically. I wanted to keep it on the project, but I listened to that song and I’m like, this doesn’t really fit the album cover, at least to me. When I look at that snowy mountain, I don’t picture that horn loop or like those 808. I don’t know, It felt different to me. So I wanted to make a visual that represented that, and then I thought, “Well, I, might as well make one for all of them.”
So all of those were actually made as still images in an AI art generator tool called Dream, which is a really cool program. I’m not experienced in animation at all, but I downloaded an animation app where I could draw in ripples to the water and add movement to the sky, stuff like that. I thought it’d be cool if I gave them a little bit of motion, a kind of dynamic [element] to them. I don’t really have much experience in terms of promoting an album. So for my Instagram and stuff, I’m just going to post once a day following the album’s release. I’ll post a visual for the song, I’ll go literally just one through eight. The neat thing is, as I do that, my Instagram page will just kind of have a grid of nine that will be the artwork, so it just kind of worked out in a way where it was visually appealing. And I do want to shout out my friend Sierra Alred, she’s a really gifted artist. The actual album cover art itself stemmed from what she was doing, and it was an honor to work with her on the visual side of things.
EU: 100%. And you also kind of spoke to this in that answer. When it comes to being a solo artist and having those ups and downs and getting into the whole self promotion strategy of it, how do you navigate that as an independent artist, for sure?
JM: That’s a great question. You’re a great interviewer. Coincidentally, and I was very grateful that this happened the night the album dropped, a clip from a Tyler the Creator interview showed up in my feed, and it was him talking about the generation below him. He basically was talking about; “So you went through this experience. You wrote this song, whether you produced it or you hired a producer and engineer, and you spent all this time putting it together, and you made this thing that means so much to you, and you’re going to put it on your story once. Like, are you crazy?” Which really resonated with me because I feel very much like there are so many people in my life that I wanted to reach out to and say, “hey, I put together this body of work”, but I’m a very anxious person inherently.
JM: So I default to the belief that people are going to think, “Oh, you’re not reaching out to me because you care about me. You’re reaching out to me to get a few more streams, or to hope I’ll post it on my story or whatever.” And that idea of shameless self-promotion or whatever, being that guy who’s like, “Hey, check out my album” freaks me out, because a part of me doesn’t want to be looked at a certain type of way because of that. But I saw that Tyler video, and I knew that he was right. I can’t be passive with my own art, because no one is going to push it as far as I need to push it. And if I’m confident in the quality of my work, if I’m confident that there’s value in what I’ve made, I need to share it with that same confidence. It’s the same thing with sending out this press release, right? I was very lucky that my good friend Sophia had this connection at Ease Up, but it still would have been very easy for me to just be like, “I don’t want to bother them, I don’t want to throw my hat in the ring.” I was like, “No, I made a good project and it’s worth sharing.”
JM: For actual promotion strategies, I do have a lot to learn, especially in terms of like Tik Tok algorithms, which are crazy. I can’t begin to understand them. In terms of social media, it’s pretty easy to get stuff, at the very least, in front of people, especially if you have a small circle. Or if you have ten people that will. I have, like, 1,600 followers. You can see how many accounts see the post, and more than 2,000 saw my album announcement, because so many of my friends made the decision to support the album, and share it in their social circles. I didn’t ask them to. I didn’t ask a single person, “Hey, can you put this on your story? Can you share this? Can you promote my album?” I’m just personally not going to do that because I just trust that if they like it enough, if they like me enough, they’ll share it if that’s something they feel inclined to do. And if they don’t, it’s okay. I didn’t feel any type of way about a moderately close friend of mine who didn’t take the time to share my album on their story. That’s their prerogative. But I just need be as confident as I can be in the quality of my work and demonstrate that with how confidently I share it.
EU: In relation to the album, but also just like, your overall sound, do you have any specific inspirations maybe from where you’re from in Minnesota, or do you take inspiration mainly from, like, mainstream artists.
