Born in the year of Thriller, 1983, how could she not become a lover of music?

As a child…

Joa­nee grew up in a musi­cal home. Her bed­time song list glided through oldies, silly songs, clas­sic rock, old stan­dards, musi­cals and bill­board hits. “Sur­rey With The Fringe On Top” (from Okla­homa), “Don’t Get Around Much Any­more” (as per­formed by Harry Con­nick, Jr. on the When Harry Met Sally sound­track) and “I Will” (The Bea­t­les, from the White Album were among her favorite lul­la­bies, all per­formed by dad (with the occa­sional Joan har­mony). A “Sil­ver Bells” duet (a la Bing Crosby & Rose­mary Clooney) was per­formed with her father dur­ing the month of Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions every night at bed­time. Musi­cals, clas­sic rock, and oldies formed most of her child­hood mem­o­ries, but by high school her fam­ily had expanded their palate to include new bands and gen­res, and began vora­ciously attend­ing con­certs through­out the metro-Detroit area

As a per­former, she’s skipped in and out of gen­res for the past twenty years, which makes for quite a bizarre time­line. Here are the more inter­est­ing points:

–When she was lit­tle, her and her sis­ter Lind­say used to make music videos in the back­yard, usu­ally to the songs from their favorite cas­sette tape Heart In Motion by Amy Grant. None of these were ever recorded, only per­formed live for each other and their par­ents, but trust us, they were incredible.

–Unfor­tu­nately one per­for­mance was recorded. A “news show” her sib­lings and her pre­pared. She per­formed “Kids” from Bye Bye, Birdie which is a ridicu­lous song for a kid to sing.

–When she was 9, she and her father chore­o­graphed a solo rou­tine for her sum­mer camp’s tal­ent show to the show “Yakety Yak” by The Coast­ers from the Stand By Me sound­track (another favorite tape in those early years).

–At the age of 12 she won a con­test at her mid­dle school with a per­for­mance of Walt Disney’s Beauty and The Beast theme. She was the only one to com­pete. She rehearsed for months. A win is still a win.

As a teenager…

–At age 15, she was a mem­ber of a 12-person choir cho­sen to per­form on stage with Sha­nia Twain dur­ing her Come On Over tour in front of 23,000 peo­ple at the Palace of Auburn Hills.

–Her sopho­more year of high school ended with a great idea—the Song Of The Day! Since she had dili­gently sur­rounded her­self with music-loving friends and came from a music-obsessed fam­ily, it was rather easy to find peo­ple eager to read the lyrics of songs Joa­nee picked out on a nearly-daily basis. Her fan list swelled to around fifty peo­ple by her senior year, and she filled two 6″ binders with the lyrics she printed out in the school’s com­puter lab every morn­ing (this was before school’s were smart/desperate enough to charge kids for printing).

–Also, by her senior year of high school, she had placed in local com­pe­ti­tions with songs in four lan­guages (Ital­ian, Ger­man, French and Eng­lish). Her mother always cried at these competitions.

–In her final high school musi­cal pro­duc­tion, Kiss Me Kate, her direc­tor wrote a lead role into the show for her. After audi­tion­ing with an Ella Fitzger­ald inter­pre­ta­tion of “Too Darn Hot,” which was sup­posed to be sung by a tenor male in the show, the direc­tor “moved some things around”. A small amount of dia­logue, six cos­tume changes, and, most notably, the lead role in the open­ing songs of both Act ! (“Another Openin’, Another Show”) and Act II (“Too Darn Hot”) became the role of Hat­tie, Kate’s less-than-amused-with-her antics assistant.

As a young adult…

–While in col­lege in Buf­falo, NY she was a mem­ber of an incred­i­ble gospel choir, and had the oppor­tu­nity to per­form works from the oeu­vres of the Clark Sis­ters, Kirk Franklin and many oth­ers. She also per­formed as Eleanor Roo­sevelt and Tina Marie (a.k.a. any time there was a white female role) in the college’s Afro-American Society’s annual ben­e­fit production.

–In 2005, she was cast in a col­lege pro­duc­tion of “I Love You, You’re Per­fect, Now Change” and was required to sing no less than two oper­atic num­bers in the show. She’s never been trained in this style of singing, and it began as a joke dur­ing warm-ups, but it even­tu­ally devel­oped into a char­ac­ter for the show.

–In 2006, she per­formed Handel’s Mes­siah as a Soprano mem­ber of the his­toric Fort Street Pres­by­ter­ian Choir in Detroit.

–On a trip to NYC for a friend’s bach­e­lorette party in Novem­ber 2007, she dis­cov­ered her true karaoke call­ing was in per­form­ing Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart”. She can’t hit any of the low notes, so it’s ridicu­lous and hilar­i­ous. You should see it. She’s also done a screamo ver­sion of Billy Joel’s “Big Stuff”, though that shant be repeated.

–Also in 2007, Joa­nee buys the domain name daily-songs.com, with the hopes that she will put it to good and musi­cally pure uses soon.

–In 2009, she began a mas­sive quest: each month in the year of 2009 she would pro­duce a playlist of all the new music she was exposed to that month. It started out as sort of a record-keeping ven­ture, as she wanted to push her­self towards actively dis­cov­er­ing new music. Only one per­son other than Joan ever got to hear these mixes: her beloved music part­ner, Mikey. Every month, she would write expla­na­tions in the liner notes and send along a pack­age to Buf­falo, and he returned the favor with some incred­i­ble mixes and CDs of his own exquis­ite taste. By the time sum­mer 2009 hit, Joa­nee real­ized that she might as well spread the love and start that blog she’s always felt was inside of her. The end.