Biography

Joanna’s first public performance was in her Kindergarten Christmas production. Too ambitious at five to be a sheep, she claimed the lead as The Virgin Mary. Little did she know that would be such a tough act to follow…
“The years of performing my own stuff are only a smidgen of where I’ve come from. I’d be remiss if I neglected to mention singing ‘Little Boy Blue Go Blow Your Horn’ in the Victoria Music Festival when I was eight, or the Benjamin Britten choral pieces, or Palastrina and Bach masses, Thomas Morely madrigals, Faure’s Requiem… it was all such beautiful music! The classics influenced me as much as the modern genius of Joni Mitchell, Iggy Pop, Enya, The Clash, David Byrne, Bob Marley, Antonio Jobim and all the other amazing musicians that filled my early adult life. That’s why I’m so eclectic. It all matters."

Herstory

IIn Victoria BC where she grew up, the youngest of five children, Joanna soaked up all the cultural and artistic influences presented to her by her passionate mother and older siblings. “Everyone was always singing in my family…usually making fun of someone’s voice. We loved to imitate Frank Sinatra and pretend we were opera singers. I think in some weird way that mockery actually helped me to become a singer.” Her Mother and her brother Geoffrey were mostly responsible for enlivening her ears to all manner of musical pleasures; though the other three also played their part in assuring Joanna was well exposed to the rhythms and riffs of her generation. As a baby she was lulled to sleep by her mothers Edith Piaff, Tchaikovsky and Bizet albums. She was spoon-fed the post war jazz greats: Artie Shaw, Jo Safford, Glenn Miller and Rosemary Clooney. During her pre-teen years Donovan, The Beaumarks, The Collectors, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Tomita’s Moog synth interpretations of Debussy, Stephan Grapelli and Django Rhinhardt’s Hot Club of Paris albums were doled out in healthy servings. Born just a little too late to fully participate in the blossoming of the Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Hendrix era of rock and folk, Joanna lapped up everything that resembled music with a heartbeat before the synthetic world of disco took over.

“I loved imitating the voices of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan especially. They all have such distinctive vocal styles, and I’m pretty good with voices… In church, sitting in the second soprano section, I used to crack up the other naughty singers within earshot when I’d sing bass in my Elvis voice. I almost got moved to the bass section as a punishment. That wouldn’t have been so bad…”

She survived the disco fever by attending as many live shows as possible in the cultural backwash of Victoria. Favorite hippy bands like Pied Pumpkin and local band Blue Moon sparked the idea in her to start writing folk songs. Aboard a crabbing boat in Naden Harbour in the Queen Charlotte Islands Joanna wrote her first tragic folk song. Around the same time Joanna began listening to jazz on her bedside radio as she fell to sleep at night. Billie Holiday came into her life about then and along with Billie came Joanna’s amazing nose cornet, a mocked up version of Billie’s famous lamenting vocal style. (click here for clip from ‘Toad’s Lament’ nose cornet solo) Her eclectic buffet of musical influences, mixed with private voice and viola lessons at the Victoria Conservatory of Music and six years of sacred choral music, gave Joanna just enough musical education to drive her into a frenzy of undirected passion.

At seventeen she left home to spend the next five years traveling, singing, loving, learning to play flute, laboring in mining, fishing and logging, writing songs, loving, cooking, learning French, sailing, and gathering a lot of life experience in her journeys to the Queen Charlotte Islands, Mexico, Quebec, P.E.I., Arizona, France, Switzerland, England, Germany and the Caribbean. She settled briefly on Gabriola Island and returned to school to pursue a career in early childhood education. Upon returning to her Home and Native land of Victoria she became stricken with the voodoo magic of Louisiana Zydeco music with a group of touring musicians, Queen Ida and The Bon Temps Zydeco Band. On the dance floor, in a frenzy of gyrating pleasure, she felt the kick of the performer within, prodding her to return to her dream of becoming a singer. “I wanted so much to be their groupie. I traveled with them on their bus to Vancouver. Queen Ida was such a magnificent creature. I would’ve made a fool of myself following them around, showing up at all their concerts. So I controlled myself. A big mistake.” In High school drama productions and at private parties Joanna had developed a panache for mimicry, one liners and guerrilla theatrics that compelled her to apply to and be accepted to a theatre school in San Francisco precisely at the time when she met and fell in step with the man who became her mate.

Instead of following her dream Joanna followed her man to the remote West Coast Village of Kyuquot where she honed her skills as a housewife and environmental activist. There in the wind and the rain, Joanna continued to sing, making up small hums about anything that came into her head in any style or era that suited her fancy. Motherhood soon followed with the birth of two daughters, three years apart. “ I love that Michelle Shocked line from her song, Anchorage (1988): ‘I sound like a house wife…I think I’m a housewife’. That really struck a chord in me. As much as I loved being a mother to my two little girls I had an intense, burning desire to perform. I went to the Vancouver Folk Festival every summer and hearing Michelle and others planted the seed of my dream to one day perform my songs at the festival. There I was, like her friend in her song, anchored down in Kyuquot, with this blossoming passion to perform as a singer/songwriter. I was torn. It just wasn’t to be for some time.” It was in Kyuquot, volunteering and substitute teaching at the two-room schoolhouse, that Joanna discovered her aptitude for working with students with special needs, which eventually became her vocation for sixteen years. After six wild and stormy years her family left Kyuquot and moved to Cumberland to the pretty little house on the corner where she settled into writing most of the songs that are in her current repertoire.

“I felt like I’d been let out of a cage. The valley was full of interesting people and opportunities to participate in the Arts and community events. I realized how asleep I’d been for almost a decade. I was inspired by my children, my community and my relentless Muse to start acting and singing again. It was thrilling.”

