Gig: One Hundred Dollars

One Hundred Dollars (Nordic Nomadic)

The Great Hall. Friday, May 13, 2011.

"If you're going to tape a step backwards turn around first," read the fine print on the ticket. A typical sort of sentiment from the night's headliners, even if on this night they'd made a big step forward, debuting their new album in the Great Hall. A big step up from the sort of dank beer dens that might be considered the band's natural environment, but they put the space to good use with some simple but dramatic flourishes.

Up first, though, Nordic Nomadic looked a bit less monumental in these surroundings — two guys on the big stage playing to a spare early crowd. Chad Ross (ex-Deadly Snakes, now also of Quest For Fire) presented some tunes that tucked themselves right into the environment. Backed by Paul Vernon on drums, "unrushed" would be an apt descriptor here — the first song was five minutes, about three of that slowly-unfurling instrumental buildup, and it's no surprise that one of the project's calling cards is a song called "The World's Slowest Man".

The best element is how Ross can pull off the music's creeping cadences without falling into either lethargy or noodling — spaciousness takes a certain skill level. Musically, this wasn't unlike the sort of thing he's doing in Quest for Fire, but here it's without the band's sludgy velocity. That said, the live incarnation of Nordic Nomadic seemed less acoustic-leaning than his two albums of recorded output. There were a half-dozen songs in the set's half-hour, and I found it pleasingly tuneful and admirably understated, but I could imagine that for some people there might not be enough there there.

Listen to a song from this set here.

It didn't take long during the between-set break for it to get rather packed-in down on the floor. It was a hootin', hollerin', good-time sort of crowd that greeted the five-piece backing band that took the stage to start a long intro to "Black Gold", playing on their own for a couple minutes. It'd been a while since I'd seen a full-band performance from One Hundred Dollars and I quickly remembered the punch that the band can muster on stage.

Putting the focus on the Simone Schmidt's words, the band often plays as a duo (alongside guitarist Ian Russell) or trio (with pedal steel guitarist Stew Crookes added to the mix). But add lead guitarist Paul Mortimer and the rhythm section of Dave Clarke and Kyle Porter and this band can bring it roadhouse tough. But still not so flashy as to upstage Schmidt, who garnered her own burst of applause as she took the stage.

That slick entrance was just one smart idea in what would turn out to be a very well-constructed show, with a lot of elements to enhance the songs. There were some nice visuals adding to the vivid lyrical imagery, like a single spotlight on the curtain behind the band, representing the full moon during "Where The Sparrows Drop". There were also some new instrumental flourishes, such as Schmidt pulling out a harmonica on "Brother", and Russell switching over to electric guitar for "Waiting on Another". That one evinced the band's more "mature" sound that's hinted at on the Songs of Man album, which still has a country feel, but also crosscuts it with as much of a soft rock/West Coast vibe — it wouldn't take much to reconfigure this as a Fleetwood Mac tune.

Besides the material from the new album came "If Not For the Carnations" (which I guess didn't fit the album's concept¹) as well as "Ashes By Now", a Rodney Crowell cover.

And then suddenly, Schmidt appeared up on the balcony, bathed in a spotlight for a solo turn, playing the affecting "Aaron's Song", a moving biographical sketch of one of the clients that Schmidt met while working as as a speech facilitator: "she lent me words / I lent her soul". The room was totally quiet during this, as if she were holding the crowd in her hands.²

That was followed by an instrumental from the band as Schmidt made her way back down to the stage — and meanwhile photocopied American one hundred dollar bills were scattered from the balcony to the crowd below. And in one final flourish, at the end of "Ties that Bind", sparklers were passed up to the stage to dramatically flare away before fizzling out in a cloud of smoke.

And then the main set ended somewhat unceremoniously, the band just walking off sans announcement after "Fires of Regret", but they quickly returned for a full encore with a mix of the relatively obscure (b-side "The Digger"), some covers (including "Mama Tried") and even one brand-new one (about children being apprehended by social services, the chorus began "Calm and Collected").

That might have seemed like the end, but they were called back for a two-song second encore — and after covering Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings earlier on, they showed (as they have in the past) that they're not afraid to play the kind of country music that hasn't been embraced by, well, hipsters as they closed out the night with Garth Brooks' "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)". All told, the set went past ninety minutes taking in a full two dozen songs for a worthy celebration of the band's accomplishments.

Listen to a song from this set here.

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Additional media: Colin Medly has posted some lovely-looking videos from this show.

¹ The title of Songs of Man can be taken quite literally, as all of them are written by Schmidt as told from a man's point of view. And though there's a lot of range to explore within that, the most prominent secondary trait in the songs is Schmidt's appreciation for old-fashioned bottom-line materialism, a constant nagging worry in songs like "Everybody Wins" and "Work" about "who gets by and who gets broke".

² It's worth noting that Schmidt — a non-musician when the band began — accompanied herself quite ably on guitar. I wasn't as surprised by this as some might have been having seen her progress a few months previously.