Toronto-based country band One Hundred Dollars, from left: Jonathan Adjemian, Paul Mortimer, Ian Russell, Dave Clarke, Stew Crookes and Simone Schmidt. (Neil Rough/$100)

The members of Toronto-based country act One Hundred Dollars aren’t ones to pussyfoot around. In concert, singer Simone Schmidt prefaces the band’s hard-knocks tunes with statements that can be jarring to an unsuspecting listener. “This one’s about having sex when you don’t want to,” she might murmur before launching into the jaunty, bittersweet Careless Love; she might preface the rambling No Great Leap by noting the disheartening number of women who are survivors of sexual abuse.

"The conflict in Canada is always posed as, ‘We have no national identity.’ People have been hooked on that for about 40 years. [But] we have to realize we do have a national identity that we don’t necessarily want to embrace."

-- Simone Schmidt

It’s no surprise then that when Schmidt and bandmate Ian Russell set about creating a series of seven-inch vinyl recordings inspired by different parts of Canada, One Hundred Dollars focused on stories that might seem at odds with rosier perceptions of our national identity. Schmidt and Russell claim they were initially inspired by Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy, the iconic CBC-commissioned tune from the 1960s that recounts the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, that “iron road runnin’ from the sea to the sea.”

The band’s Regional Seven Inch series will involve putting out a collection of two-song singles on different labels across Canada, with each record addressing issues relevant to the region in which it is released. The first seven-incher, which came out last week on Toronto’s Blocks Recording Club, features the mournful 14th Floor, which was inspired by one of the cancer wards at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. The B-side is called Migrant Workers, an unflinching narrative about the folks who travel from their home countries to harvest tomatoes in Leamington, Ont.

“The conflict in Canada is always posed as, ‘We have no national identity,’” says Schmidt during a recent interview in Toronto. “People have been hooked on that for about 40 years. [But] we have to realize we do have a national identity that we don’t necessarily want to embrace. There’s a range of things that come up when you love a place, just like when you love a person. It’s like writing a love song – you have to be critical and embrace the things you don’t love in the hopes of changing them.”

The tune Black Gold, one side of their Alberta seven-inch, was sparked by the singer-songwriter's conversations with a group of Somali friends and co-workers. Through these women, Schmidt learned of their sons’ and husbands’ experiences in Fort McMurray, where workers in the tarsands sleep in their cars because the demand for labour far exceeds the city’s accommodations.

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“There’s so much money and everyone has three Hummers, but nobody has anywhere to live,” Schmidt sighs. “They do really hard labour, but are living really hard lives that don’t allow for any cultural sensitivity, which makes for a very violent disruption in people’s lives.”

In crafting lyrics, Schmidt is wary of falling prey to the sentimentality of writers like the Romantic poets. “You have to figure out how to avoid making weird emotional porn,” she says. “It’s important to us not to be exploitative and not to just write bummer jams.” Though the members of One Hundred Dollars come from a place of relative privilege, their specificity and critical thought prevents them from sounding maudlin or mining other folks’ traumas in creepy or condescending ways.

Russell and Schmidt started One Hundred Dollars about two years ago. The band was sparked by their shared love of singing Tammy Wynette and George Jones duets. In 2007, the pair corralled some friends to record the Hold It Together EP, a humble collection of tracks that stemmed from Russell’s experiences with leukemia.

But One Hundred Dollars really came into their own with their full-length debut, Forest of Tears. Released last summer, the album pays respect to the legacy of the greats they’ve studied so diligently – everyone from Jones and Wynette to Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard. It’s an enthralling mix of tenderly strummed acoustic guitar, gently brushed drums and Stew Crookes’s shivery pedal steel. It’s all anchored by Schmidt’s weathered barn-board drawl, which belies the fact that she grew up in downtown Toronto, and is still shy of 25.

One Hundred Dollars describe the music they create as new new country – the opposite of the slick dreck that dominates modern country radio. “Country music has been not country for so long,” Russell insists. “It’s like, city views of the country.” The stereotypical signifiers of rural life – fields, work, cattle – are being written about by outsiders, he says.

One of the best things about One Hundred Dollars’ Regional Seven Inch series – and arguably one of their core strengths as a band – is that while their releases educate listeners about underrepresented issues, the work never feels too earnest, or founded on platitudes.

Simone Schmidt, lead singer for One Hundred Dollars. (Zach Slootsky/$100)

Schmidt says that the act of reflection is part of why she was compelled to release these recordings on vinyl. It’s not just that vinyl makes for a more tactile experience of playing recorded music than clicking through MP3s. As Schmidt explains it, “The act of having to get up and turn over the A-side and B-side of records appeals to me as part of the mechanics of listening.”

There’s a lot of power in the thought of a listener meditating on, say, Schmidt singing about an abducted sex worker in Vancouver (a song she’s working on for their upcoming west coast seven-inch), or the effects that Migrant Workers might have on someone who’s never considered that their ketchup comes courtesy of the invisible presence of immigrant labourers. One Hundred Dollars' investment in sharing these stories seems particularly interesting in light of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s insistence back in the fall that artists are elitists with little or no connection to average working Joes.

While she cringes at Harper’s comments about creative types, Schmidt is fascinated by the undertones of cutbacks to arts funding.

“We’re not talking about that much money, which means there’s a motivation that’s not fiscal,” she muses. “Harper’s creating a class consciousness in people that’s hateful. It’s not in a single power’s interest to have more than one story about what it has power over, and a government that wants a particular type of power is not going to be happy about having anyone other than itself creating those stories. It’s not about average Joes; it’s really about trying to homogenize the national mythology.”

14^th Floor, the first release in One Hundred Dollars’ Regional Seven Inch series, is out now on Blocks Recording Club. Check out the band’s MySpace page for details about future releases.

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.