Joob

After being voted as the top band in town in the Oakville Beaver’s music contest, now Joob needs your help to become the best of the west.

There were three local bands vying for the Oakville crown in Metroland’s Best of the West online music competition. The votes have been counted and Joob was selected as the winner. The annual competition is hosted in partnership by Flamborough Review, Burlington Post, Milton Canadian Champion and Oakville Beaver community newspapers.

Now, the Oakville trio goes up against the three winners from the neighbouring municipalities. The winner of the overall contest will get a chance to perform at this summer’s Burlington Sound of Music Festival.

“I feel pretty fantastic,” said Joob frontman Jobin Vakili. “It was a phone call I got very last minute saying this contest existed. I guess you could say it was a rushed effort.”

Vakili (guitar and vocals) and his fellow bandmates – Filip Andjelkovic (bass) and Peter Herriman (percussion) – quickly went to work to get a recording of one of their songs. They uploaded the video to YouTube and entered it into the Best of the West contest.

Though each of the bandmates is under the age of 21, they are creating an identity for themselves with a sound that resembles the music their parents may have listened to.

“I’m very rooted in classic rock and classical style of music, but with a little modern inspiration,” Vakili said. “I want to bring back the organic sound and take out all those digital effects and beats and things like that, which I think are taking away the music from itself.”

The music also has the classic themes of love and heartbreak, as well as others such as world peace and harmony.

The three members met at Iroquois Ridge High School. They were all in different grades, but the music brought them together, as they all jammed together at school.

When Vakili, who turns 21 this month, was in Grade 12, he was listening to a friend’s band play at school. The singer left the stage and Vakili was asked to play. When he picked up the guitar, the then-Grade 9 student, Herriman, walked up and asked if he could jam too. The group gave him a shot.

“He turned out to be incredible, better than anybody in Grade 12. He just blew all of our minds,” Vakili said.

After finishing high school, Vakili was considering his post-secondary school options when he decided to take some time to give music a shot. But he needed some band mates.

“I just thought who’s the best bassist and drummer I know and then boom, we just started this band,” he said.

The band called itself after the name Vakili sometimes uses, Joob. Now, they have a repertoire of original tracks to fill an entire album, plus they perform some recognizable covers. The band also intends to record a demo track.

In the final round of the contest, Joob is up against Milton’s The Compound, Burlington’s The Traveling Tallymen and Flamborough’s Shanny and the Nannigans.

Voting begins Monday, Feb. 27 and ends Friday, March 9. The champion will be announced the week of March 12. - Dominik Kurek, Oakville Beaver

Based out of Oakville/Mississauga, Joob, named after guitarist/singer Joob Vakili, make no bones about busting out the live energy. Rooted in funk-styled grooves infusing hard-edged elements of blues and rock, what makes this trio exemplary is their amazing synergy on stage, the interplay between driving basslines and exuberant drumming powered by Joob Vakili’s guitar chops, shredding with Page and Vaughan-like dexterity. Seamlessly blending classic rock musicianship with a flashy funk-blues spirit, these guys play like seasoned veterans. - @LonelyVagabond