Fitton Family Fridays: Miss Joanie
Hamilton, OH – Music lives inside everybody. Literally.
“Everyone is a musician since before birth because you hear your mama’s heartbeat,” said children’s artist Miss Joanie, aka Joan Whittaker. “You feel it and you hear it. That’s the most basic, most elemental music there is, the human heartbeat. We all have one.”
Miss Joanie returns to the Fitton Center for Fitton Family Fridays at 7:30 p.m. November 13.
“I expect it will be a cross between Miss Joanie’s TED Talk and a performance,” Whittaker said of her show. “I’m a teacher, so I want the kids to learn – and be excited by learning – but I’m also a musician who loves to play and sing.”
Her interactive performance includes a table full of instruments at her side; children have opportunities to join her on stage and play. She even plans to create a brand new song during the show with help from the audience.
“I like to say to be a good musician, we have to listen, listen, listen,” Whittaker said. “If they do that, they’ll learn how a song is made and what goes into a good song. And we can do it together.”
Whittaker comes by her love of children honestly. Her father was a pediatric dentist and she remembers helping around his office and keeping kids calm before their appointments from the time she was 14 years old.
She has legit music chops, too. Whittaker fronted a rock band for three years in Finland – true story – called Joan Shark and the Finns. She performed solo for 11 years on the Greenwich Village club circuit in New York City. Her local indie-rock band The Cla-Zels recorded four albums and regularly played around Greater Cincinnati.
Fitton Center audiences know her work well, too. Whittaker performed with Just Strange Brothers and The Newbees on the legendary Fitton Showstoppers Women of Rock show in 2018. Her musical Chocolate Donut Spiders played in the Fitton Family Theater, as did a Halloween-themed play she wrote. She’s done summer programming at the Fitton in both music and dance.
But writing a song for her newborn niece – who is now 30 – changed the trajectory of her career. Grammy-nominated Cincinnati children’s artist Zak Morgan heard her play at an open mic and encouraged her to pursue the path of children’s music.
Good choice. Her debut album as a children’s artist - Miss Joanie's Potty Party (2007) - won recognition as the Best of Cincinnati: Children's Album. Her 2018 album When the Sun Shines won a Parents' Choice Award. More recently, Miss Joanie performed in the Kids Zone during Operation Pumpkin in 2023, appearing in rotation through the weekend with both Morgan and DJ Christian.
“I play a lot of libraries and school gyms,” she said. “I don’t often get all the cool stuff I get at the Fitton Center – the lights and the sound – so this is going to be a lot of fun for everyone.”
Tickets for Fitton Family Fridays are $9 for Fitton Center members, $11 for non-members, and are available online right here, by phone at 513-863-8873, ext. 110 and in person at the Fitton Center box office.
The Fitton Family in Loving Memory of Vaden Fitton is the Fitton Family Fridays series sponsor. Aglamesis Bros. Ice Cream and Chocolate is the event sponsor for the November show.
The Fitton Center for Creative Arts is located at 101 S. Monument Avenue on the Riverfront in downtown Hamilton, Ohio.
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