Prairie girl Jobi “Johnnie 99” Mihajlovich (J99) has been playing music since she was big enough to crawl onto the piano bench in her parents’ Albertan mobile home.
By age six, she was competing with music students more than twice her age at the provincial level in composition.
Since then, she has eagerly attempted every aspect of the Muse she had an opportunity to explore, and has finally come full circle to an individual style heavily influenced by the Howlin’ Wolf, Hank Williams, and Hendrix she was raised on.
Described by one slack-jawed onlooker, as a union between Marc Bolan and Janis Joplin, Johnnie’s powerful voice and unique frailing slide style on the resonator banjo electrifies every room she plays.
Early-2010 gave rise to Southern-inspired and Olympics-escaping road record Good Enough for Canada! with the Buskin’ & Robbin’ Band.
Then her debut full-length record No Home like Nowhere, originally recorded in 2008, was released to excellent reviews.
As though this was not enough, a return to fabled Nashville studio Welcome to 1979 incited the creation of live-off-the-floor True Grit, Cigarettes & Gasoline with The Good Time Family Band.
By January 2011, she was back in the studio and A Whole Box of Shells, a rustic twang of two players and one mic, was born.
Johnny’s songs are a loving gesture of respect to all the things that came before it. They taste of depression dustbowl thirst, quenched with back-forty moonshine and taken on down to the dance hall.
Also featured on the J99 show, is Grand Forks’ own Dave Soroka.
Dave and J99 met through a mutual production company in 2010 and have together done a show in Penticton and plan a joint Canada-wide tour in 2012.
Dave and J99 have traveled the same road, with similar experiences, resulting in a harmony of music and understanding as they share the same stage.
Dave has toured Canada and straight into the deep south of the U.S. with guitar and harmonica in hand. He has recorded a number of CDs, has been interviewed on CBC Radio and has received acclaim and applause from the media music critics both in Canada and the U.S.
One critic described Dave as, “a mythical figure in the Canadian indie music scene.
With an ever growing cult following from British Columbia, clear across Canada and down into the deep American South, his songs are humorous, contagious, heart wrenching and capture the emotions and stories of a true Canadian troubadour.”
The two will be appearing at Studio B on Monday, May 16 at 7:30 p.m.