BIOGRAPHIES GAMES GALLERY

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Previous Performances Street Level Festival Shows Alliston Potato Festival Almonte Festival of The Arts Arboretum, Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa Belleville Sidewalk Sale Brockville Riverfest Brockville Ribfest Brockville Buskerfest Burk's Falls Fair Charlottetown Festival of Fathers Citygate Shopping Centre, Hong Kong Cornwall Winterfest Cumberbarn Festival, Renfrew Detroit Festival of the Arts Delaware Tall Ships Festival Dorset Snowball Winter Carnival Dundas Busker Festival Detroit Festival of the Arts Festival Of The Islands, Gananoque Fort Erie Friendship Festival Gloucester Fair Great Northern Exhibition, Collingwood Havelock Rock and Rail Festival Halifax Busker Festival Herbfest, Almonte Huntsville Festival of the Arts Jean Charest Campaign, Ottawa Kids Park, Kitchener Ont Kingston Busker Festival Lynx baseball Stadium Log Farm, Ottawa Manotick Haunted Harvest Festival Mississauga Moonlight Madness Munster Strawberry Moon Festival Nelson Streetfest, B.C. Nepean Days, Nepean Old Home Week, Smith Falls Orangeville Busker festival Ottawa Busker Festival Ottawa Children's Festival Ottawa Senators, Corel Centre PEI Bridgefest Redondo Beach Junkfest, California Renfrew Snowfest Rideau Canal Festival Sault St. Marie Busker Festival Saunders Haunted Farm, Muster Sheffield England International Street Festival Singapore River Buskers' Festival Skopje Buser Festival, Macedonia Spencerville Fair Split Bukser Festival, Croatia Sebenik Children's Festival, Croatia St. Stephen Chocolate Fest Sugarbush Festival, Vanier Stittsville, Villagefest Sydney Busker Festival Tulip Festival, Ottawa Toronto StreetFest Toronto WinterFest Vancouver 2010 Olympics Winterlude, Ottawa Windsor Buskerfestival Yellowknife Old Town Ramble and Ride Main Stage Festival Shows Brockville Fall Fair CHEO BBQ, Ottawa Canada Day Celebrations Barrhaven Canada Day Celebratons Parliament Hill City of Kitchener First night City of Ottawa First Night Deep River Summer Festival Dickison Days, Manotick Elora Festival of Singers Edmonton Klondike Days Festival and Events Conference, Ottawa Festival Lindsey Academy Theatre Festival Jojo, Hammond Festival of The Maples, Perth Great Northern Exhibition, Collingwood Kincolith Crabfest Lakealive Festival, Cambridge London Children's Festival Merikville Fair Merveille Des Sables, Gatineau Metcalfe Fair Musical Ride, Lefaivre Niagara Poultry Fest Nanjing Euro-Americas Clown Festival, China Nepean's 20th Birthday Ottawa Children's Festival Ottawa Folk Festival Ottawa Home Show Ottawa Jazz Festival Ottawa Winterlude, Jaques Cartier Park Perth Stewart Park Festival Peterborough Folk Festival Russell Fair Renfrew Valley Fest Salmon Fest, Newfoundland South Moutain Fair St. John Festival by the Sea St. Thomas Iron Horse Festival Storybook Garndens, London, ON Super EX, Ottawa Sudbury Summerfest TD Canada Trust Merger, Sky Dome, Toronto Tour for Kids, Eganville Tour De Nortel, Ottawa Toronto Winter Festival We are all drummers/ Centrepointe Theatre, Ottawa WESTfest, Ottawa Williamsburg Fall Harvest Festival Winterlude, amphitheatre, J. Cartier Park Theatre, Club, Hall Shows Astrolabe, Ottawa Acadamy Theatre, Lindsay Acadamy Theatre, Peterborough Algonquin Observatory, Ottawa Auditorium, London Banshee, Whitby Barrymores, Ottawa Bert and Ernies, Toronto Bovine Sex Club Brockville Arts Centre Cambridge Arts Centre, Ottawa Centerpointe Theatre, Ottawa Climax, Ottawa Congress Centre, Ottawa Duke of Sommerset, Ottawa Equinox, Ottawa Universtiy Empire Theatre, Belleville Guelph Legion Hanover Sportsplex Horse Shoe, Toronto Imperial Theatre, St. John Laurentian Theatre, Ottawa Lonsestar Roadhouse, Ottawa NAC 4th stage, Ottawa Navy Club, Cornwall Palace Theatre, Singapore Rivoli, Toronto Sanderson Centre, Brantford Showplace Performance Centre, Peterborough Woodroffe Theatre, Ottawa Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ottawa Zuma's Roadhouse, Ottawa TV, Radio Shows A Channel Edmonton, Breakfast TV A Channel News, Charlottetown CBC Radio, Basic Black CBC Radio, All in A Day CBC Radio Best of Basic Black CBC Newsday CBC JONOVISION CITY TV, Breakfast TV CJOH Newsline CJOH Midday CJOH Regional Contact CJOH Home Grown Cafe (1st place) CHRO Special, Summer Jobs You wish You had CHUO Radio CKCU Radio NEWRO News NEWRO Breakfast TV Rogers Fanfare Rogers Daytime Shows for Famous People Tragically Hip Sheryl Crow Ashley MacIssac Blues Traveler Ziggy Marley Washboard Hank Goh Chok Tong, Prime Minister of Singpore Stephen Harper, Prime Minsiter of Canada Corporate Shows Alcatel Boeing Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario COCA CMHC Cognos Consumer Gas Earth Day Ottawa Carelton Festival and Events Ontario Heritage Canada Hummingbird Music General Dynamics Interis Consulting International Association of Interior Designers JDS Uniphase National Capital Commision Nav Canada Nortel Phillipine Development Assistance Program Proctor and Gamble Recycling Council Of Ontario Southmedic TD Canda Trust Tim Hortons Township of Cumberland World Exchange Plaza Museum Shows Aviation Museum Cumberland Museum Currency Museum Museum of Nature Museum of Science and Technology Museum of Photography National Museum of Civilization Ontario Science Centre War Museum College, University Shows Careleton University Ottawa University University of Waterloo University of Westeron Ontario York University Algonquin College St. Lawrence College Georgian Bay School of the Arts

