Laura Power
Northern News Services
Published Monday, September 10, 2007

FORT SMITH - Veronica Johnny was walking down the road one day in her hometown of Fort Smith when she spotted a man she'd never seen before.

She knew immediately that it was Dave Johnny, a new drummer in town that her friend Richard had been telling her about.

She called out.

"You must be Veronica," he said, having also heard about her from their mutual friend.

It didn't take long before the two started a cover band with some other local musicians called The Whiskeydicks. Though the two got on well, they were both involved in other romantic relationships.

Then it came time for them to play at the Open Sky Festival in Fort Simpson.

"Interestingly enough and weirdly enough, I had broken up with my (significant other) two days before we left for this festival and so had Dave," she recalls.

On the way back from the gig, the other band members were asleep in the back of the truck, and the two had some time to get to know each other.

By the end of the trip, they had hooked up.

They kept playing together with the Whiskeydicks until their vision grew into something else.

"One day in Smith he said, 'You know what? I'm not going to play with anyone who plays covers from this point forward. If you want me to drum for you, it has to be an original song,'" she said.

With the few original songs they had already written, they started their current project, the Johnnys. After only two months into the relationship, they decided to get married.

After a few years of jamming in their living room on St. Anne's Street (or Sesame Street as she calls it) the couple decided to move to Ontario, where her husband is from.

"We were gigging and trying to gig in the North, and we just found it really hard to get out-of-town gigs and to get any kind of exposure at all or experience," she said.

Since moving to Toronto, Johnny has been musically involved with many people, but her main focus is ultimately the music of The Johnnys. She said that band alone has had numerous members, with she and her husband at the core, but that lately things seem a little more solid.

"I'm really used to the city and the people and the movements and the craziness that is Toronto ... I'm quite comfortable here now and we've gotten to know a lot of musicians," she said.

"The hardest thing is the money. It's the getting your name out there, getting the publicity and the marketing and just the high quality products now," she said.

Countless unpaid gigs have been played in the city but with the friends they've made, The Johnnys have managed to put out an album of original tunes called "I Like It a Lot," which was produced by Urban Indian Productions.

"They really believe in us, and they really love the music, and they really love us as people too as we do them," said Johnny.

She said the Johnnys are at a point now where things are starting to get bigger. She was even featured on the cover of the music edition of Spirit Magazine.

"We feel like we're at a pro level now and now we're actively looking for management and booking agents and we'd definitely love to hear from record labels," she said.

So what's it like being in a band with her husband?

"Some couples go golfing. We rock out," she said. "And we're so lucky we get to do that as a married couple."

The Johnnys aside, the Fort Smith native is disinclined to forget her roots. She makes trips home whenever possible, especially at Christmas, and brings her music with her.

She also took part in the Vancouver for Aboriginal Music lab at Vancouver Community College this summer, where she said she was able to connect with other aboriginal songwriters and try out something new.

"I wrote my first traditional aboriginal song while I was there ... It was a dream come true for me - I've been always wanting to do that," she said. "I never felt like I was good enough to write a traditional song and just the people that I met and the connections that we made really just gave me the strength to do it."

Johnny said she'd like to get into Cree music on a bigger scale. Something else she'd like to get into, she said, is to become a positive role model for young aboriginal women.

"I believe that whatever it is that you want to do in life, you should just do it," she said. "Don't listen to what anybody says, just do it."