The characters and catastrophes that populate $100’s sad, swaying songs seem familiar. There’s the girl with bruised hopes, waiting to hop a train so she can fumble numbly through her daily drudgery. There’s the distraught lover tabulating the cracks and fissures in the ceiling, counting down the seconds until unwelcome sex ends. There are cottages and compromises, grief and growth. Oh, and pain. A lot of slow, aching pain.

These stories are archetypal, the meat and blood that make up the best country music. You could almost imagine $100’s forlorn fables at home in a tune by Dolly Parton or Merle Haggard — only singer/songwriter Simone Schmidt isn’t talking about the Great Smoky Mountains or the Deep South, but the sidewalks and subway tracks of the GTA.

Impressively, this country music built on city stories doesn’t sound like the work of a bunch of wannabes or urban brats. If anything, $100’s commitment to transforming the world they know best into vivid musical snapshots results in deeply honest songs, material that feels closer to the spirit of country than it would if they were talking about whiskey and horses.

“It’s the form that we borrow,” insists Schmidt, fiddling with a pot leaf–emblazoned lighter as she and her bandmates take a time out in a backyard just south of Little Italy, steps from the garage where they practice. “To me, form is really important, and I like writing within that structure because it allows concise and conclusive metaphors. There’s nothing open. And there’s a sense of completion that comes with the form. My problem with a lot of new songwriting is that there’s no conclusion at all. Everyone’s just like, ‘Ennh!’

 “I think stories come from anywhere… I mean, we don’t pretend that we’re from anywhere else. Pain is universal, and most of them are about pain and sad things, and everyone feels that at some point. But, y’know, the ‘No Great Leap’ tune is about riding the subway. We use the word train instead — because it is a train, just not a train that rides through the countryside.”
 “And you can rhyme more words with ‘train’ than ‘subway,’” interjects bassist Paul Mortimer.
Admittedly, Schmidt’s lyrics and voice — a quavering, prematurely world-weary mezzo-soprano with a hint of twang — would be wasted if $100’s songs weren’t fleshed out by players with the same commitment to songcraft and authentic atmosphere. She started the band with guitarist Ian Russell (Jon-Rae & the River) almost two years ago; as a duo and within their newly expanded band, Schmidt and Russell are invested in making “songs that stand up on their own with just a guitar; no flim-flam, no canoodling.” Occasionally, they’d corral pal Stew Crookes to play pedal steel. (That’s his imitation of the TTC chimes you hear on “No Great Leap.”)

They built up a steady following that, impressively, wasn’t limited to a single faction or clique within Toronto’s slightly fragmented indie scene, supporting peers ranging from Fucked Up (who commissioned “Blaze of Glory”) to art-folk-blues songstress Jennifer Castle (Castlemusic — see On Disc, page 30). They made a humble EP called Hold It Together in 2007 and released it themselves. A fortuitous spot opening for Live Country Music (whose Doug Paisley warms up for $100 at the Horseshoe this Friday) led to Canadian indie god Rick White (who was in the audience) offering to record their debut LP, Forest of Tears, which comes out on Rotate This co-owner Brian Taylor’s Blue Fog label July 25.

White’s offer was even more incentive to assemble a proper band, so Russell and Schmidt recruited a collection of solid friends, including Mortimer, drummer Dave Clarke and organist Jonathan Adjemian.

 “The day we recorded [the album] was one of the best days of my life,” Schmidt grins. Their exhausting session with White lasted 13 hours.

Schmidt draws on her real-life experience for $100’s music, which makes me wonder whether the songs are an extension of her activist background. (The brains behind guerrilla print collective PunchClock, Schmidt has worked on anti-poverty and disability-rights issues.)
“The music we make is affected by our politics, but I don’t think that putting out a record can be considered an extension of our politics. A record is a record, and there are a million of them, and if it took listening to records to get the kind of world that I’d like to see, then that world would be realized.”