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The Beginning          Rock Paper Scissors anyone? Junkyard Symphony was developed in July of 1992 when Jonny and his guitarist friends Matt Fredrick and Christian Duquette decided to take their garage band "The Death or Glory Toads" down to Sparks Street on Canada Day for a trial run. This was their first real gig playing guitar driven songs from Gordon Lightfoot, The Grateful Dead, Neil Young and believe it or not the Divinyls, an Australian rock band known for a song called "I touch myself". Needless to say the crowd was not interested in guitar driven songs or songs about touching oneself and after two hours the band had amassed the huge sum of $6.         The band therefore decided to hit the local pub for some beverages, however somebody needed to stay behind to watch the gear, and thus a game of Rock Paper Scissors ensued. Had Jonny won, there might be no Junkyard Symphony today, but luckily Jonny lost and stayed behind to watch the equipment. While the others were in a cool bar enjoying cool drinks, Jonny sat out in the blistering Ottawa summer heat with not much to do but play his drums. Now these were not just ordinary drums. These were custom built Junkyard Jonny drums with buckets, pails, bongos, a toy bas drum, a tambourine, a frog horn and a even a bull horn. Jonny had opted to leave his real drum kit at home for the street was no place for a Pearl Export.          What happened next was magic, for as Jonny played, a crowd gathered, and gathered, and gathered, and soon the street was full of curious onlookers watching one really awesome drum solo on a really peculiar drum set. By the time Jonny had finished and his friends returned, there was $150 in the yellow Tupperware bucket and the idea of Junkyard Symphony was born. The idea was simple... people prefer peculiar percussion!

