Joseph Robert Hawley was born and raised in Bloomfield Hills, MI. He attended Lahser High School, overlapping in his time there with Ross Federman.

He was a film/English double major at the University of Michigan, and graduated in 2005. While at college, he formed the comedy troupe anonyMous and produced the feature film Sargasm, from which many of Tally Hall's early videos were taken. He was introduced to Rob Cantor their sophomore year through their mutual friend Andrew Laurich, a housemate of Rob and Andrew Horowitz. They sat next to each other in a musicology course, and eventually Rob convinced Joe to join the band he'd formed with Andrew and Zubin Sedghi.

Joe was the one who proposed the name Tally Hall, after the former site of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.

He is a vegetarian, in theory. He's a great, red, original, observant, extrodinary, and rambunctious man.