The Johnnie Ninety-Nine Band

"Johnnie kicks her Bluegrass up a notch by creating sonic textures and atmospheres, resulting in songs that are felt as much as heard. You’ll dig it if you dig: Michelle Shocked rewriting the American Country Songbook with Daniel Lanois producing the session." -Brian Baker, City Beat (Cincinnati OH)

"Johnnie Ninety-Nine's voice is one of those that catches you off guard. Her youthful, smiling, slightly awkward stage presence disappears the moment she starts singing, and is replaced by a maturity and confidence that makes you sit up and take notice. She has a timeless quality that is as rustic and "old-timey" as it is fresh, young, and contemporary. The kind of voice that connects up the present with a line that draws back into the distant and dim past. It's a voice that demands attention, and then rewards the effort." -Adam PW Smith, Live Event Photographer (Vancouver BC) http://www.adampwsmith.com

Prairie girl Jobi "Johnnie" Mihajlovich has been playing music since she was big enough to crawl onto the piano bench in her parents' Albertan mobile home. By age 6, 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. Ceaselessly inspired, she can also be found weaving keyed and choral tapestries with her brethren in emerging cosmic folk-rock group, Buffaloswans, or shooting bottle caps and gittin’ ‘er done with Shiloh Lindsey and her country blues outfit.

By January 2011, worn smooth by a year on the road and ready to plug in and crank up, Johnnie was back in the studio with long-time producer pal Luke de Villiers of hotshot reggae menagerie, Giraffe Aftermath. Tentatively titled, A Whole Box of Shells is a rustic twang of two players and one microphone that builds to the multilayered overdriven swamp sludge of wreckless modernity. It tastes of depression dustbowl thirst, quenched with back-forty moonshine, and taken on down to the dancehall.

In some circles, "johnny/ie" is a term of endearment. Johnny 99 is a rock solid Bruce Springsteen song. Probably thanks to some poor soul inspired by the first verse, a johnny ninety-nine is also a ruthlessly efficient beverage essentially using wine as a bed for a shot of gin. The Johnnie Ninety-Nine Band take a similar approach to their instruments, believing that high-proof music should be combined, not diluted. The music comes to life on the road, as this rogue gypsy navigates the highways and hayfields of North America to bring you some of the best that modern Canadiana has to offer.