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The History         Junkyard Jonny, aka Jon Olsen, founder of Junkyard Symphony has been playing on pots and pans since the age of four and has never really stopped. He took private drum lessons for five years as a child then entered the concert bands and jazz bands in middle school and high school. As well as being an honors student in the French immersion program, he won the overall music award and most spirited student award at high school graduation for his creative efforts in forming The Enviro Band , a collection of 20 or so concert band members who played radical rhythms on recycle bins and pickle buckets for their Earth Day ceremonies.         As a teen, Jonny began juggling and learned to ride a unicycle which became useful in his part time job as a clown where he developed his passion for performing. These skills became even more useful with the birth of Junkyard Symphony in 1992, when Jonny took to the streets to earn a living as a busker. He performed with his Junkyard kit for an entire summer on Sparks Street achieving great success and a wee bit of fame. When Jonny's parents returned home that summer from a bicycle trip in the Netherlands and discovered that their pots and pans were missing, they were more than a little surprised, but delighted to hear that Jonny had earned enough money to pay for his entire year at the Univeristy of Waterloo where he studied Environmental Resource Studies.          The next summer Jonny decided to return to his favorite pots and pans pastime on Sparks Street, and although he was still having lots of fun and making lots of money he was becoming lonely as a solo performer. That's when sidekick / Lackey, Christian Duquette, a Carleton University anthropology student, entered the picture. Christian was a good friend of Jonny's who played guitar in his high school rock band "The Death or Glory Toads". Christian didn't know how to play percussion, but he was a quick learner, and he was completely wacky, so with a little bit of Jonny's guidance, Christian turned into the Amazing Lackey, and so creating the birth of Junkyard Symphony.          After graduating from University, having paid for their degrees with their enterprising talents of turning one man's trash into another man's treasure, the dynamic duo went on to achieve great fame on the many roads that they traveled, performing in schools and festivals, and spreading a little bit of happiness and environmental ethic everywhere they went. Christian's brother Jeff, who tagged along as a roady, eventually became the infamous Plunger Boy, who had a unique talent for catching plungers on his small planet sized belly.         The fun went on for nine years. They performed throughout Southern and Eastern Ontario, the Maritimes, ventured into the United States, Singapore and England. They won first place in the Canadian Association of Exhibitions National Youth Talent contest in 1994. They won Best Act the Defies Description at the Kingston Busker Rendez-Vouz in 1995. In 1997 at the same festival, they won Best Musical Act. On Home Grown Cafe, Ottawa's famous talent show, they won first place overall in the variety category. They have been featured on many radio and television shows such as CBC's Basic Black, Newsday, and Jonovision, CJOH's Regional Contact, Midday News and Newsline, and Roger's Fanfare, and they have made over 50 newspaper appearances from places all over.

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The Later Years          But eventually The Amazing Lackey and brother Plunger Boy decided that enough was enough. Plunger Boy's belly was becoming sore and the Amazing Lackey had a fiancée and a stepdaughter to support, so Plunger Boy became an electrical engineer at Nortel, and The Amazing Lackey moved to Brockville to work at Brocktel. That left Jonny O all on his own. Unsure of where to go in life, and not wanting to give up on his dream of being a professional percussionist, Jonny continued performing on his own, calling the show Junkyard Jonny. The show went over surprisingly well in schools and community events and smaller venues that could not previously afford Junkyard Symphony.        It wasn't long, however, before Jonny got the urge to reform Junkyard Symphony again with a new partner. Trashcan Tony, aka Tony Raybould came on board to reform Junkyard Symphony with a a newer version of the show in which the audience could drum along with the band. This new show became immediatley popular as people loved to be inlcuded in the fun, and the new Junkyard Symphony traveled to such far away places as Singapore and Hong Kong where they were a big hit, and got to stay in five star hotels. They even played for the President of Singapore, quite an honour. It seems that rhythm truly is the universal language.

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The New Years          In 2012, having spent an adeventurous decade with Junkyard Symphony, Traschcan Tony moved on to new endeavors. Jonny then decided to open up the company to a series of part time assistants, rather than one full time assistant. He also added several new leaders so that a second show could be available when Jonny was booked. This allowed the company to become more diverse and evolve with the times. While they continued to travel from time to time, the company took a different focus and turned it sights to local gigs. This was partly because Jonny now had a family with two children and wanted to stay closer to home, but also because Jonny discovered there was a ripe market of medium size shows all around Ottawa and the Valley.         Jonny also began building games out of reused materials as he envisioned a second branch of the company that could evolve in conjuction with the show. The Groovy Games Gallery was created in 2019.

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