When indie rock band Joobilee plugs in at the Alamo Rehearsal Studios, you don’t just hear it, you feel it.
Vocalist Jordan Hayes, her shock of orange-red hair the color of an unlit matchstick, steers the melody of “Dandelion’s Basement” over languid basslines by Josh Zhuelsdorff. It’s a deceptively calm start, one that unravels at the chorus with Xavier Reed’s blistered drumming and a thunderclap of keys from Liam Mullen. Guitarist Austin Longworth joins Hayes on the mic, a levee of emotion breaking between the two as they sing at full volume.
They’re so in tune, so harmoniously aligned, it’s hard to believe it all started as a one-woman show.
“Everyone adds their own voice to Joobilee,” says Hayes, who founded it in 2022. “When I first started the project, I was taking on a much more folk route but my goal was to make it more rock. I just wasn’t able to do it on my own. Austin’s math-rock guitar, I feel like a lot of people pick up on that.”
A guitarist since age 10, because his dad believed he was “too small to play football,” Longworth met Hayes and Reed while working at an organization that taught music to autistic children. Reed and Zhuelsdorff had performed in bands together previously, and Mullen met Hayes through her boyfriend. By 2024, Joobilee re-emerged as a full band, opening for fast-rising indie bands like King Hannah and performing at Swan Dive, Taverna Costera, Grey Witch and other local venues of note.
The band recorded its first collective EP, The Weight of Quiet Things, with Vegas’ Electric Shop Recording, and it already feels like an instant, indie classic. On opening track “Farewell,” Hayes’ vocals beautifully assert themselves over shimmering keys and a soundscape of light jazz. “Death of a Trapeze Artist” favors gingerly strummed chord progressions and a swooning atmosphere. Meanwhile, “F**k You,” a closer written by Zhuelsdorff, delivers a wash of shoegazey noise beyond the choruses’ explicit sendoff. And Hayes’ vocals never seem too out of place with that. She’s been an adaptable singer since childhood.
The Weight of Quiet Things
“I’ve been singing since I was six years old. … I was classically trained. Originally I started singing in opera. Then I went from opera to jazz, but I wasn’t fully invested in those things because I was so young,” she says. “I was listening to f**king bubblegum pop. Then when I was in middle school, I started getting into Radiohead, the Cranberries and all of that stuff.”
The band’s love for Radiohead, Crumb, Hers and Geese continues to shape its sonic narrative. Mullen says their new material in the works even has shades of Cocteau Twins. But when they perform at Maxan Jazz on March 5, they’ll draw from a lot of Hayes’ older stuff, the new EP and of course, their onstage chemistry.
“It’s like a transcendental moment,” Longworth says. “There’s no words necessary, and everyone can lock eyes or not and it just all falls into place.”
JOOBILEE March 5, 6 p.m., free with RSVP. Maxan Jazz, eventbrite.com.
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