ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS with RATTLESNAKE CHOIR and SAMANTHA MARTIN & THE HAGGARD at the Dakota (249 Ossington) as part of JunoFest, Saturday (March 26), 9 pm. $30 wristband, $12 at door. TM. See listing.
Toronto’s One Hundred Dollars revere the icons of country music, but it’s misleading to call them a throwback band.
“I don’t think we’re a throwback at all,” says lead singer Simone Schmidt from a secluded house in St. Thomas, Ontario, where the band sometimes practises. “We’re playing country music but interpreting it in a way that’s relevant to us. We don’t wear cowboy hats or boots, and we sing about contemporary issues and situations.”
That’s what makes the band an inspired choice for this year’s JunoFest. Though they aren’t nominated for any awards, their ability to capture the current political zeitgeist using country music tropes makes them a quintessentially Canadian act.
On their ongoing regional-themed 7-inch series, they examine issues related to individual Canadian cities without resorting to polemic.
The most recent, Black Gold (which reappears in a new version on the band’s upcoming sophomore album, Songs Of Man), takes the classic country tale of a transient worker corrupted by his circumstances and repositions it in Fort McMurray’s oil-based economy.
“There’s an interconnectedness between people who live where I live and people who live there,” Schmidt explains. “A huge number of people from here go to work there, and it affects their families’ home lives when they return. That’s how it relates to the character in the song, but on a deeper level it’s about the way we’re all connected through our shared resources.”
On Songs Of Man, out in May on Outside, the band delves into the ballad tradition with a series of story songs written from different characters’ perspectives. Though specific and circumstantial, they speak to issues of the day. It’s no surprise that many have described the band as activists, but again Schmidt disagrees.
“We’re just writing about what we see,” she says. “I think the notion that we’re an activist band speaks more to people’s fear of talking about reality than to anything about us.”
It’s One Hundred Dollars’ refusal to be pigeonholed that makes them so palatable to non-country-music fans. Schmidt and guitarist Ian Russell even guest on Fucked Up’s upcoming punk opera, David Comes To Life.
“I just don’t think we fit into any scene, country music or otherwise. We make our art the way we do, and that defies categorization.”
music@nowtoronto.com
