Toronto – Even though I was pretty stoked about catching the last ever Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, I opted to go out and catch this show instead. It turned out to be a pretty good call. Besides, I’m sure all the best parts of Conan will make it onto Youtube or something anyways.
The Lonesome Ace Stringband is made up of guys who I’ve seen playing the regular Wednesday bluegrass nights at the Silver Dollar and they offered up what you would expect: old timey bluegrass tunes full of tons of picking and some high lonesome harmonies. Their stage banter consisted of asking the audience question like “Any fans of old time gospel?” (to which the crowd responded surpisingly with loud cheering) or “Any fans of old time banjo tunes?” (to which I wanted to respond, “No, I only enjoy modern banjo tunes” but I didn’t) One of them also threw out a sales pitch for their CD with a tongue in cheek attempt to convince us that CDs were better than mp3s and cooler than vinyl. Hopefully they sold a few.
One Hundred Dollars took to the stage as some intro music played and a smoke machine filled the room … kind of like the Chicago Bulls if they were a country band. The Toronto band were playing a release show for their new 7” entitled My Father’s House, so of course they played the title track midway through their set as well as a whole load of other songs, the highlights for me being “14 Hour Day, ” “Careless Love” and a cover of Little Feat’s “Willin.” Singer Simone Schmidt has one hell of a powerful voice and the rest of the band (featuring several former members of Jon Rae and the River) were equally impressive, especially organist Jonathan Adjemian.
If you enjoy country-ish stuff that absolutely doesn’t suck, then One Hundred Dollars is the band for you.
