Joe has worked in the music industry for twenty years, graduating from the Academy of Contemporary Music in 2002 and heading out on his first tour as a drummer in 2003. A self-titled ‘accidental musical director’, Joe first adopted the MD title in 2009, after auditioning for the then unknown UK artist Ellie Goulding. Having asked for the stems to Ellie’s early demos, Joe arrived at the audition with versions of each song sampled out, playback built, click and cue tracks in place and a vision for how he thought Ellie’s live show could sound.

Joe was behind the drums for Ellie’s first ever full band show in 2009, journeying with her through each of her first three album cycles, moving on from the project in 2020. Alongside an outstanding band and crew, they developed an arena pop show that heavily utilised technology on stage to make every sound from the records playable, with the vision of creating a backing track free show. Joe and Ellie’s bass player/sound designer Simon Francis became regarded as being amongst the first people in the UK to adopt the use of Ableton Live as a core system for large format touring.

Joe’s first MD projects outside of Ellie started in 2015 with Alunageorge, followed by Years & Years, Becky Hill and Clean Bandit. By 2018 Joe was the musical director on the Mumford & Sons Delta campaign and world tour, with the core team that now makes up Artclub Live growing organically to deliver multiple global touring shows at the same time.

Credited with thousands of shows, spanning two decades, multiple genres, technologies and almost every TV promo opportunity around the world, Artclub Live have developed a unique reputation for consistent high quality output and outstanding attention to detail, with a wider team capable of delivering on any brief at scale.