The month after she settled in Cumberland Joanna joined the North Island Choral society, which, interestingly was directed by an old friend from her days at Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria. “I was relieved and delighted to discover I could still read music, and my singing had actually improved during my hiatus from formal training” Within five years Joanna had expanded her unschooled musical training to include original folk, reggae, jazz and swing, by jumping into every group that came her way. She sang Madrigals with Tom Tully, Marcia Haley and Tim Haley at Cumberland’s legendary Frelone’s Music hall; classical voice lessons with June Dupuis; she started jamming with the local singer/songwriter folk hero Judy Norbury and resurrected her viola, playing gentle harmonic riffs to back Judy’s dulcimer. The following year she electrified her viola and started writing dance tunes for the Rasta-boogie-folk –pop band, Actual Reality with Wyatt Lamoureau, Michel LeClerk, Maureen McGuire and Tom Salter. She attended two summer sessions at the Comox Valley Youth Music Camp, CYMC where she met vocal jazz teacher Shannon Gunn and got so crazy for jazz that she wanted to run away from home and just sing. And, she rediscovered her thespian within. “When I was eight and my brother Geoffrey was twelve and very clever, he said to me, ‘When you grow up I know what you’re going to be. You’re going to be an exhibitionist.’ I thought that meant I would be in a circus.”

Through an advert in the local paper Joanna found a group of women interested in performing satirical / feminist comedy. There, at the first meeting, she met the dynamic and persuasive Hazel Lennox, the instigator of the project, whose fervor and enthusiasm rekindled Joanna’s interest in political theatre. With two preschool children, it was often a conflict to devote the time necessary to work the lines, develop characters and attend rehearsals, but The fabulous Ms Adventures were soon a hit in the Comox Valley and beyond. Joanna was hooked. Joanna’s characters included a dyke Elvis, recently revived from the grave, a licentious “Lady C”, a dim witted bimbo Barbie clone “Cindy Doll” and many more weird and engaging characters. “ I changed the words of ‘Love Me Tender’ to ‘Love Me Slender’ to fit the section of the show in which we address body image issues. Even the die-hard Elvis fans like that song. It’s not very favorable towards him, but apparently people get a thrill when I do this hip gyrating thing. Wow. He was really onto something there.” The thirteen member troupe dwindled down to eight in the second year and toured as far as Kelowna. After another cut and more touring the core group had jelled into five strong, peculiar and talented women that included Hazel Lennox, Marjorie Eugene, Judy Norbury, Linda Safford and Joannna. The troupe tromped to Tofino and Vancouver and Duncan Fringe festivals, Protection island, Nanaimo, Cortes and on and on for five years. Then, in 2000, after many memorable shows, they decided to call it quits. On occasion, the group still gets together to perform condensed shows from their original repertoire of outrageous and ribald sketches and songs. Their most recent appearance was in the award winning burlesque cabaret show, Madame Jojo’s Cabaret in April 2005. Without much persuasion, these five adventurous women are still keen to shock and amuse when asked.

A friendship with Judy Norbury deepened during the Ms. Adventures years and developed into a strong musical partnership. Soon the eclectic, quirky songwriting duo of Norbury & Finch was performing at music festivals, conventions and fundraisers. “Judy is a great story teller and weaves those stories into her songs. I love the way her imagery makes me feel.When I first saw her perform I was impressed. She has so much spirit. When I saw her at the Bar None up there just singing her heart out I felt inspired. Her joy and unabashed pleasure gave me the courage to get up and do it. Now when we play- we’ve been together for over twelve years- I notice I always feel good, like something soothing and wholesome has happened to me” The duo has two CDs to their credit, Tease for Two , co- produced by Todd Butler and released in 2000 and, Circular Motion, a six song sampler EP. Together they are a dynamic pair with a special knack for enlivening their audiences with their quirky, political, whimsical, original music. Their songs are composed individually but they become Norbury & Finch songs when they’re performing. It is difficult to distinguish their voices when they sing harmonies as they blend so well. Their innovative use of instruments, including the dulcimer, melodeon, penny whistle, flute and Joanna’s almost invisible famous nose cornet puts them in a musical category that is hard to define. Spirited, quirky, original and uplifting folk pretty much sums them up.

With Joanna’s latest projects she is coming to terms with what eclectic means for her. She has three video projects on the go and she’s performing in four groups, all with original music. She writes and sings whatever her generous muse put into her head. Each recording will be unique and different. Her overall style cannot be defined, but in live performance the audience is always in for a treat… you never know what she will pull out, whether it’s a gentle Celtic ballad, a steamy Latin dance number about forbidden love, a bizarre circus song with her performing her Human thermin, or a sophisticated jazz ballad. Everything she writes is well developed and musically interesting. She’s currently working on funding for two projects, a blues, Zydeco stomp album and an ambient rock/ jazz album.

“ So many influences, so much inspiration- it’s a luscious world of sound and emotion I’m in… BjorkJoniMitchellTomWaitesMiriamMakebaBlondieJaneSiberry BessieSmith Louden Wainwright the third FrankZappa LooneyTunes TheBeatles ColePorter LeonardCohen LaurieAnderson Mariannne Faithful Astrid Gilberto TomJones MuddyWaters Elvis… and the beat goes on, and the list goes on and on…and Julie Andrews! What a voice! "

The Comox Valley has been a place of abundant musical and theatrical inspiration for Joanna. Like many working mothers, she has balanced the needs of her family and the rigors of her job, meanwhile developing her skills as an artist. Joanna’s undirected passion as a youth has simmered into a bouillabaisse of a vastly eclectic musical repertoire of original songs. Now, with the release of her debut solo album in December 2005, and her daughters entering adulthood, Joanna is ready to return fully committed to her lifelong dream of being a full-time musical performer

Back to top