Joel started making music when he was in high school but didn't get serious about it until he moved to New York and wrote songs with a friend in a band called The Mores. He moved to Northern California in the early '90s and joined his first punk band called Patch. He then started making solo records using a four track his roomate and musical collaborator Greno owned. He recorded a few albums for the Mermaid Records label under the name Jorrell. The songs from those recordings are compiled in the collection called A Port Elizabeth Brahmin. Joel then moved to San Francisco and started recording with his own 8-track machine which he bought for $100 and started recording as El Archer, a nod to his surname. Later, his friend Farhad Parsa began sending him instrumental tracks to which he added his lyrics and vocals. They called this project Pilot the Morning Fall and later did more recordings like this and called it The Fears. And in the last few years, Joel started recording long distance with his old friend Greno and they released an album titled From the Springs to the Rock and call themselves Local Flight.