JM: There are definitely some local people that are a big influence in terms of artists that I connect with. Cade Eliason’s guidance and wisdom are all over this record. Enzyrose is super talented. King Kyros is crazy. XOZay and my guy Chris are both incredible. My music partner, Goofy, is one of the best writers I’ve ever met. But in terms of the influences of my overall sound, definitely a lot of them are just the rappers I listen to. Just the artists that I really like. There are artists that inspire me in a broad sense in terms of just the quality of their penmanship. I look at guys like Black Thought, I look at guys like Andre 3000, like DOOM, like Earl Sweatshirt. In terms of the specific influence of this album and shaping the sound of it, by far the biggest is Mac Miller. It’s really no contest in terms of what I was going for with this project. I was listening to a lot of ‘Divine Feminine’ when I was writing this. I was listening to quite a bit of ‘Swimming’. The most common comparison I’ve gotten was like, “Oh, this sounds like late career Mac”. Which, I mean, his music obviously dealt with quite a bit of substance abuse and kind of battling those demons.
JM: It’s crazy, he passed on my 18th birthday. September 7, 2018 was when Mac, rest in peace, passed away. But no, for sure he’s a big one on this project. I don’t know, I just love great writers. To me, that’s just what I always look for in music of any genre. I’m always like a lyrics-first person. I just find that hip hop especially has such great storytelling, and I think he’s a great storyteller.
I think Kendrick [Lamar] is arguably the best storyteller of the last decade. Practically every single one of his albums has arguably the best narrative track from the year it dropped. “Art of Peer Pressure’ and ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst’ are both crazy. ‘How Much a Dollar Cost’ is crazy, and then ‘Duckworth’ is crazy, and then ‘Mother I Sober’ is crazy. And ‘Auntie Diaries, ‘We Cry Together’, the one where it’s literally like a couple arguing on the track, like it’s crazy. And so, obviously, I’m not incorporating too many of those elements in this project specifically, but overall in terms of an honest depiction of my own life, I try to approach it in a way that honors the greats and is respectful to the art form as it’s evolved. The album is very focused in terms of what it’s about.
JM: In terms of influences on my writing style, they come from all over the place. But thematically, I would say Mac was the big one for this one.
EU: Do you plan to perform your new album live soon? Can listeners expect to see you out performing?
JM: Absolutely. I’ve been meaning to coordinate a performance specifically, like an album release performance and granted, it’s a little late for that, but with a local venue called The Treasury. I performed there with my music partner, Goofy. We performed there a couple of months back, and I did, like, two cuts from the album before it was released. I absolutely want to get out there and perform, especially during winter break when a lot of my friends who are out of state come back to Minnesota. I want to get some local artists on that card as well. The Twin Cities have such a crazy, vibrant underground music scene, and there are just so many people there who are some of the most talented people I’ve ever seen, and people don’t know them. So hopefully I can. I mean, it’s not like I have some massive platform, but a few people are checking out the music and stuff, and so hopefully if anyone ends up wanting to come to a show, I can then get their eyes on other local acts, too.
JM: But yes, absolutely. There’s not a date yet, but hopefully sometime in December. Fingers crossed.
EU: What can listeners expect from you in the next year? Aside from performing live?
JM: Sure. Well, within a year, definitely dropping another project. I won’t drop a title or a track list right now, but I do pretty much have both of those things figured out. I don’t want to jump the gun, but yeah, like I said, the album I was writing in high school is called ‘Sober Thoughts’, and this one’s called ‘Drunk Words’. Drunk Words are just Sober Thoughts. I don’t think ‘Sober Thoughts’ is the next project. I think that’s a couple of years down the road. I think that’s bigger. This [‘Drunk Words’] technically is an album in terms of the length, but I think that’s [the album ‘Sober Thoughts’] probably closer an hour. That’s more full blown. I have another eight or nine-song album that’s entirely written and half recorded, and so definitely another project within the year. A lot more singles and features. I have a lot of songs in the works that are with other local artists because I’m definitely trying to network and collaborate more. Definitely keep your eye out. I want to drop a song at least every few months.
Mayer continued to speak more candidly about releasing music prior to his release from treatment and how that differs between then and now
JM: I mean, it’s different now that I’m back in school, because throughout most of the album release, I was just working, and so I was able to focus a lot of my free time on it. So, my time frame is definitely different. I’m in school studying music, and so I’ll be able to be better, you know what I mean? I’ll be able to do a lot more of this stuff. The engineering on the album was all done by my buddy Cade, and hopefully on the next one I’ll be able to mix some of the songs. Just more music, I would imagine. Definitely. Within a year from now, 100%, the next project will be out, and I will be hard at work on the third one. So, yeah, that’s about where I’m at.
EU: So great to talk to you!
Be sure to stream “Drunk Words” on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud!
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